Accidentals in transcriptions?

[christianm77]

Like what Christian said if your transcribing something in Bb use the key sig. But if you look up and see that the solo has really become Bb7 to G7#9 (Db13#11), Gb7 B7... instead of Bma7, G-7 C-7 F7... what's the point.

Personally the point of transcriptions if for the learning of the one transcribing. I believe the memorizing of someone else doing the transcription as well as the use of slow down tools is waste of time. And throws a wrench in the balance of the learning process.

So what you are saying is use your common sense and work according to context. That'll never convince anyone on an internet forum.

We need absolutes and we must defend them beyond all reason. :-)

[targuit]

You do not learn jazz by the act of transcribing. But you educate your ears. The ultimate goal is to play what you hear. What you imagine. Not what John Coltrane played. But he is a teacher. Like Joe Pass. Or Martin Taylor. But in the end you can play scales and transcribe till you are blue in the face. If you cannot play what you hear and hear something that moves people and express that, then you will never be a top notch jazz musician. In the end it is about making the chills go down someone's back. If you cannot pull that off, forget it. The rest is a pipe dream and a hobby.

[Reg]

So what you are saying is use your common sense and work according to context. That'll never convince anyone on an internet forum.

We need absolutes and we must defend them beyond all reason. :-)

Yea Christian... I need to stop laughing. exactly, thanks.

Hey Jay... post some examples of your polyphonic guitar notation... One out of every 100 guitar charts I sightread has very much notated out guitar voicings. Usually just two and three part kicks and accents. And it's not because I can't sight read them...usually most composers don't know how to voice chordal music for guitar... and with Jazz, your kidding right, lead lines with changes.

Just because you don't like music doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't being performed. I sight read music at least 3 nights a week and compose and arrange standards and make lead sheets for jazz that isn't in fake books the rest of the time for some of my regular gigs. You can't keep playing the same shit... even if your really good, it get old, at least if you want to develop an audience that shows up at your gigs.

Modal music ... just for the record... modal tunes have harmonic movement and also use functional harmony... Modern jazz can sound and feel just like standards... it just might be a little more complicated. Good musicians make complicated music sound simple... as compared to making simple music sound complicated.

One goal is to play what you hear... it's also a good idea to be able to hear what your playing... like someone else's music.
Playing music isn't that complicated... you develop the skills and perform. Don't make it more than it is.

Enjoy playing... we're lucky we get to. I like to bitch as much as anyone... well maybe not anyone... But I always enjoy playing gigs...

[Jonah]

targuit

to read properly you should hear the language anyway...

early lute music is all in tabs and very plyphonic... if you ask some modern player to put it down in voices I am sure some of them will make mistakes... why? becasue they do not hear and know the language properly...

But unfortunately standard notation is not always a clue either... I know too many performances of Beethoven or Mozart that are played from notation without actually understanding of musical language...


As I said - yes, this system represents in writing development of classical musical language... but it does not guarantee that if you read it you will play correctly..

And in jazz it is jazz borrowed historrically...


Try to read French as it is written and see if Frenchmen understand you

[targuit]

Reg - to put it simply, I can play anything you can read or write or play. Unless you write music more complicated than Benjamin Britten, for example. So if you have any modern classical music around, I can read and play it. I've been reading notation daily since I was twelve. That was a while ago.

And don't even think of suggesting that modern jazz music is more complex and difficult than modern classical music. That does not pass the laugh test.

Look - Coltrane and Davis played melody instruments, agreed? While I suspect that they could also score for a piano, it is not hard to read a melody part written without a key signature. After all it is one note after another. If you write a chord melody guitar solo of Body and Soul in Eb without a key signature, the chords will look pretty damn funny and awkward to a musician who routinely reads classical guitar parts.

[targuit]

Jonah - fortunately for the French, I read, write and speak French. And Italian fluently.

But I think I understand your point. I do not play the lute, but I learned a great deal of lute music for guitar, inspired by Julian Bream's albums of lute music, most of which I learned back in the Sixties and Seventies. I never read lute tablature specifically, however. Could you cite a specific example?

[cosmic gumbo]

I think solo transcriptions without key signatures allows me to piss farther.

[joburr]

Are these transcriptions for you? Students? Sessions? I think context is important when making decisions like this. We all like to think there is one answer for a lot of things, but usually end up finding a lot of shades in between. For example, when learning a modal tune, I like to use the key signature of the parent key (A Dorian would have the G Major key sig). But if a blues, I use the key signified of the tonal center and flat all the 7ths for a I7 chord.

I also think hat if you don't use a key signature during a transcription, you're comparing to the key of C constantly. That's no good and will get lost in that mindset. If a solo is rotating around the key of C#, why bother with all those sharps? Just add the key signature and move your hand up a fret.

Lots of good tips here, though. I wouldn't stress it too much. Do what allows you to take the information you're getting and put it to logical use in an efficient manner.

[JonR]

I think solo transcriptions without key signatures allows me to piss farther.

Yes, there is that.

[JonR]

It's nice to hear someone else who's anti-slowdown speak up.

It doesn't help you hear. If you can't hear it, transcribe something else until you can.

You're being very strict here, Jeff!

I speak as a sad addict of slowing down stuff. It began with tape decks in the 1960s, and has progressed to the "hard stuff" - as it were - (software) now. You may be right that my ear would have improved better and faster if I hadn't had that, and always had to work at original speed. But then I probably wouldn't be a musician now if that had been the case. I would have given up. I would have got too bored with either the stuff that was simple enough for me to learn, or with the hours and days (weeks?) it would have taken for me to learn the music I actually wanted to learn (which wasn't that hard to play once I'd learned it).
I would have felt excluded from the world I desperately wanted to belong to - and just for some spurious moral injunction to never use slowdown assistance? (OK, the world would not have missed my contributions to music since then, but that's a different issue...)

To me, listening slow is only like playing slow when you first learn to play something. You start slow and speed up as your technique gets to grips with it. When I listen to a piece at half-speed, I can play along with it almost straight away. I can connect, and begin to get off the ground.
But mainly, I can be sure I'm getting the right notes while avoiding the frustration of repeated wrong attempts at full speed. It saves time, sure, but I don't see that as a bad thing. (Although I get the argument that it is.)

My ear certainly was bad when I began, but slowing down recordings helped it. I can certainly hear things now that I couldn't back then.
If I was training for a marathon, I wouldn't expect to have to run the whole thing at full speed from day one. I'd work up to it.

And also a big +1 to the point of transcription. Comparing what you learn from actually doing it compared to looking at someone else's? You can't even compare, really.

I totally agree there.
If I had not been able to slow down music I wanted to learn, I would have been reduced to relying on other people's attempts at transcription, assuming I could find any (which of course I couldn't back then).
But of course it's true that "transcription" - writing down what you hear - is not the point (it's a memory aid at best). Playing it is the point, and if you can accomplish that wholly by ear that's ideal. So much the better if you can do it without slowing it down - I agree - but I see little harm in slowing down when you have to.

[dingusmingus]

Yeah, it was my understanding that Ellington and Fats Waller learned stride piano in part by playing the James P. Johnson piano rolls at half speed.
In Search of James P. Johnson - Do The Math.
And David Liebman recommends using half speed "for practicing synchronization with the original as well as for study ofnuance and expressive techniques used."
David Liebman: Educational Articles

In my own, very mundane, experience, listening at slower speeds (and singing along, etc) has really helped me develop my ear.

Still, I think Mr. B and Reg are surely on to something that it can be a waste of time to pick something way above your level. And also that it is a good practice to push your ear, including trying to get stuff at full speed.

[Reg]

Yea there is probable some perfect balance for everyone... But I'll stick with my view. It's almost like we're talking about two different aspects of listening and learning.

In the end... if you get there, it probable doesn't make a difference.

[targuit]

The first tool I used to slow down music was a Tascam CD Guitar Trainer that I used for some years until it broke. I found it very effective at hearing the nuances of a guitarist's style and simply for getting the job of transcription done faster, essentially with tunes normally played at very fast tempos.

I have not purchased Transcribe or other slow-downer software, though if I had cash to burn I would get it in a heartbeat. But it is also true that I don't do much "note-for-note" transcription as I used to ten years ago. I have a Tascam portable digital recorder that actually has the capacity to do the same task, but I haven't used it for that as yet.

[mr. beaumont]

You're being very strict here, Jeff!

I speak as a sad addict of slowing down stuff. It began with tape decks in the 1960s, and has progressed to the "hard stuff" - as it were - (software) now. You may be right that my ear would have improved better and faster if I hadn't had that, and always had to work at original speed. But then I probably wouldn't be a musician now if that had been the case. I would have given up. I would have got too bored with either the stuff that was simple enough for me to learn, or with the hours and days (weeks?) it would have taken for me to learn the music I actually wanted to learn (which wasn't that hard to play once I'd learned it).
I would have felt excluded from the world I desperately wanted to belong to - and just for some spurious moral injunction to never use slowdown assistance? (OK, the world would not have missed my contributions to music since then, but that's a different issue...)

To me, listening slow is only like playing slow when you first learn to play something. You start slow and speed up as your technique gets to grips with it. When I listen to a piece at half-speed, I can play along with it almost straight away. I can connect, and begin to get off the ground.
But mainly, I can be sure I'm getting the right notes while avoiding the frustration of repeated wrong attempts at full speed. It saves time, sure, but I don't see that as a bad thing. (Although I get the argument that it is.)

My ear certainly was bad when I began, but slowing down recordings helped it. I can certainly hear things now that I couldn't back then.
If I was training for a marathon, I wouldn't expect to have to run the whole thing at full speed from day one. I'd work up to it.
I totally agree there.
If I had not been able to slow down music I wanted to learn, I would have been reduced to relying on other people's attempts at transcription, assuming I could find any (which of course I couldn't back then).
But of course it's true that "transcription" - writing down what you hear - is not the point (it's a memory aid at best). Playing it is the point, and if you can accomplish that wholly by ear that's ideal. So much the better if you can do it without slowing it down - I agree - but I see little harm in slowing down when you have to.

Hey Jon,

I copied and pasted this from a follow up thread that's bound to get buried under a bunch of gear posts.

"So I'm VERY anti-slowdowner, for folks trying to learn jazz. And here's why.

The goal is to play jazz. To pre-hear lines or whole sections of solos, and play them. Which means you need a good ear. It's not an option for a jazz musician, sorry. The good news is, you can train your ear.

Jazz is a long journey...but the good news is, there's almost 100 years of recorded jazz to pull from. So if you can't "hear" Bird's solo on Kim to transcribe it, tough tacos. Transcribe something you can hear. There's THOUSANDS of solos even a beginner can hear. You could spend a year just transcribing and analyzing Miles' stuff of "Kind of Blue," and all of that is accessible to just about anybody. Writing down is good for analysis...music is visual. It's not just about the names of the little black dots...it's about the space between them and how they're grouped together.

I've heard people say, "but without a slow downer, I'll get bored." BS. Listen more.

And who says you gotta transcribe solos? Transcribe a melody, for cryin' out loud. Start small. There's no prize for the fastest learner.

As for transcription, who cares if you can play it? In fact, if it's not something you actually WOULD play in the moment, why bother? The real gains from transcription are the intense listening required to do it, and the analysis that follows. And sure, you can analyze someone else's transcription, but the process of actually doing it and trying to figure out the "why it sounds so cool" of your favorite lines is the most beneficial.

Transcription isn't even something you need to do hundreds of. One or two good ones that you really dive into are better than 20 half-assed attempts. And you don't have to write stuff down all the time either. Just copping some great licks is just as important...but again, who cares if you can play 'em, really? The real value is assimilating them...making them part of what comes out naturally."


Just my foot stomping opinion. I get fired up about some stuff...the ONLY thing I know for sure about jazz is that there's no short cuts, and slow downers are short cuts to actual ear challenging. But of course, others' mileage may vary.

[Jonah]

I do not play the lute, but I learned a great deal of lute music for guitar, inspired by Julian Bream's albums of lute music, most of which I learned back in the Sixties and Seventies. I never read lute tablature specifically, however. Could you cite a specific example?

Tabs do not show the note - you cannot see if it is Ab or G# or two voices just met tohether at teh same pitch, nor the rythm for every note if they move separately.. so you can play it properly only if you know how this music works..

plenty of examples - check any Luis Milan's Pavana e.g.

[targuit]

Well, Jonah, now I see what you intend. The old lute tablature where it designates the string and fret number of the note in question with no rhythmic value. I don't care for modern day tab much less the venerable old lute tablature, though I note its historical significance.

I'd prefer to drive a Lamborghini rather than a vintage Ford as well.

[grahambop]

Lute tablature does show note durations - there is a small notehead mark above each group which looks a bit like a crotchet, quaver etc. to denote the new duration whenever the rhythmic value changes.

I think what Jonah meant was that it is not possible with this system to show 2 notes played simultaneously with different durations, so a classical guitar transcription of Dowland for example must take this into account, and make some editorial decisions.

I read somewhere that the lute players were generally told to interpret the tablature as 'let each note ring as long as possible', since the lute does not sustain notes for that long.

For example they would let the bass note sustain while the upper notes were quicker (i.e. short duration). But the tablature duration value mark would have to show both bass and treble notes having the same (short) duration at this point.

I actually enjoy playing Dowland on classical guitar straight from the lute tab (I have the complete Faber edition by Diana Poulton), it feels like going back in time. Just tune the G string to F# and it's quite quick to pick up.

[christianm77]

Lute tablature is younger than notation am I rite? I think frets were introduced to lutes and the various types of stringed instruments around the time of Renaissance.

Early notation had been knocking around since Guido d'Arrezzo. It was a bit different than the notation we use today - particularly in the area of recording rhythms.

Any way, the mention of Guido reminds me of why notation was invented - to transcribe the oral tradition of church plainsong an aide memoir. In a sense that's what we do in jazz - it's aide memoir for the oral tradition, but the oral tradition itself is the important thing. So in a sense it doesn't matter what we write down or how if it helps us remember.

In another sense, writing things down in notation helps me understand notation. I also find having a framework of 1 2 3 4 5 etc that is easily and clearly recorded in Guido's venerable system helps me 1) remember the music 2) develop a framework for fingering on the guitar.

That could well be cheating though.

[christianm77]

Which made me think about the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (solfege) thing as it applies to jazz. This might seem like a painfully slow way of describing something patently obvious, but for me it basically sums up the history of jazz harmony.

At one point (Parker/bebop and earlier, say) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 might be built on the whole of a rhythm A section (with a few b6 and #1's if you get my drift). Transposition of this material would be facilitated by this understanding.

You then would get 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 on different 1's on each chord in some special cases - particularly dominant cycle progressions that you get in a Rhythm B section or Sweet Georgia Brown. So from the early days there were cases when a separate scale would be put over a separate chord.

This is how I understand much of the harmony of bebop and earlier music.

Now 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 has to be use with a separate 1 for progressions with lots of ii-V's or ii-V-I's that wander around. A good example would be the How High the Moon or the B of Cherokee. In this we can start to see a move towards putting a new 1 on several different key centres in rapid succession.

Obviously as soon as we start doing this it complicates the issue of key signatures, because keys are locked into one '1' for a whole section of music. Now with Cherokee B section there's no point putting a key sig in there except as a formality. For the whole song though it still makes sense because over 75% of it is still in B flat.

For modulatory tunes like Tune Up, Giant Steps, Moment's Notice and so on the case gets weaker - the only point is to say 'this is the key the tune starts or ends in' which should be manifest from the chord progression anyway, especially as much post war jazz theory is obsessed with the blatantly obvious cadential ii-V-I formula (and how to make this crushingly square chord progression them sound less boring :-))

Now in jazz pedagogy it is common to do a separate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 over each chord - to view every progression as a series of atomised vertical collections of notes. Here, key signatures are very much a waste of time.

I think whether or not you use a key says something about the way you view and understand music, right?

[joburr]

The goal is to play jazz. To pre-hear lines or whole sections of solos, and play them. Which means you need a good ear. It's not an option for a jazz musician, sorry. The good news is, you can train your ear.

I used to feel the same way. Then a friend of mine that I haven't seen in a while (an AMAZING jazz player) looked at me like I was crazy. Just to put this in perspective, he transcribes ALBUMS from start to finish. Literally, a slow practice night for him is playing an obscure Wes Montgomery album from start to finish. Anyway, he made a good point. Slowing down is about rhythm more than tones. Really getting down and dirty into how different players lay back on certain beats, or drag on certain lines, and I mean microscopic. Indeed, his lines are great, but his feel, untouchable by other players. I was sold.

Another point is that some of my teachers made the point that they used to have to transcribe from vinyl records. Even slow down the record, DETUNE the guitar, learn the fast line, RETUNE the guitar, and speed the record back up. Imagine! The technology available is amazing. And if you don't use it, someone else out there is.

With all this said, using the "Transcribe!" software to slow things down didn't make me a worse transcriber. It actually made me so much better at transcribing very quickly. To the point that, the more I used it, the less I needed it.

To each his own, I guess. Unfortunately, I knew nothing of jazz when I was younger, and by the time I got into it, my ears weren't as familiar as my peers. Whatever tools I can use to make me feel like a player that has more freedom and makes me a better player, the better.

[Jonah]

Well, Jonah, now I see what you intend. The old lute tablature where it designates the string and fret number of the note in question with no rhythmic value. I don't care for modern day tab much less the venerable old lute tablature, though I note its historical significance.

I'd prefer to drive a Lamborghini rather than a vintage Ford as well.

I don't believe in progress as an idea applicable to art... though partly of course maybe)))

I had never read tabs before I got into lute music...

Tabs had some advantages: during the period of no standard tuning - it was the way to write down music in a wat that any player in any tuning could perform it... (as well as it is practiced for horns until now thoug in a bit different way)...
Another advantage that it indicates some techical ponts - e.g. Weiss tabs are very interesting exactly in a way of his non-stanbdard approach.. (but not always of course).

Notation was not considered as progress to tabs actually.. and it existed earlier in mensural notation already... no dougt that professional lute players of those days new theory and could notate in more common way...

At the same time even early teachers recommend to start to read standard notation as soon as possible...

Today I can play piano from baroque lute tabs - I mean that it makes no difference for me... but there still can be some complications about voicing....

The fact that you drive Lamborghini (since we consider a car as means only) is great - I have nothing against it.. the problem moght be that even driving Ford you might take the wrong way - it's not the car that chooses the road...

That was my idea

[Reg]

So that's somewhat the point... your using transcribing for a reason.

I would dig seeing how someone notated getting behind the beat and other feel related rhythmic notation.

I made a living transcribing junk music and making piano lead sheets while in college, When I was at Berklee my work study was transcribing big band charts... just a reel to reel and music paper. I guess I could have maybe become quicker at first if I would have slowed the music down. But instead I developed better ears and feel. I developed transcription technique... basically fill in what you know and then fill in the blanks. you begin to hear and understand different common practice from different styles... and different composers and players. It makes you have to also think of how and why as comparred to just memorize what you hear and notate it best you can.

This somewhat comes down to different approaches to hearing and performing.

If you can hear and understand music... transcribing is simple.

So when you transcribe are you notating out the music... or are you learning how to play the music on your instrument, memorize what your playing and then wright it out.

Again two different approaches to learning how to play... no right or wrong, but very different.