What is the Difference Between Piano Translation and Piano Transcription?
Piano Translation and Piano Transcription
Transcription is the process of arranging, rewriting or composing a piece for a different instrument than it was originally written for. It can also mean rewriting the original piece for a different medium or genre, such as creating a piece of music from a movie soundtrack or from an improvisational jazz recording.
Some examples of transcription include the famous Mozart arrangement of his Don Giovanni overture for small wind ensemble. The Beethoven Symphonies transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt are another example of this type of composition.
Often, transcriptions are done for purely pragmatic or contextual reasons such as when musicians play in cafes and restaurants. In the 1800s Mozart transcribed his operas’ overtures and songs for small wind ensembles, and today composers such as Stravinsky have adapted the piano for small percussion groups or string quartets for ballet rehearsals.
What is the Difference Between Piano Translation and Piano Transcription?
In the field of popular music and rock, there are two main types of transcriptions, namely individual performers copying a note-for-note guitar solo or other melody line and music publishers transcribing entire recordings of guitar solos and bass lines and selling them as sheet music in bound books. There is also a category of PVG (piano/vocal/guitar) transcriptions, where the melody line and accompaniment are arranged as a piano part while lyrics are written below it.
The most important function of piano transcription is to translate the notes and intervals in a musical piece into a format that a human can understand. This can involve learning scale degrees, reading musical notation and using a pitch-detection technique to identify which elements of the sound make up what pitch.
One of the most impressive aspects of piano transcription is that it requires a high degree of skill and a large amount of patience. A pianist must be able to identify the correct note, a corresponding musical interval and the smallest possible step that they can perform without changing the key. This skill takes years to develop, and even then it’s likely that a musician will still find their “musical ear” challenged at times.