Songscription Blog & Music Transcription Resources
Explore Songscription's guides to music transcription, sheet music, MIDI, piano roll, and AI-powered music learning, plus product updates and company announcements from the Songscription team.
Everything about getting notation you can read, edit, and print: making sheet music from a song, simplifying and arranging it for your level, and exporting a clean score to PDF or MusicXML.
The B-flat clarinet reads a major second above concert pitch, so a piano part handed straight to a clarinetist sounds in the wrong key. Here is the interval the clarinet needs, how its registers affect the result, and how to get a part in the right key without transposing by hand.
The French horn in F reads a perfect fifth above concert pitch, a different interval from the B-flat and E-flat band instruments. Here is exactly how far to move a part for horn, why concert pitch comes out wrong, and how to get a readable part without working out the interval yourself.
The Nashville Number System lets a band read a song in any key, but every charting app makes you type the numbers in by ear first. Here is how to get the chords automatically and turn them into a number chart.
The most powerful moments in a worship set are often the spontaneous ones, and they never come with a chart. Here is how to capture a spontaneous song or a brand-new release the publishers have not caught up to yet.
Hand a sax player concert-pitch music and it comes out in the wrong key. Here is how transposing instruments work, the interval each saxophone needs, and how to get a part in the right key without the math.
If a song sits too high or too low, the fix is not to strain, it is to change the key. Here is how to find a key that fits your range and get the sheet music and chords in that key, not just a pitched-up recording.
Harpists arrange constantly, because most of the songs people request were never published for harp. Here is how to arrange any song for harp, from picking a harp-friendly key to handling pedals, levers, and glissandi.
Some songs were never published, and the score you need does not exist online. Here is a practical order of operations for finding sheet music for any song, and what to do when nothing turns up.
A piano reduction takes music written for many instruments and condenses it onto two staves a single pianist can play. Here is what that means, how it differs from an arrangement, and how to make one.
A fake book is a thick collection of lead sheets, one song per page, melody and chords only. Here is what a fake book is, where the Real Book fits in, and how to build your own from the songs you play.
Plenty of great pianists do not read a note. Here is an honest answer to whether you need to read music to play piano, when reading actually helps, and the ways to learn songs without it.
Tablature shows you where to put your fingers instead of which notes to play. It is the fastest way for guitarists to read music, with one big trade-off. Here is how it works.