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I have seen many people play the vocals of a song like leads on the guitar.

There is not much guitar in my country's music so I am trying to learn how to convert the vocals of songs into guitar lead tabs.

Is this possible? if so how?

For examaple: The vocals of this song interests me and i wish to play it on my guitar.

A.R.Rahman

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It's very possible! The voice is an instrument like any other, you just need to train yourself to hear pitches.

Transcribing melody by ear isn't too hard if you have the proper tools :). Download a trial of Transcribe! or the free program Audacity, import the track, then take it slowly.

Try to sing the melody, then imagine what you'd play on guitar to match that. Cursory knowledge of music theory and the notes on the fretboard can make this a great deal easier. I'd recommend using musictheory.net and finding a diagram of notes on a guitar to assist.

Hope this helps.

You are more than capable of doing this. Do not get mad, do not be impatient. This is an exercise, you just have to train.

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  • It may also help to isolate the vocal track using, e.g., the site melody.ml .
    – Richard Metzler
    Commented May 17, 2021 at 14:43
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Yes, it is possible. What a singer sings, are notes. What a guitarist is playing, are notes. So what you have to do is take the notes the singer sings and play them on guitar. Now, you can combine that with chords or some rhythmic guitar, but as far as the lead goes that's that.

You need to find the notes, so you can try to find them online or in some book. Otherwise, you'll have to work it by ear.

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  • When I look up for notes, I get chords and not tabs.. Is there an easy way to do it by ear, i tried but its sooooooo dificult
    – Anarach
    Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 6:29
  • You'll have to search for the melody (or singer's part) . This might not be easy if the song is not popular. These are the kind of notes you need.
    – Shevliaskovic
    Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 6:30
  • Well its not popular outside india so i am doomed :-)
    – Anarach
    Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 6:31
  • Doesn't matter if it is not popular outside india. You might find it in some indian site.
    – Shevliaskovic
    Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 6:32
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    There's not really an 'easy' way to learn music by ear. The more knowledge that you have about music theory will certainly help, since determining the key will help you narrow down on the notes and avoid a lot of guesswork. One potential thing to make it easier is to slow down the tempo of the music while you're trying to learn it by ear.
    – MrTheBard
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 12:07
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If you can't interprete the notes that you're singing - what would be a very important aim for a musician and what you can learn right now as you seem to have the motivation to learn to know the notes of a melody - you can record them by mikrophone insert them in realtime in a musicprogramm which will detect the pitch and notelength of tones and transcribe them to mididata and notate them on your screen. Some apps also show a tab notation for guitar.

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