Do many people read solo transcriptions?

[orri]

I see quite a bit on the internet that people transcribe jazz solos from recordings and share their transcriptions with other internet people.

That's all cool. I can understand that people want to share their work, be kind, bring it forward and help other music learners.
I can also understand that people like to have some kind of a finish criteria for their transcription project.
They transcribe a solo, they practise playing it and in the end they can have a sheet (or computer document) which signifies their achievement and a finished task. If they prepare the document with the intention that other people might use it, they might demand a higher standard from themselves. When they have that document there aren't many reasons to against sharing it regardless of whether any one will use it or not.

But the part I am wondering about is how much demand there is for transcribed solos?
You need a certain skill level to be able to read and play solos.
I would assume that if someone is interested in playing a recorded solo that they would also be interested in developing the skill to learn them ear?
I would also assume that if you have the skill to read and play the solos you can relatively quickly (months?) reach the point where you can learn them by ear if you simply spend time on it?
That leads me to the conclusion that there is probably a rather small amount of people with sufficient skills and motivation to read and play recorded solos but insufficient skill to learn them by ear?
Am I misjudging? Are there people (maybe amateur horn players that mostly play arranged music in big bands and such?) who are only interested in reading solos but don't have any motivation to develop the ability to learn it by ear, or just don't know where or how to start.

What I have myself done on a few occasions is that while I'm transcribing something (not only solos, sometimes chord changes or arrangements) that there is a segment in the recording which I either find difficult to transcribe or hard to hear accurately on the recording what is going on, then I have found other people's transcriptions on the internet and found them useful.
Maybe that's a more common usage than learning solos entirely from a sheet?

(just to clarify, I'm not saying that no one should ever learn a recorded solo from a transcription, I'm simply wondering about how much demand there is for adding one more solo transcription to all the available ones, and if many people commonly find them useful).

[supersoul]

I use solo transcriptions that I find online to practice sight reading. Along the way I might discover an interesting phrase or idea.
But mainly it's just to work on sight reading, which is something I like to do when I'm not feeling very creative but still want to practice.

[Litterick]

Do you not prefer to create your own solos?

[orri]

Do you not prefer to create your own solos?

I do.
But I would prefer even more to be able to improvise "better" solos in the future than I am capable of improvising today.

I find the study of how great musicians play great solos to be a useful way to become a better improviser.

[Christian Miller]

Good sight reading fodder

If it’s on YouTube you can always slow it down as well. Just wish they didn’t generally come with tab, which I find distracting.

[mr. beaumont]

It always feel like cheating to me. If I'm gonna play somebody else's lines, I want to steal them myself.

But I could see it being great for reading.

[Marinero]

I never studied a recorded solo. I don't condemn the practice for others but it does not represent my view of improvisation. However, after a lifetime of playing and listening, I have all sorts of ideas and phrases that bounce around in my mind, seemingly, at random and I'll laugh to myself sometimes when playing and say . . . "Hey, that's Coltrane. . . that's Dexter." About a month ago, I was doing my daily musical search for new Jazzers and I came across an alto sax player on YT who was playing "Bird licks" practically note for note and there was only one poster who, also, noticed it. Different strokes for different folks . . .
Marinero

[whiskey02]

I use them sometimes, not to "learn" and play the whole solo but to cop a synopsis of the devices a particular player uses to sound like themselves. There's only 12 notes, a "standard" repertoire and a handful of frequently used mash up of chord movements. Yet any player who's name is familiar to us sounds like themselves because of their unique to them (maybe a dozen or so) ways that they work their style over a song. Transcriptions are a great tool to juxtapose Miles & Trane, etc. or get a quick sense of how Clifford Brown goes inside to outside and back in. Transcriptions are a tool, why not use a source of information readily available in addition to your own work.

[Alter]

For sight reading, I prefer going through something like the Omni Book, Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon solos, etc, rather than sight reading books and stuff.

Sometimes I just spend time with CDs, picking phrases, other times I do the same thing with a book.

[SOLR]

(just to clarify, I'm not saying that no one should ever learn a recorded solo from a transcription, I'm simply wondering about how much demand there is for adding one more solo transcription to all the available ones, and if many people commonly find them useful).

From what I see there seems to be a lot of demand for transcriptions..for all the reasons already enumerated in previous posts and it's a business for quite a few that pays the rent. In almost all the replies on the YT posted freebies there are people asking for other songs/tunes etc...As to why we use them, it's TIME....it certainly speeds up a process of learning new licks and specific player patterns etc..not everyone can put in the hours and not all aspire to become seasoned pros with their own language. The "raison d'être" for the tabs is to reach as many guitarists as possible. Actually they sell better than the notation transcripts although both are pretty much always included.

Personally I like to listen to a tune first and always try to play along and 'jam' with it ,as others have stated when you get to a certain age you've heard a lot of solos and these lines do tend to come up in your own soloing this also happens when I'm virtually playing with F. Vignola or Joscho Stephan or Pasquale Grasso or Julian L. J. Kreisberg etc... If I really like that tune I might look up for the transcription and try to get further with it...And yes it does help practice my reading.

FWIW I find them useful...Of course you can slow down the YT but It certainly beats playing my old Pat Martino LPs at half speed (which was not nearly slow enough to catch it all ). Must have driven my parents crazy..

S

[sgcim]

When I write arrangements of tunes,for 17 piece big band, I'll sometimes transcribe a solo that I think is
perfect for the piece or even integral to the piece, and then harmonize it for the section that is going to play it.
It can be any instrument, any player, as long as i love it.
Sometimes I love it, and the players love it, too.
If they love it, then they'll always want to play it, which can get annoying if we've already played the thing enough.

[JazzPadd]

I read solo transcriptions occasionally. Never had the patience or even interest to learn any verbatim. It’s more curiosity how a player wove a line that caught my ear, how they navigate the changes. A more theoretical than practical endeavor. Some instructive favorites for me include Chet Baker’s solo on “Beatrice,” Jimmy Raney on “Out of Nowhere,” Emily Remler on “Strollin’,” and Howard Roberts on “Bluesette.”

[Jimmy Smith]

I find the study of how great musicians play great solos to be a useful way to become a better improviser.

Yes, this. I try to habitually do at least some incremental study of the greats' solos. I work with both picking it up by ear and books. I find both helpful. By ear you work on your aural skills, the books let you analyze or play through more material in a shorter amount of time.

[Litterick]

I found John Schofield's Guitar Transcriptions to be a very agreeable way to appreciate the music.

[rpjazzguitar]

I do it as a compromise between transcribing myself and not transcribing at all.

[Christian Miller]

There’s an argument that reading transcriptions misses the things that make transcription (or ear learning as I call it) so good as a practice activity. Cutting straight to getting the material from the solo misses out the importance of the process which is the real focus here, not what you transcribe. So will stealing licks or analysing harmony etc is something one can do it’s not really the focus of ear learning.

I would rather say, have a think about the way you approach the study of solos might affect what you get out of the process. For example, if I read a lot of transcriptions, I’ll get better at reading. That’s a good thing (and something I’m actually prioritising at the moment) but it’s not everything.

There’s a lot of ways to do the ear learning thing. They all offer something slightly different.

Do you write it down?
Do you sing it all first tristano style?
Do you put it lick by lick on the guitar?
Do you learn it so you can perform it?
Do you learn it to forget it and then move on to the next thing?
Do you analyse or not?
Do you do the David Leibman thing and write several choruses out underneath each other and compare to see the thematic development?
etc etc

some are more process oriented approaches, some are more results oriented. Neither is right or wrong, but they all do different things, work different muscles. And some are going to hurt if you aren’t used to working those muscles.

if you are interested in ear training, transcription is the best ear training there is. However for training to be useful and not simply overwhelming and dispiriting, you do need some sort of progressive graded difficulty.

If a Pat Martino solo is out of reach you might get a lot from simply working out a bop head by ear, or a simple solo by Chet baker etc.

it’s important to know what your musical level really is, and as an improviser that is about what is truly internalised at the molecular level and will come out ‘at the speed of jazz’ to steal Reg’s phrase. A building cannot be built on shaky foundations. Otoh as bill Evans pointed out there’s a difference between superficially imitating something and really getting inside it. Something simple that’s truly mastered will always work better musically than something complex that’s only partially mastered and understood (for want of a better word.)

Ear learning is an excellent way to get deeply into something because you have to listen to it very carefully and intensely. It also tells you in no uncertain terms exactly what’s within your ability and what isn’t.

one mistake people make with aural study of jazz, in my opinion, is to worry too much about the pitches early on. You could try focussing just on the rhythms of a solo, and a time honoured way to do that is singing the solo. It’s funny how well the notes drop in when you know what the rhythm is…

Its almost like soloing or something…

[Litterick]

You could just relax and read them, Christian. No pressure.

[Christian Miller]

You could just relax and read them, Christian. No pressure.

I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that people are interested developing their skills.

if you can relax when sight reading a transcription, maybe it’s more of a warm up, or even pleasure and you already have solid reading chops? Nothing wrong with that but you may not be learning anything new if that’s your goal.

Otoh I personally don’t get a lot of time to simply play for pleasure. That’s one of the trade offs of doing it for a job and also having a family. I still enjoy practicing an awful lot. It’s like problem solving. Reading is fun too, and I’m not so good at it that it teaches me nothing.

[voxo]

i remember the good ol days Yahoo forum .i was just starting out..Tony DeCaprio used to frequent the room...he once had the Elvis Las Vegas gig...turned to jazz later on...nicest bloke you could imagine,..a girl came into the room just finished college.she played sax and blew everything ...Trane and Bird..a brilliant sight reader..people were concerned for her...wonder what happened to her...Teaching maybe...

[Litterick]

I do it because it impresses the waitress in the coffee shop.

[sgcim]

I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that people are interested developing their skills.

if you can relax when sight reading a transcription, maybe it’s more of a warm up, or even pleasure and you already have solid reading chops? Nothing wrong with that but you may not be learning anything new if that’s your goal.

Otoh I personally don’t get a lot of time to simply play for pleasure. That’s one of the trade offs of doing it for a job and also having a family. I still enjoy practicing an awful lot. It’s like problem solving. Reading is fun too, and I’m not so good at it that it teaches me nothing.

When the guys in the two big bands I play in sight read the solos that I painstakingly transcribe and then harmonize, the ones that can sight read fly dung, seem to be having the time of their lives playing the transcriptions, while the guys in the lamer band, seem like they're being tortured, and just want to play Sammy Nestico charts.
Whether the guys in the great first band are getting as much as I am out of transcribing them is hard to say. Besides being incredible sight readers, they're also excellent improvisors. Three or four of them are better IMHO than most well-known players, so it's hard to say if they can even get much better.
One guy is really an alto player, but wants to play tenor to improve his tenor chops. I found this out one nnight when the lead alto player couldn't make it, and this guy not only effortlessly sight read the alto book, but let loose with some solos that made it feel like a hurricane just blew apart the club!
I transcribed a sax part that was so difficult to play, the guys in the second band just gave up, and told me they'd have to take it home to work on it.
I told the 70 year-old guy that said that that I wanted his mother to sign the music each day he practiced it...