I do a fairly large amount of transcribing of various jazz material. Usually, I do transcriptions of solos with only vague concern for what the accompaniment is doing (since usually the harmony is a known quantity). Recently, however, I have shifted my focus towards transcribing solo piano passages.

My question is this: What can you do to make a good and accurate transcription when there are simply no crisp, clear recordings and no reference transcription exists, particularly when the object of the transcription is the piano? I consider this to be a question about tools in the literal sense (software and whatnot) and to be about the kind of knowledge that one would utilize in transcribing piano.

To add some context: When transcribing melodic passages, I usually don't use any tools; I might slow the recording down, but that's about it. When you introduce multiple notes, things get hairier, and I have at times employed spectrograms (like those produced by AnthemScore) if I really can't figure something out, but their value is somewhat questionable, particularly for live recordings. I am also aware that, as a person who does a lot of transcribing, logic sometimes rules the day over ears and you employ what you know about music to fill in what you can't hear. However, on some of these recordings the quality is so poor that of voicings I don't hear much of anything at all. I could tell you the chord, of course, but not how the player actually played it, which is often the main purpose of the transcription itself.

I am particularly looking at transcribing Ahmad Jamal's famous performance of Poinciana that appears on At the Pershing: But Not For Me, for which some transcriptions of dubious quality exist but none seem to be especially good. This is, however, a general question, and the example I'm providing here is simply a reference point for the kind of work that I'm trying to do.