If you're talking about transcribing drumline sheet music there are a few tricks I learned over the years that may help. Here goes:
1. Get the rhythm down first, if you cannot dictate rhythms them go to my website, then the helpful perc info page, and then timpani to find out information about ear master pro....it has a rhythmic dictation portion of the program that will help you transcribe the rhythms faster.
2. Once you have the rhythm down, listen for accents or embellishments like grace notes, crushed grace notes, buzzes, or crushes and put that on the page.
3. The next tricky part is to listen to each individual hand to figure out the sticking. Many drumlines use logical sticking of starting off the right and playing everything alternating but drumlines like Blue Devils have very odd sticking and Phantom Regiment plays everything off of both hands. A lot of times you can unfortunately hear the difference between rolls and fast singles so you know what a diddle is in the transcription and what a single is. If you're listening to a snare line, many snares will have a weaker left hand than their right so listen for the week hand and you can hear patterns to determine the difference between doubles, singles, paradiddles, etc. Your ears and logic are the best way to determine sticking.
4. For tenor or bass it is sometimes hard to hear the individual parts, you can however use an equalizer and alter how much you hear each voice to bring down the snares and listen only to the basses etc.
That's all I've got for now, if your asking about melodic dictation it just takes lots and lots of practice and I again suggest ear master pro which I mentioned above.
Hope that helped,
Jared O'Leary
