-
So, we've had some strong disagreements elsewhere on this forum regarding the importance of transcription. Suffice to say there's not much agreement, and I would say that there is also little agreement among even well known players.
Personally, I think transcription is a concept that has grown up with the colleges. Transcription - that is writing things down - is useful in an academic environment because it gives the teachers something to mark and assess the student by.
The older practice of learning to play jazz by ear is really what I am talking about here. Again, there are many paths through this. Some play individual licks by ear, others sing whole solos with the recording, and some do indeed write stuff down. But I don't think any jazz musician would think of playing music without some element of close listening study.
If your ears are already very good the need to transcribe as a separate dedicated activity is much less, unless you need to write something down for a school assignment or a project. I remember a Gary Burton class posted elsewhere where he said he never transcribed as he had perfect pitch. The implication being that he didn't need to. I found that doing relative ear training exercises separately has greatly improved the speed and accuracy of my ear learning.
Personally, I think the purpose if this type of activity is to teach the process of improvisation. Being able to listen closely to a phrase and execute or write it down (for fluent reading players esp.) in near real time helps train the connection between ears and instrument, and perhaps even more importantly develop the musical memory and imagination. You need to hear a phrase in your head before you play, and studying recorded music is extremely helpful.
Different approaches to ear learning emphasise different elements of music.
What 'transcription' is not necessarily about, but can include:
1) learning language
2) copping licks
3) understanding the history
4) imitation of another musician's style
5) playing along with records
6) analysis
No doubt some will disagree!
-
02-04-2016 08:31 AM
-
"Transcribe" is always used loosely by jazz musicians. It means pick stuff up by ear.
You can't get literal with colloquialisms, they are what they are and aren't going anywhere.
-
I don't think transcription was the original colloquialism. I think it was a misappropriation of classical term to give the practice some sort of academic legitimacy, and I strongly suspect this was probably a by product of jazz's move into the educational establishment.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Why not call it learning solos? Or learning music by ear.
The term transcription is very misleading. Also the term makes it a bit forbidding. Learning music by ear is what we should be doing all the time. There shouldn't be any reason to give it a fancy term.
The way we couch language is very important.
-
I suppose it is, for some. I think it's more important to understand that words/phrases don't always retain their original meaning.
And certainly, it means that could write it down. If you were doing a whole solo, I don't know any other way, really. But when jazzers talk transcription, it's process, not product, and it really doesn't matter what an outsider thinks is important.
It's no different than "cutting heads" not meaning actual decapitation, really
-
I don't think 'transcription' is really the best word..I use it really because it seems to be the word everybody uses in jazz-speak these days..when I started learning jazz we simply said simply 'lifting' or 'learning' a solo - not 'transcribing'..
Coming equally from a classical background, 'transcription' usually means adapting a work written for another instrument to another instrument - an 'arrangement' essentially..however classical world likes to use term 'transcription' for this, but I don't think it is appropriate term personally..
Anyways main thing is the idea that what counts and not what you call it..
-
Anyway that is rather a side issue...
-
The biggest thing for me at present with transcribing is:
rhythm
feel
swing
& accents
..........think it is because they are the hardest things to notate or explain verbally
-
Interesting topic.
I also dislike the term "transcribing" but we are sort of stuck with it. For me, transcribing is answering a specific musical question. I never used to do it much because I had no specific questions. I learned a few Miles solos and couldn't wait to get it over with. Now, being that I know much more specifically WHAT I want to know, I spend a part of my daily practice doing so.
For example, right now I am working on Carmen Mastren's introduction and rhythm playing on a Bechet Spanier Four tune (can't recall the title at the moment). My questions? What exactly DID a master of the swing rhythm guitar style play on X tune? What chord forms did he prefer over what chords? How did he create interest or movement in his part? How does his playing style feel or swing compaered with other guitarists etc etc...
Of course there are other discoveries to be made in the process. In my case, the use of a rootless dominant 9th chord form that seems to recur often in Mastrens playing.
Without specific questions, I don't see much point in transcribing.
-
BTW you may have noticed - the rootless dom 9th ... also known as minor 6th. Basically, minor 6th = swing guitar. Not just Carmen Mastren.... Originally Posted by dcharles
Love Mastren's playing BTW. Highly underrated....
-
The more I transcribe of whole solos the less I see it's needed. What is important is understanding and feeling what you're playing. Transcription also helped me with that, but in the future I'll work with much smaller segments instead of hundreds of bars which only frustrated me because of the vast amount of time it took just to play and remember.
It was also way too much material to be able to get a deep understanding of it.
Opinions against the above stated are very welcome
-
I agree - if I could spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week transcribing I would go in deep - but work, family & other commitments limit available time so I prefer to work on smaller units to really learn them & internalise them..........on a good day this opens up lots of variations for me Originally Posted by yaclaus
The more I transcribe of whole solos the less I see it's needed. What is important is understanding and feeling what you're playing. Transcription also helped me with that, but in the future I'll work with much smaller segments instead of hundreds of bars which only frustrated me because of the vast amount of time it took just to play and remember.
It was also way too much material to be able to get a deep understanding of it.
Opinions against the above stated are very welcome
-
-
'Something stood out that I gravitated to...'
Reminds me of what Hal Galper said:
There are few things I find more enjoyable than popping on some great music and copying the phrases.
You feel like music is an open book then...
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
Yes very true- in other contexts it would be a minor sixth (or half diminished)! I was thinking of it in this example as a rootless 9 as it was D-Ab-C-F over a Bb root in the bass.
Mastren's playing is a big influence on me, and there is a lot left to transcribe from the collection of Bechet Spanier four tunes I have!
-
I think the fact that the items in your list come very easily to some, and and with great difficulty for others, is one of the reasons for disagreement. Some people swing naturally, while others have to work hard to get it. Originally Posted by rkwestcoast
-
As someone who is a Johnny-come-lately to learning Jazz, whenever I heard the word "transcribe" I immediately envision the "scribe" part which for me, implies writing it down.
I would think you could put accent marks on the notes you want to accent (you, know, the "louder" symbol) if you wanted to document the accented notes.
I really can't think of a word that captures what is being talked about here. I like the term "lifted" that someone used. How about "copying," because you are trying to reproduce the solo on the guitar (which to me does not include writing it down).
I guess in the end, it really doesn't matter as long as we understand each other.
Semantics...
-
Yeah I think 'transcribe' is a bit of a hoity toity word for it. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
-
I've always been pretty good at copping chords and licks from recordings, but notating has never been part of it since I'm not schooled in that capacity. I worked with a keyboardist in the late '70s (that ended up being a music dept. college professor) who suggested I transcribe solos (whatever that means!). Then he said that I was pretty much doing that already.
I'm just trying to improve my reading skills at this point. Something I never spent much time with since I picked up what I know by ear. I think I've missed out on a lot by not becoming a good sight reader because there's a lot of music that's too difficult to "transcribe". i.e. some of the Irish jigs that I've learned over the past 15 years. Reading Charlie Parker type stuff is still frustrating!
-
I am on page with this thread about copping versus notating. Calling copping "transcribing" does seem hoity toity to me. There is a bit in the John McLaughlin video lessons when he says something along the lines of transcribing and about how it would take too long. For sure he is talking about notating.
-
If you look up the word 'transcription' in the dictionary, you find the musical definition often involves arranging a song in a medium for which it was not originally cast.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...aMZahSzXe4wDsQ
Music. the arrangement of a composition for a medium other than that for which it was originally written.
- a composition so arranged.
By that definition, I use the term to refer to my arrangements of songs for voice and guitar in standard notation with Sibelius as opposed to a full trio or quartet for example.
Last night I recorded my arrangement of the beautiful Mancini / Mercer tune - The Days of Wine and Roses. I generally don't copy specific guitar or piano solos, as I improvise off the arrangement. But for me the act of arranging serves several purposes, one being to create midi music files with which to rehearse and a second being to create sheet music for portability and recording. But perhaps the most important thing is to learn the song's structure from the inside out, whether talking about the chord progression and melody or harmonic refinements.
Is it necessary for learning a song? No, I can just take a printed lyric sheet, listen to a particular performance by an artist or group and note down the chord progression and extensions and colors. But I really like and enjoy the process of writing the music down as notation with Sibelius which takes perhaps an hour or two to produce including lyrics. I find the printed notation page to be beautiful in terms of musical architecture - the contour of the melody, the movement in the bass. What I write out as the guitar accompaniment as block chords often is not what I actually play in performance, but I find inspiration for improvisation in the notation itself.
In the past I used to actually "transcribe" note-for-note solos, but if the tempos are fast and you don't have Transcribe or other slow down devices, it takes too much time and effort, though with those devices slowing things down is simply the best way imo to learn an artist's style and touch. I used to have a Tascam CD Trainer that was a hardware approach to what Transcribe does. Until it broke after years of use. But if you want to learn a particular solo in its entirety no matter how complex, with a device like Transcribe it is a piece of cake if you know notation and theory. As long as the solo is listenable (not buried in the mix), you can transcribe anything when you slow it down 20% or so. So that is cool too. I just don't necessarily want to copy the artists so much as absorb their approach and find my own way.
One last very important point - working with notation software and standard notation also improves your skills associated with doing transcriptions including reading and writing in notation, pattern recognition, learning how to score out rhythms and melody lines. The last is very important and with playback you have instant verification that what you wrote is correct. Extraordinary synergy for your musical development.Last edited by targuit; 02-10-2016 at 09:35 AM.
-
As with all things spoken, there appears to be several variations. You got me curious, TG, so I went to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary. I did not cut and paste because I fear copyright infringement considering the forum got shutdown for that late last year. Originally Posted by targuit
Transcribe | Definition of Transcribe by Merriam-Webster
The definition you gave was captured under item 3; however, the item 1 definition states, "to make a written copy of something."
I can see how this could be applied to writing down the notes in a solo.
-
You have a point, AR, as one could get a written transcription of a press conference, for example. And writing down a solo note-for-note is a form of transcription in my book, too.
I did not know that about 'copy and pasting' a generic definition. I will go back and paste the link to Dictionary.com.
Reply With Quote
Grant Green, What is This Thing
Yesterday, 01:59 PM in Ear Training, Transcribing & Reading