In music, transcription is the act of notating a piece or a sound which was previously unnotated. The heretofore unnotated piece transcriptioncan be something small or something large. Composers as notable as Paul McCartney do not read or notate music, and it is up to a music transcriber to transfer the musical ideas to a printed form. Transcription has also come to mean arranging a piece of music which was originally written for one instrument or group of instruments so that it may be performed on a different instrument or group of instruments; the latter meaning is almost synonymous with arrangement.