Here’s a scrap I found floating around on the old laptop. It’s a transcription I made (at the request of a friend) of the song “Friday Night (Is Killing Me)” by Bash & Pop, a band formed by Tommy Stinson after the Replacements broke up (and who have reemerged in 2016). (Sorry for those hoping for tab of “Friday Night” by Vandenberg.)
Why bother dusting off this handwritten fragment? For starters, check out the amorphous EBEBAE tuning. Is it “open E11” or “open A sus2” or … what? Also, it reminds me to talk about learning songs by ear: We’re now probably in the best position ever to figure out how to play songs. In this instance I studied the studio recording and a live YouTube video. The combination of hearing a clean version and eyeballing what’s actually going on can be pretty illuminative (assuming they’re both being executed the same way). What’s more, we now often have access to loads of online transcriptions. As most of those are in no way vetted, it can be a risky proposition, but stitching together the best of several interpretations can be effective. And, of course, we no longer have to degrade our media and hardware by playing one second fragments of Zappa keyboard lines again and again (am I projecting?) since there are many software options for looping and slowing down audio. Use all of your resources, people!
Speaking of the accuracy of random online transcriptions, is the above 100% precise? Not sure. Why don’t you play along and decide for yourself?
echoflower 