Electronic Aids to Aural Transcription

n view of the continuing importance of aural transcription in ethnomusicology, it is surprising that so little effort seems to have been expended in simplifying even the mechanical operational problems of electronic equipment involved in the process of transcription. The greatest difficulty in producing a reasonably accurate transcription is due to the transient nature of music. A complex musical passage needs to be heard many times and often necessitates retardation of the sound track in order to be comprehended by the transcriber. With present-day tape recorders, the latter involves a corresponding drop in frequency of the whole sound content and thus introducing distortion, since neither playback systems nor the human ear have uniform response over the audible frequency range. Perhaps the ideal instrument to aid the aural transcriber would be a "music stretcher," a device which would be capable of slowing down music while preserving the original pitch, amplitude and sound spectrum. In addition to this, stop-action facilities with sound recordings, as we have for film and video, could be used to great advantage in both aural and electronic transcription of music. In recent years there have been some developments in these directions, specially for use with speech. Generally described as speech stretchers or Variable Speed Controls (VSC), these devices make possible the slowing down of recorded tape while compensating for the drop in frequencies. Phonetic Laboratories in many Universities, as well as large research organizations (e.g. Bell laboratories) have been experimenting with this for years, but it is only recently that a reasonably priced portable cassette machine has been introduced, the Varispeech II, produced by Lexicon. It is able to compress or expand speech in a range from one half to two and one half that of the original. Its primary application is for rapid listening of speech and, while speech remains reasonably coherent over much of this range, the music transcriber would undoubtedly be disturbed by the "burble-like" distortion which is progressively added as the speed is reduced.1 Another much more expensive device, the Harmonizer, produced by Eventide, is much better suited to music and is used in movie production for slightly altering the speed of music for alignment with film. Beyond a variation range of plus or minus 15%, however, the ear notices distortion in the form of periodic interruptions in the continuous flow of sound, similar to that introduced by the Varispeech. While these devices could be of some help in resolving certain types of musical