Getting Started Tips

Intermediate Grade 5 Transcribing Blues Solos
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He's some advice on getting started with this pack and things you might want to check out (or have checked out before starting!)


View the full lesson at Getting Started Tips | JustinGuitar

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Hi, would you say that is important to follow the order of the mp3 of the course? Or it doesnt matter? thanks!

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I just purchased and started this course. Wow this is a bit of a challenge. I am using Guitar Pro for transcription. Bit of a learning curve for me but I am starting to get the hang of it.

For a warm up I transcribed the 24 bars of the rythm for the first artist(Albert King). This was pretty easy to do so it was a good start to learn how to use Guitar Pro. I am 10 bars into the lead. Some bars were not that difficult but a few bars took me a few hours.

I can’t wait to finish and compare with Justin’s transcription. I learned a lot trying to listen for bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides. So much to learn in just a few bars.

I think this is a good course and worth the $15 cost.

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Justin recommends following the order given starting with Albert King.

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I’m in Grade 5 working on practice for Major Scale Maestro and looking towards what’s next and I see the Transcribing Blues Solos course. A few questions:

  • I’m kinda surprised to find this here when I know we haven’t yet learned the rest of the minor pentatonic & blues scale patterns. Just wanted to double check that it makes sense to do the blues solo course before knowing those?
  • Do people really buy Guitar Pro for this? Seems to be a $70 investment. It certainly looks cool and I’ve already experienced the pain of trying to type my own kind of half-assed tab into notes files, so I guess I’m answering my own question. Just wondering if there might be less expensive (and less fully-featured) alternatives?
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Great questions! The Transcribing Blues Solos course can still be valuable even if you haven’t fully learned all the minor pentatonic and blues scale patterns—it’s more about training your ear and understanding phrasing rather than relying purely on scale knowledge. That said, having a solid grasp of those patterns will definitely help. As for Guitar Pro, yeah, a lot of people use it because it makes transcribing and playback super easy, but if $70 feels steep, there are alternatives like TuxGuitar (free) or Soundslice (browser-based) that might work for you. Sounds like you’re already seeing the benefit of proper tabbing, so it’s just a matter of what fits your budget and needs!

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In the blues immersion course, Justin makes us transcribe blues solos on paper (tabs), without the rhythm notation.

With Guitar Pro, you need to write the rhythm and deal with learning the software, so it makes things more complex. Some students had great success with it, but I’d recommend starting transcribing on paper first and decide later if you want to use software.

Free alternatives that I use are Musescore studio or Songsterr.

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There are five set solos ‘in the style of’ and you should be able to have a go at these with minor pentatonic patterns 1 & 2 already covered before this module.
You don’t need Guitar Pro just the blank tab available from the link @math07 shared.
Good luck and have fun.
:slight_smile:

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I started with Guitar Pro and it did take about one complex song to iron out most of what I needed to know to make the tool useful. I really do like using it over alternatives I have tried from my own paper tab sheets to tuxguitar. Being able to hear back what I have tabbed is important for creation and for copying.

I remember the cost being more like half $70 though. I did use the Justin discount. See the very bottom of the notes section of Justin’s GP video:

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@sequences I agree with you I was exactly the same but once I got to know it I loved GP8 cheers Hec

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Coming back on this: I dove right in with Guitar Pro. I’m not a paper guy and once I realized I could import an audio track and use it both to transcribe and as a practice tool, I was hooked. It’s way easier to transcribe when you can click in the sheet music repeatedly to play over a section with the backing track. And it’s great for practice! Being able to play along at 10% increments in tempo is amazing.

Thanks @sequences for the tip about the discount.

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12

This made sense and I was able to handle the Albert King style solo transcription without issue. However, I’m seeing as I work through the Clapton one that I’m transcribing notes that are well beyond patterns 1 & 2 and thus, as I try to play along, I have no great sense of the pattern/position from which to play them.

I’m going to work through the first module of Level 6 and come back to the transcriptions.

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@jeffzapotoczny … Ah … the Clapton one strays beyond patterns 1 & 2? My apologies if I misremembered.