Transcribing Jazz Solos: Tips, Tricks, and Recommended Recordings

[kris]

The problem is to play my own solos.
You have to be creative - learn from the solos of the masters but at the end play your own.
Make sure the solo is good or very good.

[Tal_175]

I would say the value of learning whole solos or whole choruses is that we get the logic of the solo. A good solo is more than just a set of "vocabulary" phrases strung together. The great players have a logic, a flow, to their solos that embraces the whole. I hear this especially in someone like Jimmy Raney. That solo of Kenny Burrell "I'm Old Fashioned" has a lovely overall architecture that I never really noticed until I transcribed it.

I also think this is where transcribing takes us beyond just learning licks and vocabulary, and opens up the more comprehensive sense of how a specific player builds a solo, how tension is created, how suspense builds, how they resolve the tension climactically, how they transition between ideas. That's more than learning a few phrases, it's getting a bit more into the player's head.

I agree with you that there is more to a solo than it's smaller parts. But it's not obvious to me how to systematically work on incorporating these higher level ideas from solos.

There are straightforward ways of working on assimilating licks. You can identify the harmonic, rhythmic and phrasal ideas in a lick and work on applying the lick as a whole or use the ideas to make up new phrases etc. But I haven't figured out how to deliberately work on learning from entire solos in a way that I can with smaller phrases.

[lawson-stone]

The problem is to play my own solos.
You have to be creative - learn from the solos of the masters but at the end play your own.
Make sure the solo is good or very good.

Between the two points "Learn from the solos of the masters" and "at the end play your own" intervenes many years of work and untold investments of effort, especially to fulfill the last statement "good or very good." "Learn from the solos of the masters" can be a very large project.

This is not a study approach, but a life-plan.

[kris]

Between the two points "Learn from the solos of the masters" and "at the end play your own" intervenes many years of work and untold investments of effort, especially to fulfill the last statement "good or very good." "Learn from the solos of the masters" can be a very large project.

This is not a study approach, but a life-plan.

This is what a study approach looks like.
A jazz musician learns all his life.
Whether it's playing with different musicians, or listening to Cds, or analyzing and trancribing solos.
It is caring for continuous development.

[Kmatuhin]

I personally enjoy transcribing short solos. That's why I like vocal jazz and big bands. And I have a feeling that in such cases (when there is a maximum of one square per solo), the soloist prepares his solo much more carefully. Such solos often more musical than 10 minute improvisations (in my opinion). By the way, Charlie Christian's solos on Benny Goodman's recordings is a great example.
... besides, a learned short solo is harder to forget and psychologically easier to transcribe.

[lawson-stone]

This is what a study approach looks like.
A jazz musician learns all his life.
Whether it's playing with different musicians, or listening to Cds, or analyzing and trancribing solos.
It is caring for continuous development.

I agree, but that is an "approach" that is not a "plan."

A plan recognizes we don't do all these things at the same time to the same degree. We select and focus for shorter periods to reach specific goals. The two are not in conflict.

[kris]

I agree, but that is an "approach" that is not a "plan."

A plan recognizes we don't do all these things at the same time to the same degree. We select and focus for shorter periods to reach specific goals. The two are not in conflict.

Everyone must have their own plan and adapt it to their needs. And do things gradually - not all at once.