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Yeah, that word is whack.
If it means writing it down
I have never done it, ever.
If it means learning by ear
I've only done it that way.
Now I'm going swimming.
I mean, going to the club
for a bit of transnatation.
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08-22-2023 08:16 PM
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Your knowledge of the intimate motivations of people is stunning. I don't even know my own motivations a lot of the time, I should start asking you.
Originally Posted by ragman1
Do you really have to insult everyone by blasting this as a "stupid conversation for people who talk too much?"
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Writers of the time would use the phrase 'jazz transcription' to describe a jazz interpretation, such as this review on page 147 in The Billboard of November 29, 1947:
SUITE 'N SWING (Peer Gynt)— Henri Bene (Victor P-190)And this, from a 1932 issue of the Musical Digest:
Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite gets another going over, and this time, it's the lovely melodies smothered in a jazz transcription by Henri Rene. And while his studio band plays it energetically enough, with the musical moods running the gamut from boogie woogie to the blues and peppered with tenor sax improvisations, the spinning of the four records strikes no responsive chord.
Interviewed on the boat when he re-turned from Europe, Serge Rachmaninoff expressed himself "enchanted" by a jazz transcription he had heard of his never-to-be-forgotten Prelude in C-sharp minor.
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Polysemy. It's a thing.
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Interesting - transcription as synonym for arrangement almost. Originally Posted by Litterick
Today I would think of the term transcription used in classical circles to mean something slightly more constrained than an arrangement - for instance making alterations necessary to make a work performable or idiomatic on another instrument.
But of course Segovia’s transcription of the Bach cello prelude no1 for instance has quite a bit of recomposition, adding parts and so on. Previous generations weren’t shy about doing this type of thing.
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I wonder. Especially as I associate Tristano with the codification of the practice in jazz education Originally Posted by RLetson
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I know very good musicians who transcribe. I know very good musicians who don't. They're good enough to know that in each camp, there are others they respect, play with and love who are in the other camp. At the level they play, they both know there are strengths of transcribing, and there are strengths in knowing the historical knowledge, lexicon and syntax and creating their own contextual statements without necessarily taking the notes from others.
It's sometimes the case that the strongest, most vocal advocates of one way or the other are those for whom the ability with complete immersion and inspired originality is a mystery.
Sure it takes listening, hearing and some kind of communion with the canon in order to play within the genre, but that knowledge can be acquired in many ways. Folk musics are a good example of a non literate process of acquiring musical language and even within that category, there is the requirement to listen, find the logic within and imitate. It is not a requirement that anything be written down in that case.
In the end, the goal is to play with a personal integration with the language. That knowledge is one of syntax, lexicon, kinesthetic ability, recognition of dialectic nuance, respect for the historical legacy and the traditions within, practical proficiency and having something to say.
I've known enough really good players who have a personal mastery of the language, who can play at the highest level, who have acquired the knowledge and experience necessary to be considered masters who didn't get that knowledge through the eye or the pen.
Yeah, and these cats I know can listen to a solo in real time and know with a great deal of accuracy what is being played, how it's being played, and a huge point, WHY it's being played; the options not chosen by a player. Their ear is informed by their own experiences and the immersion in the genre.
Oh well. Different strokes for different folks. And so on and so on and shooby dooby dooby.
Hope everyone finds what works for them with the minimum of discouragement and the most amount of encouragement.
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For those serious musicians who don’t ‘transcribe’ - I have always assumed that everyone learns at least some repertoire (bop heads and so on) aurally. Is that actually the case would you say? Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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George Shearing, and Art Tatum knew their musical history and they earned their rightful place in it. Their relationship with their ears and hands did not need eyes. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Oh absolutely! Originally Posted by Christian Miller
A kid who grows up in a house where that music is being played a lot learns what sounds and feels right, and the nuance of choice within different performances, artists and points within history. One key element is immersion in the causality of playing... and the joy and fun of acquiring the ability.
I had a teacher who learned everything by ear and by playing with others. He attributes his unique approach to the freedom from the time necessary in a commitment to written or rote imitation. I have a friend who is a normal guy who learned the genre through immersion in a listening rich environment and a joyful and fluent upbringing. People have called him a natural but he's had to struggle with mastery like anyone else, but he also embraces his ease with the instrument as something that came through hard work, without the necessity for transcription.
That's just what was right for them. They were both very knowledgable about the history that preceded them and they respect it in their own search to build upon it and create something that defies tradition.
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Everything is moving towards methods of learning jazz.
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How important is it to transcribe Jazz solos?
'Important', 'transcribe' what a serious pair of words.....
How enjoyable is it to hear something cool, sit down with the guitar and be able to play it a few minutes/ hours later.... very!
How enjoyable is it to then analyse the cool thing and make the connections.... 'ahhh they went for the 3rd of the chord there as a target note, well played......
very!
Something else that I get from doing this is that I end up with my own new material as a result of the many attempts I make to get something right but not getting it spot on..... the mistakes you make can lead to their own new set of new material, loosely based on the thing you were trying to figure out.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
A former girlfriend who read music at Oxford in the eighties said she spent three years doing little else but transcription: adjusting scores for different instruments or ensembles. Orchestration or de-orchestration, or something like that.
According to a 1970 issue of Jazz Forum, 'At the invitation of the Institute of Jazz of the Academy of Music and Fine Arts in Graz (Austria), a meeting of jazz researchers, musicologists and ethnologists was held on November 21-23, 1969,' for a symposium on jazz transcription. If only we could learn what they discussed, the secret of jazz transcription would be ours!
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I had a chance to ask Jim Hall about this, he told me "I could see how that might be useful but I never did it"
I said, oh that's interesting, I've been doing it a lot and wondering if I should keep it up, then he said, "well, there was this one Charlie Christian solo I learned early on...and a few Lester Young solos...a few Bird choruses..."
What I took from this is that he didn't have an ideological devotion to it as a practice regimen, he just did it when he needed something from those solos and then moved on.
I've heard Steve Masakowski say he has students transcribe tunes, which makes a lot of sense to me (add this to the long list of Masakowski things that make sense to me...). I do know students and players that can rattle off all kinds of transcribed lines but don't know any heads very well, which is kind of a drag to play with. Plus, this gets you in the practice of even doing this with tunes you do have lead sheets for, like catching those chord subs or extensions or voicings, melody embellishments (corrections?!), little details in the interpretation that aren't on the page. And this is a kind of "transcribing" as well. Just recently I dove into transcribing Ed Bickert's comping behind a Don Thompson solo, I got so much out of that it kind of blew my mind.
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You can get a lot out of a transcribed solo if you work on it for, say, two years and keep finding new things to learn from it.
If you transcribe a solo and play it for a couple of weeks and then move on to another one, you may get some residual benefits but I don't think it's as productive use of the practice time as the former approach.
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I assumed he was only talking about himself. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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This is a point I was trying to make, but you're saying it with more clarity. My teacher did have me transcribe my own solo, as a way to find out my much-too-common approaches (like starting on the root, too much use of minor pentatonic, 8 notes etc..). This was useful. But if I wanted to learn more about how someone like Jimmy Raney approaches a passage, I would just use a transcription created by a pro. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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With transcription, copping licks, lifting, stealing, etc, the LEAST important thing you get from the process is being able to play it at tempo.
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True but probably the most important thing is stealing all the vibes. Helps to be able to play along with the recording at tempo. Slowing it down you lose all that stuff. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Though you could probably translate it to a slower tempo by singing or humming it at tempo and then adjusting it down to where you could play it.
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Very true. I was responding more to the idea someone had suggested of "parroting" the solo. If your end goal is to play along and get likes on Instagram, hey, great, but that's just not the most important thing you can get out of it. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Or another way of saying "the process is more important than the product."
In art school, we were encouraged to try and copy the masters...my garage is full of half-assed of Impressionist painting copies. But I'd never show them to anybody
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For the sake of clarity, the bird in question was a parakeet. I’m not sure what difference that makes, but we’re very particular about words on this thread. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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This seems to align with my conclusion over the past few years that despite the diversity of approaches of the greats, learning music by ear is pretty much a must - the exact nature of that music and what you do with the info varies…(and we all know the problems with the available commercial sheet music for stuff like Parker tunes and so on.) Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Anyway, I can’t help but notice you are using the term transcription in quite a specific way. It really does vary from person to person.
When someone like Gary Burton for instance says they haven’t transcribed, there’s a bit of parsing and context that has to go with that statement. Of course he can play tunes easily by ear. He’s Gary bloody Burton…
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To report from outside the jazz environment: A big chunk of post-Folk-Scare pickers learned the details of, say, Blind Blake or Doc Watson or Davey Graham pieces from transcriptions painstakingly worked out by guys who sat down with the recordings and figured out the notes and reconstructed (or constructed) the fingerings. Some, like Stefan Grossman, had the advantage of direct observation (he took lessons from Rev. Gary Davis) and could publish pretty accurate renderings, but most of it was acquisition-by-ear, followed by writing-down-in-tab.
Then there's Pat Donohue's song, which includes an account of acquiring repertory and licks from recordings: "Sittin' in the basement, stealin' from Chet." Or Leo, or Davey, or John Hurt. . . . I did a bit of it myself when I couldn't find a published tab of a piece--for example, I stumbled through Merle Travis's "Blue Smoke," though my fingerings turned out to to nothing like Merle's. My approach was "Get some of the feel right and fake what you can't manage." Style, after all, is limitations, right?
Sidenote about teaching/learning in oral/aural traditions: My Hawaiian acquaintances of a Certain Age nearly universally report that they learned not via explicit lessons from their elders but by watching (and not asking questions) and imitating the elders and (in some settings) teaching each other. Ears and eyes first, then fingers, and sometimes (according to Keola Beamer) a brief, impatient, uncommented demonstration of how a passage should be played as grandfather or uncle passed by. Keola did eventually take lessons from Auntie Alice Namakelua, one of the first elders to explicitly teach, and he went on to produce the first method book for slack key, built on her lessons and his own experience. Other players of Keola's generation and some of those a generation older also took to giving lessons and providing tutorial materials, mostly in the form of transcriptions of standard and signature pieces. Much of this was happening at the same time that mainland college-age kids were seeking out old blues and old-time players to see how they did it.
FWIW, more than one early slack key teacher operated entirely by eye/ear, a kind of guided adaptation of the traditional watch/listen/imitate approach by which they learned. I don't think Auntie Alice or Sonny Chillingworth or Raymond Kane wrote out the pieces they taught, though more formally-schooled players like Keola and Peter Medeiros did use transcriptions. (And early Leonard Kwan and Raymond Kane materials were produced with the assistance of transcribers.)
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I actually disagree with that. I'll air my biases and say I post my transcriptions haha, but I think there's a lot to be gained by at least trying to play transcriptions along with the record up to speed. The most obvious benefits are practicing rhythm, time feel, articulation, etc, all the important components of phrasing. Especially if you record yourself and listen back, the process can really highlight the "easy" things you might be missing in your playing. Also, if you do a whole solo, you get a feel for the overall arc of it. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I think one other thing that's sometimes missed is that as much benefit as you can get mining ideas from transcribing, you also ideally want to be able to execute those ideas at speed in a real musical setting. Obviously if you're just playing someone else's solo you aren't using them in actual improvisation, but I think just being able to execute them at tempo can help clear some subconscious road blocks to having them come out in your playing.
Not to say you have to do everything up to speed. I've done a couple Brecker solos and a McCoy solo that may just be permanently beyond my technical ability, though I still try and work on them. But I also would've said the same thing about a couple Adam Rogers solos I did that I actually, after 6 months to a year of practice, managed to record relatively clean takes of. Challenging yourself like that can be a great way to grow.
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I look Mr. B's comment literally as it relates to LEAST (especially since he put that in caps): Clearly being able to play a transcription 'at tempo' is of value but one doesn't learn how to do that (well) from the transcription. As you note, one learns to do that by either playing along with 'the record' or recording oneself and comparing that to a recording. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
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