Sanderxpander
I'm a by ear guy too, I think we're having a disconnect here somewhere. Transcribe is just a tool that lets me hear better with its slow down and isolation EQ. The spectrum analysis is a bonus for me that sometimes helps. Most of the time it's off. Still looping a section and playing it twice a little slower is preferable to playing it six times manually at regular speed.
Maybe you should check out Transcribe? You seem to have a completely different image of it than what it is and I think you might actually like it a lot.
Heh... actually I wasn't even really referencing that. I was just more offering some general thoughts on the OP and how I go about it. Sorry for the confusion. I'm a little spaced out today. Been having some dumb pain flareups the past couple days and it's distracting me. I'll take a look at it. Thanks.
Bristol_Jonesey
Hi Beep
No your points are well made and informative.
There's not been many cases when i can't figure out a certain chord. It might take a while but the effort is well worth it.
Then you get to work out how to play it on your instrument of choice.
My favorite part about the manual method is you get to really rip apart the chord and it's relation to the overall composition. You can see what improv possibilities are available for soloing and what variations of the chord can be used to add some extra flavor to the backing tracks. If you do your own bass parts like I do it also shows you all the possible walk lines and of course the main chord structure for the up and down beats.
IDK... I just like really exploring stuff that way. A lot of ideas to be found in even the simplest chords.