Hi, looking at songsterr and also using my ear looks like Justin got the first note for let it be wrong. Looks like it should start on G and repeat for all of “when i find my” then goes to A on “self”.
Justin started on E for “when I” then goes to G on “find”. Still sounds okay but maybe not correct? I am still new to this so not clear but seems to me it starts on G.
Does this even matter? What are your thoughts. Thanks
I here it as G G G G A, same as you, when listening to this beatles youtube version of the song.
I’m not sure why Justin is stating an an E. It’s possible that he was listening to a different recording of the song.
Does it matter? Yes, no, maybe. Songsterr versions are not always completely accurate. Lots of covers are not quite right. It can still work. There are plenty of videos along the lines of “why does no one ever play this riff correctly!!”
e.g.
Keep working at it and you will get better. Some things are hard to play note for note but a simplified version can still work. That’s my take.
I put off the grade 3 transcription lessons until I started grade 4. Now I can focus most of my effort on transcription on the weeks that I do grade 3 consolidation. I noticed that a lot of people had problems with this lesson. My advice is to not to be distracted by all the chord melody playing or embellishments like slides or vibrato that Justin puts into some of his playing in the lesson. I think he is just trying to show what could be done after you transcribe the melody. This is a specialized transcription lesson, so all that is needed for the melody transcription is to transcribe the vocal melody (what is being sung in the song) for these songs, note by note. I mostly focused on finding the notes or sounds in the first four frets. Even though I like fingerstyle, I used the a pick, since you only need to play one note at a time and I am faster with the pick. I also used the suggested first couple of notes that Justin gives and wrote the fret numbers on my blank TAB sheet. I then sing or hum a few notes of the melody (full disclosure, I mostly just listen to the song in my head or imagination), find the next note or two and write out the number(s) on the TAB sheet. Then I play back what I have written out to make sure it sounds correct. It takes time, which is why Justin recommends setting aside at least 30 minutes for a transcribing session. I am setting aside four 30 minute sessions this week for this one lesson. I don’t worry about annotating the rhythm, but at some point I think it would be cool to put into GuitarPro. Since the melody repeats for every verse and chorus of most songs, I only transcribe the first verse and chorus. I don’t worry about the lyrics, just the melody notes. I will admit that this is probably easier for me since I am a singer and who also played a lot of melody parts in my earlier years using old guitar methods that start by teaching you how to play melodies. If you don’t have a lot of experience with this, then this might be a lesson that you try a little and then come back to later, like I did 
About six months ago I struggled to transcribe chords in another lesson, and basically got nowhere with that. Now, it’s the same with melody. For me it seems to be a case of trying interval after interval until one sounds OK, and then finding it is wrong anyway. Each note is a new struggle. I feel that some of these lessons forget how hard this process is for some people, and just jump way too far ahead. Justin shows that he can do it, but doesn’t explain how. It is pretty disheartening to be stuck like this, without knowing what to do.
@MarkPeters Hi Mark, I have found ear training and working out melodies by ear very challenging too, at the very beginning it seemed quite impossible. It’s already a few years now that I try and I am improving but I tried to find new strategies as recognising the intervals became a bit frustrating. This is what I’m doing at the moment and it seems to work well for me. I take a little tune in the key of C or G, knowing the key and which Major Scale you need is a great shortcut and you immediately know where your good notes are on the fretboard. Then instead of trying to guess the interval I keep on humming the note I want to find out and at the same time I play the Major Scale starting from the first note, which gives the tonality; if you’re in the key of C for example start from C and slowly play each note of the scale and listen carefully until the right note will match with your hummed note. It might not be easy at the beginning holding the note with the humming while going up the scale but then when the sound matches with the right degree of the scale is Yessss!!! You instictevely recognise it! I hope it helps, let me know if you try how it goes.
I’m not sure Justin would suggest or approve of this strategy using the Major Scale but I need to find out my melodies somehow!
@Silvia80 Silvia, this evening I took your suggestion, and tried to work out the tune of the hymn ‘Jerusalem’, using your humming method. Assuming the scale of C major, I was able to get most of the notes including, surprisingly, the two accidentals on the words ‘pleasant’ and ‘clouded’. I did get a couple of notes wrong, but overall I am quite pleased about this. Thank you very much for taking the trouble to help.
@MarkPeters Uh I’m happy to read this! 
There are days when I can’t focus properly and my ears just refuse the task and identify the notes is difficult and on other days I can find the notes easily…but always a few would not be correct, I’m not able to be that accurate yet! Only…there are not accidentals in the key of C Maj I think 
…but in music rules are often broken.
Some days will be harder because your ears are tired. It’s best to do ear training early in the day when the mind is fresh. Not that I’m any good at it, I remember Justin saying that somewhere.
@Silvia80 Exactly, a song in C major would not be expected to have accidentals, so it was good to be able to identify that there are some in this song - this tells me I was listening closely and not just picking out notes prescribed by the key.
Have you checked the lessons out in this playlist?
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL46BF323DFB881712&si=0DY7mkpM_jZTPEgV
Thanks for the link. No, I don’t recognise any of those lessons. I may give them a go if I feel like I need more challenges, but for now I prefer to learn new material from tab; it invariably has fewer errors than my own efforts, and is considerably faster.
My various comments on transcription are not cries for help; rather, they are feedback on what I consider to be less useful lessons, simply because:
This is the truth. There have been so many days that I was simply too brain tired after work to practice, think about whatever concept I was learning, and there’s no way I could transcribe. I had to put it off until the weekend.
I like to think of transcribing as a tool for developing our ears. The same way we might learn theory to develop our understanding of music. Or technical exercises to develop our technique. Or learning rhythms to develop our sense of time.
I wouldn’t look at it as Tab versus Transcribing.
Tab is a great way to quickly learn what notes to play when learning a song as long as they are accurate. You don’t need to replace this with Transcribing.
Although, if you wanted, you could spend 10% of your practice time on Transcribing/ear development.
But again, maybe you’re more motivated to learn and play songs than anything else, and I think that’s fine too. Always stay inspired and motivated. Always keep it fun. Maybe Transcribing will be something you come to a little later on your journey 
I’ve been playing “fast car” for the past couple of days, starting out going through the chords with a capo on the first fret. Basically cycling through C, G, Em and D chord patterns. My question is, if i’m going to practice playing the melody is it more beneficial for me to play it keeping the capo on while trying to more or less maintain the chord patterns when possible or should I be taking the capo off and force the fingerwork to play where the capo allowed me to passively open up the string?
If I’ve read the question correctly. The chord shapes remain the same. The capo just enables you to change the pitch to suit the vocal range of the singer.
I’ve come back to this lesson after several weeks of daily practice, and am disappointed to find that transcription isn’t getting any easier.
I also feel that I am failing to convey the difficulty I have with it.
If, when I am playing a tune I know, I accidentally play a wrong note, I immediately know it is wrong - from the way it sounds - so I am not ‘tone deaf’. However, when fishing around for each successive note of a melody that I am trying to transcribe, I get things wrong many more times than I get them right. Eventually, some of my mistakes start to sound like they might be the right thing to do. Why this should be, when I have the actual melody right there too, confuses me completely. It is as if the errors embed themselves more deeply, through repetition, but I don’t know. Of course, as soon as I read tab of the same piece, I realise my mistake.
I ought to say that while I am new to guitar, I am not new to playing music, and my difficulty with transcribing has been there right from the beginning.
I’ve now had a go at all the transcription lessons in the beginner course. I think they fall seriously short of actually teaching the process.