The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    “To transcribe” literally means transferring a recording into written form.

    What many (self-taught) musicians used to do was learning whole solos by ear and by heart without pencil and paper. The great pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano made that a part of his teaching methods. In the following video Tristano (and Banacos BTW) student Dave Frank explains the benefits and how it is done.


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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Reminiscences of Lennie by Dave Frank and Harvey Diamond


  4. #3

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    Thanks for posting, it's very useful

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by fleaaaaaa
    Thanks for posting, it's very useful
    Always welcome.

    Here is a short documentary of a Warne Marsh (one of Tristano’s most important students alongside Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Peter Ind and Sal Mosca among others) masterclass in Norway showing some other of Tristano’s concepts. It is partly in Norwegian but you get the idea.



    This is Sal Mosca




    British bassist Peter Ind


  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bop Head
    “To transcribe” literally means transferring a recording into written form
    I don’t think everyone uses it this way even in jazz circles (it obviously means something completely different in classical.) Some seem to use it more to refer to learning music by ear on their instrument.

    tbh it’s another example of a slightly misleading term being adopted by the jazz edu community probably because it sounds clever or official. The older generation of musicians probably never thought to think of a name for it, because they just did it all the time and it wasn’t like they could learn their favourite solos and tunes from books, and afaik did this by primarily by singing and then playing on their instruments rather than writing down so much.

    The term I personally I like is ‘ear-learning’; the Tristano approach is definitely that.

    John Klopotowski’s book on Warne Marsh is worth checking out
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 09-03-2022 at 04:19 AM.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    I don’t think everyone uses it this way even in jazz circles (it obviously means something completely different in classical.) Some seem to use it more to refer to learning music by ear on their instrument. […]
    I have seen so many examples of solos written down by musicians (not talking about the older generation here), e.g. just those two sites that come to my mind quickly

    Khan's Korner 1 - Transcriptions by Steve Khan

    Dave Ratcliffe Piano: Transcriptions

    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    […] The older generation of musicians probably never thought to think of a name for it, because they just did it all the time and it wasn’t like they could learn their favourite solos and tunes from books, and afaik did this by primarily by singing and then playing on their instruments rather than writing down so much. […]
    That is of course true like I also wrote in my original post. On those digitized records in the Internet Archive you can sometimes hear that certain parts are more worn out than others, probably because s/o listened to the same part over and over again, like track 4 on this one. (Jimmy Raney is not directly from the Tristano school BTW, just for the record, pun intended.)


    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    […] The term I personally I like is ‘ear-learning’; the Tristano approach is definitely that. Paul Berliner’s book has more info on it, and John Klopotowski’s book on Warne Marsh is worth checking out. There’s also Peter Ind’s book on Lennie (he studied with him starting in the late 40s) […]
    That’s a good, simple and precise term.

    I know Klopotowsky’s and Ind’s books but I have yet to check out Berliner.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bop Head
    I have seen so many examples of solos written down by musicians (not talking about the older generation here), e.g. just those two sites that come to my mind quickly

    Khan's Korner 1 - Transcriptions by Steve Khan

    Dave Ratcliffe Piano: Transcriptions
    Yes I do realise people do do this; I've done it myself (and the internet is full it), and I don't think it's a bad thing and who am I to disagree with Leibman, Khan etc etc?

    Writing things down can teach you different things to learning them on your instrument.

    Writing things down directly to paper without playing them is a good way to work on your functional ear training for example. I find writing down rhythms very useful for learning to read better. It's a good way to learn to audiate from notation, which is a very useful skill if you want to be a well rounded working musician.

    The main purpose for most people seems to be analysis of some kind. Analysis can be interesting and useful, but it doesn't make one a musician. The ears do, and to be an instrumentalist, the ear/instrument connection is paramount. If your main aim is to learn to improvise jazz, the time honoured way is to sing and play. That's the primary mechanism as far as I can tell, and Tristano was simply adopting what jazz musicians were already doing from accounts of the era (again Berliner is a great source of info)

    That is of course true like I also wrote in my original post. On those digitized records in the Internet Archive you can sometimes hear that certain parts are more worn out than others, probably because s/o listened to the same part over and over again, like track 4 on this one. (Jimmy Raney is not directly from the Tristano school BTW, just for the record, pun intended.)
    Ah cool!

    That’s a good, simple and precise term.
    Simple language is best. Jazz edu terminology is a mess. At a guess I think they were trying to make an academic case for jazz, so the the terminology got official and sometimes esoteric sounding.

    Written out transcriptions and analyses are also useful for academic assessment.

    So - and Rick Beato of all people pointed this out really nicely in now of his older videos - you can't simply put a bunch of promising young players together in a college with some older experienced masters and tell them to get on with it, and call that an accredited undergraduate degree. This is kind of silly because everyone I have read or talked to on the subject (including jazz professors) understand this to be the Most Important Thing. Maybe the old Berklee School was more like that before they became a College in the 70s?

    Anyway this is a central problem of music edu that came up a few times when I was studying my music education Masters - conservatoires are forced via the academic accreditation system into becoming liberal arts colleges.

    I find it impossible to imagine Barry or probably Lennie ever fitting into this sort of modern academic milieu ... Barry for one used to gleefully relate the story of the one time he was invited to teach at Berklee ('that dumb old school') and exactly how that went down. Again Berliner has some hilarious accounts of the culture clash between NYC and Boston, so to speak.(Not that I'm dunking on Berklee - some of my best friends are Berklee grads and they loved it.)

    In dark moods I sometimes think that this has contributed to contemporary jazz becoming increasingly what Keith Swanwick calls 'pseudomusic' (like the dreaded Berklee Funk) in the sense that it does not exist in a wider social context. I feel that musicians like Kurt have struggled to break free from that despite their best efforts and great talent, because these kinds of players become so feted within the jazz community but remain totally obscure outside of it. With that in mind the wider cultural impact of people like Thundercat and Kamasi is very heartening. Anyway....

    Anyway, my favourite living straightahead guitar player Peter Bernstein? He said he had made ONE written transcription in his life, Charlie Christian, and that was for school - everything else was just learning lines and tunes off records on the guitar.

    So when someone like Jesse Van Ruller or Kurt says they haven't transcribed much, I think this is the context that needs to be borne in mind. They are probably talking about writing things down because it would be impossible to function as jazz musicians at their level without learning tunes etc from recordings and having good enough ears to do so quickly. I do know Kurt is into Tristano incidentally...
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 09-03-2022 at 06:36 AM.

  9. #8

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    Whether you do it formally or not, whole solos or part, I don't know how anybody could ever play jazz even semi-convincingly until they listen to a few solos so much that they can sing them.

    It has to be the music that plays in your head. I like this system, the meditative aspect, and the streamlining...the solos i can sing might have taken me months or years to learn, literally just from repetition.

  10. #9

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    It was an East Coast tradition to go to Lennie for lessons up until his death. All my piano player friends who were about my age studied with him.
    Bill Evans, Phil Woods, and many others did. Some players spent a year or two, just playing the heads of standards till they were perfect! Mike Garson did that for two years before he was allowed to work on improvisation!
    One friend of mine studied with Billy Bauer until BB couldn't teach him anymore.
    At that point, BB would say, "Well, you've learned everything I know, and I have to send you to Lennie Tristano", at which point my friend would shake his head, because he didn't dig that scene.

    This happened over and over, until Billy asked him, "Well who the f--- do you want to study with?
    My friend answered, "Tal Farlow".
    Billy said, "Can play any tune in any key at any tempo, and then gave him Tal's number.

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    Whether you do it formally or not, whole solos or part, I don't know how anybody could ever play jazz even semi-convincingly until they listen to a few solos so much that they can sing them.

    It has to be the music that plays in your head. I like this system, the meditative aspect, and the streamlining...the solos i can sing might have taken me months or years to learn, literally just from repetition.
    Doing that with solos is currently above my capabilities, but I do it with melodies. I don't feel like I've (really) learned a tune until I can sing the melody and gotten the timing, internalized it.

    It's a confidence booster thing sort of. I know the tune and don't care what the chords are or how wacky the re-harmonization is. Knowing the melody makes it way easier to understand the logic (or lack of logic) of a re-harm.



    *
    I've transcribed exactly one thing in my life, lol. When I was 17 I wrote down a Jimi Hendrix solo from one of his live gigs. Hey Baby - (New Rising Sun) from Maui, HI 7/30/70.
    Last edited by ChazFromCali; 10-23-2022 at 01:41 AM.

  12. #11
    I studied with Sal for five years and indeed did a lot of singing and then writing it down. Parker solos, Lester, Wes, and probably more.
    It was a cult like scene but if you kept your head and separated the teaching from all the other crap it was a learning experience.
    Totally different from Barry Galbraith who taught mainly through reading.
    At least in the short time I was with him.


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  13. #12

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    Lennie Tristano - Learning a solo

    'Learning a solo included three steps. First the students had to be able to learn the
    solo by ear. Then they had to sing it with the record on the lesson. The next step was to
    sing the solo without the record. And when the students could do these steps perfectly,
    then they could start to learn the solo on their instrument.'

    https://www.oscarvandillen.com/wp-co...tan-Polgar.pdf

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuyBoden
    Lennie Tristano - Learning a solo

    'Learning a solo included three steps. First the students had to be able to learn the
    solo by ear. Then they had to sing it with the record on the lesson. The next step was to
    sing the solo without the record. And when the students could do these steps perfectly,
    then they could start to learn the solo on their instrument.'

    https://www.oscarvandillen.com/wp-co...tan-Polgar.pdf
    I just have a cancellation so will try that now

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuyBoden
    Lennie Tristano - Learning a solo

    'Learning a solo included three steps. First the students had to be able to learn the
    solo by ear. Then they had to sing it with the record on the lesson. The next step was to
    sing the solo without the record. And when the students could do these steps perfectly,
    then they could start to learn the solo on their instrument.'

    https://www.oscarvandillen.com/wp-co...tan-Polgar.pdf
    This is basically the Indian classical music tradition. Sing everything you want to play, and then play what you can sing.

    I mean, the greatest improvisor of our era, U. Srinivas (1969-2014), learned Carnatic music this way. No one was going to teach him how to play electric mandolin, because nobody in India played that instrument. It was utterly foreign. He simply sang everything and transferred to his instrument.