Learning Transcribed Songs Note-for Note vs. Learning to Improvise

**AlsoRan** · 03-14-2012, 01:52 PM

I am wondering what, if any, "damage" there is in just memorizing transcribed Jazz Songs and playing them the same way every time instead of learning to improvise my own versions of the melody and solo.

It's just that I have a burning passion to play the songs that I like, such as Grant Green's version of "I'll Remember April," and some of the Hal Leonard versions of songs such as Blusette, Misty, Satin Doll and How Insensitive.

I can easily see myself being occupied for the next year learning and perfecting these other songs that I enjoy.

I do practice learning the guitar, applying theory, using good phrasing, and other guitar studies/applications, but I wonder if I am not doing myself a disservice by not creating my own improvizations and my own comping style.

One thing is for sure, my technical skills are growing with each song I tackle.

Any comments?

**metalmike31216** · 03-14-2012, 02:06 PM

There isn't any reason why you can't do both. Both approaches will help you a lot in your quest to become a better guitar player. I learned to improvise by stealing people licks and solos and trying to apply them in different situations. I do this every single day.

**AlsoRan** · 03-14-2012, 02:42 PM

Originally Posted by metalmike31216

There isn't any reason why you can't do both. Both approaches will help you a lot in your quest to become a better guitar player. I learned to improvise by stealing people licks and solos and trying to apply them in different situations. I do this every single day.

I do that too! Not only with Jazz but with other genres.

Thanks.

**mr. beaumont** · 03-14-2012, 02:45 PM

You'll learn a bunch. But isn't part of the joy of jazz improvising? It is for me.

**onetruevibe** · 03-14-2012, 02:58 PM

I totally understand the value in transcribing other musicians' licks - I've been doing it for years (love figuring out Albert and B.B. King's stuff) and have learned tons. So, I don't look back on those years as a waste of time.

But at the same time, what I've really begun to dig about jazz is the freedom I'm gaining to trust my own imagination and create my own lines based on what I'm learning here on this board and other places. So cool!

I don't have to always be a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants (although the view if often better).

So, yea. I guess it's rarely one or the other. Most often it's both.

Have fun and continue to grow! That is all.

**Jazzpunk** · 03-14-2012, 02:59 PM

Transcribing is a means to an end. The ultimate goal should be to learn from the masters and than find your own voice.

I think this should be put into context though. If you are aiming at being a pro jazzer you are not going to get very far just playing other people's solos. Even if nobody notices that you are copping another artist's entire solo note for note, what will you do if the song is called in another key?

If however, you are just playing for your own enjoyment than I don't think there is anything you 'must' do. Have fun with it and play what you enjoy.

Do you subscribe to Matt Warnock's Facebook page? He just did a really good video showing how to take a transcribed lick (from Wes) and than break each line apart in order to analyze it and work the concepts into your own playing.

**AlsoRan** · 03-14-2012, 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by Jazzpunk

Transcribing is a means to an end. The ultimate goal should be to learn from the masters and than find your own voice.

Even if nobody notices that you are copping another artist's entire solo note for note, what will you do if the song is called in another key?

Do you subscribe to Matt Warnock's Facebook page?

This was all good food for thought, including Mr. B's comment about the utlimate aim.

Yes, I ultimately want to be able to improvise freely in my own "voice," but I kind of think I would be better able to work that in after I increase my technical skills and especially after I satisfy this yearning to be able to play my favorite songs and plaly them very well.

Still, improvisation and harmony are a part of my studies.

And yes, I subscribe to Matt's newsletter and visit his site. In fact, some of his material is supplanting other Jazz books and DVDs that I have been using. The recent lesson on arpeggios, for example, convinced me to break up my studies into smaller bites - and it is working.

**coolvinny** · 03-14-2012, 07:36 PM

I seriously doubt your "technical skills" are holding you back, unless you are trying to play at ridiculously fast bpm's. Slow jazz-thinking is I think a much more common problem than slow finger-moving. I just transcribed an Ed Bickert solo...two choruses, and only one fast run in the whole thing! It's the thinking that's hard, not the moving of the fingers.

And to level with you, transcribing is not hard if one just views it as learning a solo by ear and then being able to play it. The hard part is mining that solo for insights into how to improvise, and actually applying that knowledge. What changes are happening while they are playing their lines? How do I play that in a key that's a 6th apart and on a different string set? What if that next chord was dominant instead of major?

That's the hard part, and in my experience it is WAY harder than just learning the solo in the first place. I learned the Bickert solo in 2 days and can play it perfectly note-for-note, but it will keep me occupied for weeks while I really try to learn what's happening, apply some of the lines to other tunes, etc.

**AlsoRan** · 03-14-2012, 08:54 PM

You summed up my quandary. If I ever want to learn to improvise, I will need to do the painstaking work of dissecting each song - and that is just not what I want to do right now. I just love to play! But I do so knowing exactly what the next step will be when the day comes that I am as passionate about improvising as I am about playing with guitar play along tracks.
One fine day.....after I can play my favorite songs, and play them very well.

**cosmic gumbo** · 03-15-2012, 09:26 AM

I think you have more to gain than lose by taking your own approach to learning the solos you'd love to know. That is exactly what Freddie Hubbard did with Miles' solos. Went to NYC and played them note for note.

**Gramps** · 03-15-2012, 09:50 AM

I think soloing is taking something you already know (theory/and licks) and re-arranging it to fit the current song your playing.

Learning transcribed solos will help you learn a jazz vocabulary, develope technique and teach you concepts that the original player used, not to mention being able to actually play a song. (ok, I mentioned it) I've also found that transcribed solos get my ear accustom to hearing harmonic ideas that I'd never come up with on my own. (some things that sounded odd to me 1 year ago now sound very normal)

I think learning theory and learning vocabulary are two sides of the same coin.

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by AlsoRan

You summed up my quandary. If I ever want to learn to improvise, I will need to do the painstaking work of dissecting each song - and that is just not what I want to do right now.

I don't think you have to dissect every song to be able to improvise...that's going to help, but there's other ways to get started to...arpeggios, ear training, stealing licks here and there and making them your own...Improvisation is a journey, not a destination, and really, the only way to truly get good at improvising is to practice improvising.

**dfoo** · 03-15-2012, 10:29 AM

Not to state the obvious, but just practicing for me doesn't help. I have to look at what others do otherwise I run out of ideas and keep playing variations on the same thing over & over.

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 10:31 AM

Well, what are you practicing?

**dfoo** · 03-15-2012, 10:34 AM

Improvising!

Ok, I realize that isn't very helpful. I'm new to jazz guitar (4-5 months) although not new to guitar (been playing for years). I've been practicing scales, arpeggios and improvising over the original melody. What I find is that I just don't hear the jazz sound in my playing. I would characterize it as more noodling than playing something which is cohesive. By looking at what others have done I can see more how to run the scales together to create something more interesting and musical.

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 10:40 AM

Yeah, but how are you doing it? Are you singing a line and then trying to play it back? Are you crafting melodies from arpeggios and then using chromatic half steps for ornamentation? Are you taking a Chord scale approach?

**dfoo** · 03-15-2012, 10:41 AM

I would say I'm not doing any of the above. The first two I can understand, however, I'm not sure what the chord scale approach is.

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 10:44 AM

So seriously, what are you doing when you practice improvising?

Practice is the time to think, and repeat, look at situations over and over...

**dfoo** · 03-15-2012, 10:55 AM

I added some text to my second reply. Perhaps you missed that?

**MatthiasYoung** · 03-15-2012, 11:46 AM

It's important to understand a guitarist's solo style. If you listen to several pieces by the same person, you may find that they have certain scale shapes and patterns/sequences that they tend use. As you become aware and understand these patterns, you can then take a musical approach by utilizing these same devices in your own playing of these songs. In the end, you may not necessarily be playing a solo note-for-note, but it will have the same phrasing as the artist's. Oftentimes the original artist doesn't even play his own solos live note-for-note. Just something to think about...

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by dfoo

I added some text to my second reply. Perhaps you missed that?

I did miss it.

There's a few things necessary to sound "jazz," no matter how generic that term might be.

Being able to swing is huge...this is as much about practice as it is about listening...I really think (and I've been saying this a lot lately) that to play jazz it has to be the music that you hear in your head. The more listening you do, the more jazz phrasing and rhythm and swing will be the stuff that sounds "natural" to you.

When you sit down with the guitar, note choice also matters. When the chord changes, you should change...every chord has it's most important notes--those are places for taking off and landing.

Jazz is about tension and resolution. Resolving to those strong notes is important..

You might practice taking a tune that has, say, one chord per bar, and start with whole notes, playing the third or seventh of each chord as they go by...then go to half notes, and ply both the third and seventh...get those sounds in your ears.

Chromatic approach tones are a big part of sounding "jazz," take a four note pattern of all chord tones, play them as quarter notes. Then, add an approach tone a half step above or below each of those notes...play the new pattern as eighth notes.

Practice common jazz situations-- ii V I, ii V i, I vi ii V, etc. Write licks out as you come up with them...keep things fluid, able to be tweaked on the fly...one of the surest ways to bomb in an improvising situation is to have a lick planned out completely and then screw it up just a little...totally derails the train. Everything should be fluid.

Scales can be useful, but most of the info you need for playing over a succession of chords is located right in the chords themselves, which I think is a much more direct approach for beginners to jazz.

CST, or chord scale theory, is a scalar approach. It's more useful (and in many cases completely crucial) over "modern" jazz, post bop and onward. Songs became less about chord progressions...

Oh, and Matthias, I sure hope the artist doesn't play his own solos note for note live--this is jazz we're talking about here!

**dfoo** · 03-15-2012, 12:28 PM

I've been playing quite a bit of stuff in the first aebersold volumes which starts off with 8 bars per chord and then 4 bars per chord. I find that useful since its easy to keep track of the changes and the current scale. However, when I try and improv against real tunes such as Misty, blue bossa or Maiden Voyage I find it more difficult to get a nice lyrical line. I've been looking at the transcription that Matt Olsen did https://sites.google.com/site/mattot...ons/blue-bossa I find that helpful to get some ideas. For example, the line he starts on the third page D E F, ... I find very tasteful and I could never have come up with that...

TH · 03-15-2012, 01:02 PM

I had the fortune to work with people early on that played tunes with me, acquiring the language by example and not from emulating specific people. I also had the great fortune to work with a teacher later on who's philosophy was "life is short. I'm busy enough finding my own way through, why would I want to learn to sound like someone else, or transcribe solos I didn't feel a deep need to learn?" From him I learned to transcribe only when there were passages that were of special interest. Someone else did have me transcribe: Bach Chorales by ear. THAT was really great.
My personal take is not a popular one though, I avoid transcriptions unless I'm studying how a particular person confronts options. I don't use transcribing much "out of the box", I have to understand the constructive elements of what someone has played and use it in my own way. That's the only way I would use transcribed material.
I was just talking with a pretty well known musician, one that a lot of people do transcribe the solos of. He looks at that phenomenon with regret, and a certain degree of puzzlement. I think there's also some element of guilt if not sadness that to some degree, that process will displace the potential of some young student who can't see his own original take on the genre as this person did, and will not run with it and develop it in a unique and personal way. They are HIS shoes, he made them to fit on HIS feet. There is a feeling that walking in footsteps means walking in the same shoes. Only rarely does this really fit the way it does with the person's own feet.
Schillinger said "Genius is the realization of a tendency" Who's tendencies are acquired in a transcription learned without knowledge of one's self?
David

**mr. beaumont** · 03-15-2012, 01:14 PM

There's a lot of truth to that ^^^^^

I think transcribing, or copping licks at least and not writing them down, is an important part of developing as an improvisor--if just for the "hearing" part. I hope my posts in this thread read as saying--this is important, but by no means do you have to wait to learn improvisation until you can transcribe and analyze.

TH · 03-15-2012, 01:42 PM

I was just thinking about the process of my own acquiring the language, and it comes from so many places but immersion in a live scene is something everyone that can, should do. If you want to be a good improvisor, go out to a club, see a horn player, stay two sets, find the fantastic street musician and don't pass it by, listen and drop a buck. Real music has a connection with time and urgency that exists without the luxury of playback or correction. THAT's the real tradition that traditionalists can connect to.
Sure, improv without guidance is indulgence and can be pointless, but knowledge of form and priority, awareness of options and how and when to take them, that comes from seeing the sweat of overcoming a bad crowd, a bad sound system, a bad night.
How often do we transcribe "bad" solos? But it's what a performer does after a bad note choice, a recovery, finding the real reason why and with what you're doing, sometimes 3 songs later, that I learn the most from.
How many times do you take the inspiration home after a show, find you can play better for a few hours? Is it the notes that have opened you up, or the place those notes take up in the real time you hear them?
Don't forget there is a transcription process that comes from finally understanding what you and a performer share in common and how you deal with understanding can give you insight into your own voice.
That's my lame half cent approach anyway.
David