Transcribing Por Nuestra Music

When Dr. Gurrola approached me with the opportunity to help and be a part of The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, I was unsure if I wanted to pursue this.  

I decided to take Dr. Gurrola's opportunity to work on her transcribing and translating more works that would eventually be published with her initial dissertation for several reasons: (1) I knew this opportunity would look great on a résumé, (2) I was able to work in a manner that would allow me to have the freedom to work around my schedule, (3) I knew this opportunity is rare, and (4) Dr. Gurrola is someone I have learned many lessons from since returning to a college setting, and I felt she was giving me another opportunity to grow as a musician.  When I returned to college after a sixteen-year hiatus, I realized that I had forgotten most of my computer and basic music programming skills.  I mentioned this to Dr. Gurrola, and my concern did not faze her.  Dr. Gurrola reassured me that this was a learning process for everyone involved in the project, and she would teach me everything she knew along the way.

Upon joining Dr. Gurrola and Ashley Garcia on this project, we agreed that I would update the musical notation and words of Felipe Pedrell’s excerpts.  We decided that for anyone trying to understand the composer's perspectives on what he was talking about, the music needed to be clear for anyone to read.  That meant that the music we were transcribing would need to be reproduced precisely like its original form so that upon the first read, one could understand what the composer expected from the performer and the reader.  I felt reasonably comfortable doing this part of the project since I had some background in music programs.  We decided that we needed a music software system that was simple enough to use but would also allow us to transfer the excerpts we were working on to other music software systems.  This was important because if we could not fix or print the extracts that were needed, we could transfer them to another software system that would work.  So, everything was updated using the program MuseScore as our program for all the music notations.  Since I have not used music programming software in quite a while, I thought I would have to learn how to do specific notation differently. Since programs change or become outdated, I had a fifty-fifty chance of learning the software quickly, but that would depend on how the program functioned.  This could make my life easier if the program we were using made things easy to manipulate and if I did not have to stop every couple of minutes to figure out how something worked.

Looking back, using MuseScore at first was daunting.  I had so much trouble getting MuseScore to run on my desktop computer since my computer was outdated and kept crashing as I tried to start the project.  I spent half a week trying to figure out why I could not get the program to work correctly.  After many attempts, trials, and errors, I finally decided to move the program onto my laptop computer with its updated software.  I was reluctant to use my laptop computer since I was not used to sending documents and using updated windows.  I thought that using an updated computer plus new software I was not used to using would be a huge learning curve.  However, I was able to get MuseScore to run on my laptop; I realized that MuseScore would not be the problem.  Rather, the problem was learning to use an updated version of Windows.  Using a new version of Windows is almost like someone being at the same store a million times for groceries.  The customer walks in and goes to where they know their usual items will be, and, suddenly, the thing they were so accustomed to finding at they very spot discover that their groceries' usual location has been moved.  If they're lucky, only one or two of the items have been relocated elsewehere; however, more often than not, many items have been moved. With a new Windows version, I had to relearn where everything was and how to send files. I did not even know I could now edit a PDF file, leaving me to think, "When did that become a thing?" I thought once someone compressed a PDF file, it could no longer be edited. Oh, how times have changed.


Transcribing and translating music via laptop and printed texts.

Using MuseScore is relatively easy, that is, after you learn how to run the program efficiently.  MuseScore works using four different voices, allowing us to apply a variable number of notes in different voicings.  I can tell that a lot of thought was put into how this program would run just by how the program opens and asks the user what is needed for their new project to get started.  After the project has been completed, MuseScore has made it easy for finished project to be shared.  The program can keep everything in the layers you created or compress everything into a PDF file, so one can share this as a piece of work completed for fellow musicians to read and play.  When I ran into questions on how to use the program, I could look up everything on Google and YouTube's search engines. Doing so enabled me to save time and learn in a visual manner instead of having to read the manual. I feel MuseScore was the right program to use for this project since everything becomes relatively easy after one understands how the program works.


Continuing translation and transcription work via laptop.

From starting this project, I have learned some valuable lessons along the way: (1) Permanently save your work as different updated files.  Doing this allows you to go back to previously made edits and see where things may have gone wrong instead of updating the original file and overwriting that.  This will allow you to check if you accidentally changed anything as you updated edits.  (2) Updating music from a different era is not necessarily complicated but tedious.  If you are not careful, you can make mistakes due to the monotonous drudgery of copying notes over and over.  (3) Keep everything as organized as possible.  Once you get on a roll with knocking out page after page of notation, you may have to go back after edits need to happen.

As I have been updating Felipe Pedrell’s notation from the manuscripts, I have been able to link some exciting occurrences.  I am taking music theory classes that  I need to graduate and have seen the principles of how music theory should be applied in Mr. Pedrells music. I found it fascinating that as I was transcribing Pedrell's notation, I began to see how chords were being used in his trilogy Los Pirineos.  Since it is my job to catch notes that, in modern reading, feel out of place, I get the inside view of how to reform his ideas into an updated version.  Sometimes I have to change nothing to his original work, which makes me realize how a music writer has sharpened his mind as an instrument that has been used for generations to come to read his piece.  I also realized that I do not think I would be the right person to do this job without modern technology.  I feel this way since the program is there to guide me to my destination, and without it, I would be in the dark, only relying on my knowledge and books to help me rewrite everything.  This also means that my work process would be much slower since I would have to write everything out manually, a prospect that I certainly would not be looking forward to as our research project continued on in the coming months.

Written by Daniel Trevizo, Undergraduate Research Fellow
El Paso Community College, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

All images courtesy Melissa Gurrola.