How important is to transcribe jazz solos?

[Litterick]

How is it taught otherwise?

Not trying to be obtuse. Really wondering. For what it’s worth I find this stuff super interesting. I’m really big on pulling stuff out of transcriptions and trying to turn it into technical practice and that sort of thing. I think the technical practice is really important but it also helps to see why I’m practicing it. And that’s almost a separate thing from all those unquantifiable things you pick up from imitating a solo by a player you admire.

So I’m curious what the substitute is for imitation in the context of art. And if it’s really a satisfactory substitute to you. Etc etc.

At the risk of appearing obtuse, I would say one learns to draw by being taught to draw. An art teacher shows the student how to see the subject, and how to use the media to represent it. The seeing and the representing are entangled, not separated activities.

But then, art differs from music because it has subjects.

[pamosmusic]

At the risk of appearing obtuse, I would say one learns to draw by being taught to draw. An art teacher shows the student how to see the subject, and how to use the media to represent it. The seeing and the representing are entangled, not separated activities.

But then, art differs from music because it has subjects.

Not obtuse. I think that’s what the earlier pages of the conversation were about. I would say you learn to play by being taught to play also. Technique, some theory, vocabulary. Barry Harris has an intense system for how to play and explore bebop harmony and phrasing, but I’m not sure it’s a substitute for exploring the music oneself. And I’m not sure he would expect it to be (though others would know way better than I would).

Taking that raw material and spinning differently—placing it differently in the measure—pushing the harmony—applying concepts in different ways. People do that. I’m not sure you can be taught to hear differently (per Christian that might be a bit of a paradox) but the listening and transcribing is where you learn how others heard the music differently, and worked through that raw material differently.

One can be taught to draw—but is there more to find in the imitation than can be imparted through instruction.

[Litterick]

Well, there’s “art” and there’s painting. The art world, at least in the west, increasingly wanted novelty and originality. Perhaps above all other qualities. Eventually art largely broke away from painting and sculpture. No, not entirely. But think of Duchamp. Think of Warhol.

Then think of, I don’t know, someone like Laurie Anderson. Original and interesting. Entertaining. Thought provoking, fresh, kinda weird.

Less about a fairly focused set of acquired skills, more about concept and performance. Skills require repetition and yes, imitation. New concepts do not necessarily. And much or most of the art world kept score by originality.

These days I’m not so sure. I think now it’s more about some sort of personal authenticity.

Painting is still taught in art schools, and the "art" you put in quote marks is still art. In the twentieth century, music, literature and art changed. New forms of artistic production became prominent, photography and cinema especially. And jazz. Music was recorded. Teachers and students thought in new ways about the nature of art forms: what a sculpture or a concerto is. Creators were liberated from private patronage by state support and markets for their products.

If art had stayed the same, it would have been ridiculous. It would have been like programmes at the Lincoln Center where all the jazz is at least fifty years old and all the musicians are Afro-American, as if ECM never happened. Things change; or at least they did.

[Bop Head]

[...] Think of Warhol. [...]

Andrew Warhola Jr. worked as an commercial illustrator originally and he really knew how to draw. Up to this day, graphics designers have to learn how to do drawings after nature like still lives and nudes.

[pamosmusic]

If art had stayed the same, it would have been ridiculous. It would have been like programmes at the Lincoln Center where all the jazz is at least fifty years old and all the musicians are Afro-American, as if ECM never happened. Things change; or at least they did.

Uh. What are we talking about here?

[pauln]

Uh. What are we talking about here?

Enterprise Content Management?

[Litterick]

Not obtuse. I think that’s what the earlier pages of the conversation were about. I would say you learn to play by being taught to play also. Technique, some theory, vocabulary. Barry Harris has an intense system for how to play and explore bebop harmony and phrasing, but I’m not sure it’s a substitute for exploring the music oneself. And I’m not sure he would expect it to be (though others would know way better than I would).

Taking that raw material and spinning differently—placing it differently in the measure—pushing the harmony—applying concepts in different ways. People do that. I’m not sure you can be taught to hear differently (per Christian that might be a bit of a paradox) but the listening and transcribing is where you learn how others heard the music differently, and worked through that raw material differently.

One can be taught to draw—but is there more to find in the imitation than can be imparted through instruction.

You might not be able to hear differently, but you can listen differently. Attention is key.

Imitation is necessary if you want to paint in the style of the artist imitated, but there is not much call for that — at least outside those Chinese factories that produce exact copies of works by the Old Masters.

[Litterick]

Uh. What are we talking about here?

Reactionary views of art and music.

[pamosmusic]

You might not be able to hear differently, but you can listen differently. Attention is key.

Imitation is necessary if you want to paint in the style of the artist imitated, but there is not much call for that — at least outside those Chinese factories that produce exact copies of works by the Old Masters.

Poor word choice on my part, with respect to the word “different.” I meant something more like unique. Like training someone to have some truly original manner of perception.

You can train your listening. It can be different than it was. But I’m not sure you can train someone to listen in a unique way. The best you can do is train someone to listen as broadly as possible. Hopefully something interesting springs from that.

And out of curiosity … how would one be taught to listen if not by listening and imitating?

I’m really not sure if painting and drawing is different than music, but it seems like maybe your conception of what goes into imitating is narrow. Or maybe imitating is a bad word choice on the part of whichever one of us started using it first. Transcribing is more like close study. Listening, singing, thinking about the articulation and time feel, reproducing on the instrument, working out other fingerings, analyzing, breaking down into component parts, changing and adding and subtracting, copying the rhythm.

Is that part of what happens when an aspiring artist copies an old master?

It would seem to me that in any art, imitation can be flat and dull in the hands of someone not inclined to make interesting. But useful and enlightening in the hands of someone looking to be enlightened. I’m not sure any instruction would teach the former to be original. And the latter would probably be original if they were in any other field.

[pamosmusic]

Reactionary views of art and music.

Meaning Lincoln Center is reactionary?

[mr. beaumont]

Imitation is necessary if you want to paint in the style of the artist imitated

Disagree.

Can I not learn how to use light masterfully by studying Rembrandt? What better way to study him than trying what he did?

Copying doesn't mean you never move beyond it.

Jazz players should understand this...why so many study bebop? Just to copy it? Hardly.

[Tom Wright]

All artists study the works of others. Writers study writers, composers study composers.

An improvised solo is different in important ways. It happens in a unique circumstance, when other players have offered their musical comments, or even solo improv happens in a specific time and place, with a specific history of other playing informing it, like Keith Jarrett.

The last solos I learned verbatim were Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" and Zappa's "Willie the Pimp", back in the 70s. For jazz it has been learning the vocabulary, the elements, the words (riffs) and sentences (heads) used by others. Most riffs come out of the building blocks of heads, either the one being played or another in that vein. And the best jazz is a conversation, like improv theater. The players react to each other, build on the previous player.

I found it was the accumulation of riffs I copied, and tunes I learned, that gave me the vocabulary and stock of stories I could tell. In a conversation at a party, one wants to offer a joke or story that adds to what another speaker offered.

So of course you learn what other players do. But copying an entire conversational response from a particular party is probably more than is useful. Copying how a particular player delivers a head, learning the way they started their solos, is enough, I would say. Those things will get used, while an entire Joe Pass or Pat Martino solo won't.

[Kirk Garrett]

Painting is still taught in art schools, and the "art" you put in quote marks is still art. In the twentieth century, music, literature and art changed. New forms of artistic production became prominent, photography and cinema especially. And jazz. Music was recorded. Teachers and students thought in new ways about the nature of art forms: what a sculpture or a concerto is. Creators were liberated from private patronage by state support and markets for their products.

If art had stayed the same, it would have been ridiculous. It would have been like programmes at the Lincoln Center where all the jazz is at least fifty years old and all the musicians are Afro-American, as if ECM never happened. Things change; or at least they did.

Maybe, but all this is beside the point I was responding to. I never said art didn’t change over time, nor did I offer a value judgment about it. I simply pointed out that the art world (galleries, schools, the street) focused increasingly on the conceptual and novel side of art as a primary interest. This is neither good or bad. Today the emphasis is more about personal authenticity than breaking new conceptual barriers, which is a bit different.

This was in the context of a discussion about the role of imitation in developing 1) skills and 2) an originality or authenticity of one’s own.

Schools walked away from teaching painting and drawing for decades. To some degree, young people have rekindled an interest in obtaining those skills.

“Art” is really anything at all, which is why I used quotation marks there.


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[Kirk Garrett]

Andrew Warhola Jr. worked as an commercial illustrator originally and he really knew how to draw. Up to this day, graphics designers have to learn how to do drawings after nature like still lives and nudes.

True, I never denied that. However, I will assert that Warhol’s fame and the power of his work rest on his conception and not his personal execution.

See the word “necessarily” in the post you’re referring to. Conceptually led artists did not — necessarily — rely on the acquisition of a given set of skills.


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[pamosmusic]

Disagree.

Can I not learn how to use light masterfully by studying Rembrandt? What better way to study him than trying what he did?

Copying doesn't mean you never move beyond it.

Jazz players should understand this...why so many study bebop? Just to copy it? Hardly.

Yeah. What I said, but better and in fewer words.

The ole Modular Lick Compendium, exhibit A.

[Litterick]

And out of curiosity … how would one be taught to listen if not by listening and imitating?

I don't know. I am not a music teacher. I was not talking about teaching. I imagine great musicians have unique ways of listening.

I’m really not sure if painting and drawing is different than music, but it seems like maybe your conception of what goes into imitating is narrow.

I have no such conception.

IOr maybe imitating is a bad word choice on the part of whichever one of us started using it first.

No. Mr Beaumont talked about imitating Impressionist paintings, so I asked whether imitation happened in music teaching.

Transcribing is more like close study. Listening, singing, thinking about the articulation and time feel, reproducing on the instrument, working out other fingerings, analyzing, breaking down into component parts, changing and adding and subtracting, copying the rhythm.

Is that part of what happens when an aspiring artist copies an old master?

No.

It would seem to me that in any art, imitation can be flat and dull in the hands of someone not inclined to make interesting. But useful and enlightening in the hands of someone looking to be enlightened. I’m not sure any instruction would teach the former to be original. And the latter would probably be original if they were in any other field.

Quite possibly.

[Litterick]

Disagree.

Can I not learn how to use light masterfully by studying Rembrandt? What better way to study him than trying what he did?

Copying doesn't mean you never move beyond it.

Jazz players should understand this...why so many study bebop? Just to copy it? Hardly.

You might learn to use light masterfully in the manner of Rembrandt, but not in the styles of Constable, Monet or Winslow Homer.

You would not be alone. Rembrandt had many followers and imitators. The Rembrandt Research Project, organised by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek between 1968 and 1998, found half the signed Rembrandt self-portraits in museums and private collections to be copies or pastiches.

[Litterick]

Maybe, but all this is beside the point I was responding to. I never said art didn’t change over time, nor did I offer a value judgment about it. I simply pointed out that the art world (galleries, schools, the street) focused increasingly on the conceptual and novel side of art as a primary interest. This is neither good or bad. Today the emphasis is more about personal authenticity than breaking new conceptual barriers, which is a bit different.

This was in the context of a discussion about the role of imitation in developing 1) skills and 2) an originality or authenticity of one’s own.

Schools walked away from teaching painting and drawing for decades. To some degree, young people have rekindled an interest in obtaining those skills.

“Art” is really anything at all, which is why I used quotation marks there.


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Art is not anything. Art is what the art world accepts as art.

Artists, the good ones at least, have always striven for originality. What changed in the twentieth century was the scope of possibility.

[Litterick]

Meaning Lincoln Center is reactionary?

'That bedrock conservatism -- belief in a jazz canon, skepticism about the idea of progress -- is far more than an intellectual abstraction to Crouch and Marsalis. It drives the way they program at Lincoln Center.'

Wynton Marsalis And The Jazz Rage

[Christian Miller]

Well, I often make excuses for not transcribing too… society is to blame!

Eat yer greens!

But I’ll back up there . that’s not to say there isn’t a nuanced conversation to be had on these subjects, and some points to be made. I’m not myself 100% in the camp of ‘everyone must read’ or ‘everyone should transcribe.’ In another situation I might be arguing against those positions.

The worst thing about this kind of discussion is rather inevitable way everything ends up in a for or against camp. If this is an inevitable product of internet discussion it explains much in the modern world.

I’ve seen my own position stereotyped not just by those arguing ‘against’ me. I’m not saying ear learning is even necessary, I’m saying it’s not in opposition to creativity.

‘Transcription’ is not the be all and end all. It is not however, opposed to originality in music. Most often it is used as a gateway into becoming a functional musician. Quite often players who’ve done a lot of ear study of one player obviously end up sounding like them, so Litterick is correct in that. At this point it’s quite common for the community to step in and advise the young Metheny or whoever to stop playing those Wes licks.

but to draw from this the conclusion that imitation of a model was a mistake or a blind alley, or that ear study always leads to the parroting of others styles I think isn’t supportable from evidence or experience. Actually I think for many players sounding like someone else is a perfectly legitimate stage to go through, provided there’s a development from there. It’s not how I did it, but many have.

Personally, much of the time i study stuff by ear because I hear something I like that I can’t identify and I am curious - what’s going on there? What’s that chord change? I haven’t felt the compulsion to learn and play a solo for a long time, but the one time I did I learned a tremendous amount. playing other people’s music tends to have that effect.

If I learn a whole piece of music - a tune, or a solo - it’s because I love it and I want to play that. Believe or not most musicians, including the particularly creative and original ones I know, are not really doing stuff for any more complicated reasons that that. What a cool tune/solo/piece! I want to learn it.

Reading between the lines I think what litterick actually objects to is actually a perceived connection between transcription and the canon. Which is to say why the Old Masters (prez bird etc). This is not a product of ear learning per se. Is that correct, would you say?

I think the idea of a canon is always questionable. Otoh great stuff is great…

I’ve transcribed plenty of contemporary jazz. I’ve done ECM stuff, contemporary jazz, you name it. I took down a Brad Shepik tune with quarter tones the other day (that taught me something). I don’t think that’s unusual behaviour… Very often you kind of have to do that because the charts are not available if you want to play those tunes or study them. And you can see plenty of stuff that people have taken down on Scribd.

Above all it teaches you to hear better and more.

[Christian Miller]

If art had stayed the same, it would have been ridiculous. It would have been like programmes at the Lincoln Center where all the jazz is at least fifty years old andall the musicians are Afro-American, as if ECM never happened. Things change; or at least they did.

I’m going to need a bit of an expansion on what you mean by this. Because an uncharitable reading makes it look like you are saying that we should make jazz more White and European and that will make it more progressive. Which is an … interesting … take I would say. Rather early to mid century.

I expect that probably isn’t what you are saying.

[Christian Miller]

All artists study the works of others. Writers study writers, composers study composers.

An improvised solo is different in important ways. It happens in a unique circumstance, when other players have offered their musical comments, or even solo improv happens in a specific time and place, with a specific history of other playing informing it, like Keith Jarrett.

The last solos I learned verbatim were Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" and Zappa's "Willie the Pimp", back in the 70s. For jazz it has been learning the vocabulary, the elements, the words (riffs) and sentences (heads) used by others. Most riffs come out of the building blocks of heads, either the one being played or another in that vein. And the best jazz is a conversation, like improv theater. The players react to each other, build on the previous player.

I found it was the accumulation of riffs I copied, and tunes I learned, that gave me the vocabulary and stock of stories I could tell. In a conversation at a party, one wants to offer a joke or story that adds to what another speaker offered.

So of course you learn what other players do. But copying an entire conversational response from a particular party is probably more than is useful. Copying how a particular player delivers a head, learning the way they started their solos, is enough, I would say. Those things will get used, while an entire Joe Pass or Pat Martino solo won't.

I want to expand on that a little and say that I think learning/imitating a lot of stuff by ear helps you hear and respond to what is going on on the bandstand.

[pamosmusic]

I’m going to need a bit of an expansion on what you mean by this. Because an uncharitable reading makes it look like you are saying that we should make jazz more White and European and that will make it more progressive. Which is an … interesting … take I would say. Rather early to mid century.

I expect that probably isn’t what you are saying.

Yeah that’s what I was hoping to —er — clarify.

Anyway. I posted and deleted a whole thing. Not really a discussion I’d like to have on the internet.

[Litterick]

I’m going to need a bit of an expansion on what you mean by this. Because an uncharitable reading makes it look like you are saying that we should make jazz more White and European and that will make it more progressive. Which is an … interesting … take I would say. Rather early to mid century.

I expect that probably isn’t what you are saying.

No, it was not what I was saying. I thought the controversy about the conservative (or reactionary) programming at the Lincoln Center was well-known. Clearly, I was wrong.

[Litterick]

Yeah that’s what I was hoping to —er — clarify.

Anyway. I posted and deleted a whole thing. Not really a discussion I’d like to have on the internet.

If you said something about me, you should tell me what it was. Others will have read it.