Mark Turner Minor Blues Transcription

[BreckerFan]

This one was a workout. Definitely an iconic solo for me. I got about 90% as clean as I wanted, and sometimes that's got to be good enough haha.

There are a bunch of cool chromatic ideas, and the triad lines are really cool too.

[pamosmusic]

!!!!

[Bop Head]

While I am impressed and frankly admitting I could not do this ATM may I ask you why you are not using more legato technique (slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs) when transcribing a sax solo instead of picking every single note in the fast runs?

This is a serious question and I am sure there is an answer to this from someone who put so much effort into this. (Maybe you want to simply be able to pick every note of Turner's chromaticism at that speed w/o mimicking his phrasing too much).

[GuyBoden]

Very impressive, keep up the good work.

[Christian Miller]

This one was a workout. Definitely an iconic solo for me. I got about 90% as clean as I wanted, and sometimes that's got to be good enough haha.

There are a bunch of cool chromatic ideas, and the triad lines are really cool too.

Great! I should get around to some Mark, very distinctive melodic language. I remember doing kurts solo on this but it was ages ago….

Now do it with only three fingers! (Just kidding)

The pick technique is great, very tight with the original.

Like bop head I do wonder if you’d tried emulating turner’s articulation?

EDIT: also I see a lot of this type of video on the web, but I always find myself wondering, what challenges did the player encounter when learning to play the solo? What have they learned? How are they applying these ideas? What are their favourite phrases? Wouldn’t it be hip if they put out a video using some of this vocabulary on a tune? Love to hear about all that stuff.

[Christian Miller]

Also I gather Turner is also a big science fiction reader

This is an achingly hip record

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[BreckerFan]

Thanks all!

Regarding articulation, I'm typically not trying to precisely mimic articulation. I've chosen economy picking as my primary picking style because I like the uniformity and evenness of it, especially for double time lines. Kinda gives a pianistic, McCoy-ish sound. So my goals when transcribing are 1. Learn the language and phrasing 2. Work on rhythm and time feel and 3. Play the solo within my framework of approaching the guitar.

Christian you bring up a good point about the takeaways from something like this. I use recording a take as a challenge or bar for when I've learned a solo and move on. By that point I've transcribed it and put many hours into playing along with the record at various speeds. I take what I can via osmosis unless there is a particular concept that I need to work on in more detail, in which case I'll write an etude.

It's interesting that you mentioned doing a video on concepts from transcribed solos, because I've been thinking about doing just that. Not a purely playing video, but a breakdown of a line and then a couple examples lines using concepts from the transcribed line. I'm working on a Kenny Garrett solo rn that has some great stuff and that I was planning on using for a video like that. Maybe I'll do one for this as well.

The most interesting things from this solo to me are 1. His use of a large (full octave) chromatic scale run rather than just some passing tones to connect some ideas. Gives the line a "dense" sound 2. His use of the major and minor 7th over Ebm not as passing tones but as landing points 3. He plays D major over Ebm but using a major pentatonic which is a cool sound