[A Greene]

I've met many great players over my lifetime who didn't work on a many (if any) transcriptions. Even the great David Liebman says there's a time to stop transcribing and start finding a voice of your own.

I've spent the last 5 years REALLY digging into transcribing - I almost feel like it's time to take a break and start searching for those sounds that I really like move in that direction.

Just thinkin' out loud.

 

[turf3]

Well, there are lots of stories of the great classic players (Bird, Prez, etc.) memorizing their idols' solos. Of course, in those days that meant memorizing the eight or ten 32 bar solos you could get access to by buying 78 rpm records, not the hundreds of them available now. Also, that was a time when the older players on serious bandstands would kick your butt if you regurgitated someone else's stuff. So I could imagine that for developing players today too much focus on transcribing could become a trap, both because of so darn much material available and because the old school bandstand is hardly ever to be seen.

 

[LiAm84]

Well, there are lots of stories of the great classic players (Bird, Prez, etc.) memorizing their idols' solos. Of course, in those days that meant memorizing the eight or ten 32 bar solos you could get access to by buying 78 rpm records, not the hundreds of them available now.

Interesting point.

 

[AddictedToSax]

It seems like a useful tool to learn the language of the style you want to emulate. But being able to mimic exactly a solo performed 70-80 years ago sure isn’t going to create something new.

It’s like learning to play classical music note perfect. It takes skill and a ton of talent and dedication to do well but it’s not creating anything fresh.

 

[mmichel]

I've met many great players over my lifetime who didn't work on a many (if any) transcriptions. Even the great David Liebman says there's a time to stop transcribing and start finding a voice of your own.

I've spent the last 5 years REALLY digging into transcribing - I almost feel like it's time to take a break and start searching for those sounds that I really like move in that direction.

Just thinkin' out loud.

I think the only real dangers to development are if (1) you only transcribe one player, or (2) you focus on transcription to the exclusion of working on other things.

What I've heard most (modern) great players say with regard to transcription is that they primarily focused on copying the things that they liked most, but rarely transcribed complete solos (and almost never wrote them down).

 

[SimonJazzSax]

Interesting thoughts and a double edged sword I believe. If all you work on is transcription, then yes it's not good. But if it's only one aspect of your practice and you are working just as hard on your vocabulary and your voice, then I think it's fine.

Also ... I had a chance to talk with Josh Redman for a while once and he stated that he didn't start transcribing until he was around 30 and found that it really took his playing to another level. I think if a guy, as well known as he is, was searching at age 30 (long after he was established) and feels transcription is a valuable practice tool then it's definitely worth while and should be included in your practice.

Also, as with most things that you practice, it will move in and out of your routine.

I think it's what you actually do with the transcriptions that matters most. How deep do you take the feel, nuance, etc. Most players simply don't take it far enough to get what's useful out of a solo. I don't do that many solos. Maybe 3 or so a year, but I spend months generally on one solo and I feel that I get a lot from it and can really integrate it into my playing. Check out these Sonny recordings I posted below where he sounds just like Bird. It's scary. Cool to hear him in this stage though.

 

[LateNiteSax]

YES ABSOLUTELY.
Transcribing should be a significant phase of your development, but if you are serious about becoming your own player, the point in time should come when you stop and focus your energy on working out and forming your own style. You already have a ton of ideas, concepts etc floating around in your head. Now its time to stop regurgitating and start truly improvising in your personal style which should be talking shape. Hopefully you have opportunities to play with other good musicians who will inspire you.

Eventually, practicing should transcend music and be about becoming better at these processes of accessing/ getting into your deep "alpha state" of relaxed concentration, and also tapping directly into heavy cosmic energy flow.


At this point I transcribe a few interestting things per year. Generally not even entire solos, perhaps a section or a couple of choruses of a solo that particularly grabs my ears and attention.

EDIT: Oh and BTW, you don't need an expensive vintage 5 digit blah blah saxophone and some ridiculous holy grail $1500 mouthpiece
to do this...

 

[1saxman]

Transcribing IS writing it down. Otherwise, its learning. Anyway, I think its a great tool especially for improving sight reading. But let's put the cart before the horse for a minute and look at it another way - does anyone think any great solos were written first and then played? Its supposed to be improvisation, and that always means 'on the spot'. Otherwise, it's composing. A great improviser does it a lot in live playing for a long time before he becomes 'great'. He builds on what works. Meanwhile, always hearing others either live or recorded, he gets new/different ideas. Practicing scales, modes and chords plus learning tunes is the foundation of a musical vocabulary.
The notion of players berating others for 'playing somebody else's stuff' would only apply when the player copied a solo verbatim from the same song. Everybody hears stuff somebody else did and uses it, even copying styles in many cases. That's how the music advances and there's nothing wrong with it.
I am not sure that transcribing improvised solos and then learning to play them really is that important in jazz improvisation. Learning solos is how I taught myself to play when I was a teen in the rock era, and I tried as hard as I could to sound like those great players. I'm glad I didn't know enough about music to write them down because written music can only impart certain things. I learned all the little nuances I could that could never be reflected on a sheet of music. Transcription is a good teaching tool because it forces you to 'decode' every phrase which should help your technique if you are able to play it, and like I said it is probably the best reading teacher there is - but what happens now? Being a transcriber is not a very glamourous profession, and that's basically what you're learning.
Listen to the records. Get into the personality of what they're doing and put yourself there.

 

[HeavyWeather77]

I think this is a really interesting topic. Transcribing has always come naturally to me and it was something I was grateful for when I learned it's what jazz musicians are "supposed" to do. It helped answer so many questions and fill in so many gaps, and it inspired so much exploration for me. I transcribed a ton in college, entire albums worth of Coltrane and Cannonball solos, Chris Potter, Lee Konitz, Mark Turner, Wayne Shorter, all my favorite sax players, as well as lots of great guitarists and pianists: Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Kirkland, Jimmy Herring, Red Garland, etc.

But along the way, two huge bits of advice from two heroes of mine ended up hitting me reasonably hard. First, in a masterclass with Chris Potter, he talked about how important it was for him to invent his own exercises. He'd write a line he liked and learn it in every key and every octave on the horn. Later, I took a lesson with David Binney, and his advice was even more individualistic: to paraphrase, essentially, "find what's weird about your own playing and develop that more than anything else." And that goes along with Liebman's advice, in my mind: spend a lot of transcribing as you develop your foundation, but then be as inventive as possible as you develop a personal sound that emphasizes what you in particular like. I think all those developmental experiences are key.

 

[Grumps]

What I've heard most (modern) great players say with regard to transcription is that they primarily focused on copying the things that they liked most, but rarely transcribed complete solos (and almost never wrote them down).

That's the part I never did; writing it down. But moving on from studying the greats, if you play pop music and there's a recognizable sax solo in it, you gotta get that down.

 

[DryMartini]

5 years is a long time. I have recently gotten much better at it. I feel I can figure out entire solos in day if focus. However, figuring them out and playing along with them in time and with all the nuances is another story. How many solos have your been transcribing over those 5 years?

I would look at transcribing as reading books. You can always learn more. Just also be conscious of allocating time to developing tools to help your own voice grow.

I've only been playing for 5 years tho.

 

[Bubba06]

It's a sort of fundamental question, isn't it? I've been thinking about this balance a lot lately.

In my opinion, once you get past a certain point (learning the basic style), isn't transcribing more about what you do with the stuff you've transcribed? It's about the depth of learning, right? Dissect the cool lick, learn ascending/descending, backwards, 12 keys, different time signatures, etc. Like other people here, how time effective is it at some point to just learn the entire solo? It's like always trying to play a piece/tune from top to bottom, instead of focusing on what you're trying to get from it.

Personally, I've realized in the last year that I'm way out of balance and not using my ear enough. Part of this "shut down" for me has been to rebalance my practicing to increase the connection between my ear and my brain.

-Bubba-

 

[SimonJazzSax]

Well, there are lots of stories of the great classic players (Bird, Prez, etc.) memorizing their idols' solos. Of course, in those days that meant memorizing the eight or ten 32 bar solos you could get access to by buying 78 rpm records, not the hundreds of them available now. Also, that was a time when the older players on serious bandstands would kick your butt if you regurgitated someone else's stuff. So I could imagine that for developing players today too much focus on transcribing could become a trap, both because of so darn much material available and because the old school bandstand is hardly ever to be seen.

Check out these recordings of Sonny Rollins with Babs Gonzales. Each one of these solos is Bird and only Bird. Literally verbatim licks regurgitated, and not just one here or there, the entire solo is ala Bird. Articulation, feel, time emphasis. Everything. To me it's cool. I know he developed his own thing, but even Sonny 10 Years from these recordings in 1959 you can still pick out the Bird, he's just started manipulating it more. You can't get to this level of imitation only transcribing and playing along with a guy a little bit. This is some serious sh*t.

Solo on this one starts at 1:18

Solo on this one starts at 1:23

 

[Nefertiti]

I think transcribing will only limit your development if you are trapped mentally into thinking all you can ever play are lines and licks that you work on and memorize. For different players the mix of creative ideas and memorized ideas is different and that's ok but when improv comes down to 99% learned lines and licks I consider that a limitation. The player might be the most burning player in the world on Cherokee at 500 but if I listen to him a couple times and after that I can predict everything they are going to play before they play it and there is no surprises for me, then I get bored. I like listening to music where I am surprised. Where I don't know what is coming next. The best players I enjoy are players that I think don't know what is coming next either. Players that are playing on the edge.........

These days I transcribe more for concepts than specific licks. I transcribed a Danny Walsh solo awhile ago where on an F7 he was outlining a D triad. The lick was cool but I didn't spend any time on the lick. What I did was spend a week playing ii-V-I progressions and outlining the VI triad on the V7 chord. I got the concept down pretty good. Instead of spending a week learning one lick in all 12 keys that would have little impact on my playing I learned a concept that I can use a zillion different ways in the moment.

At a certain age of development a player should stop wanting to sound like someone else and think "How can I be inspired and get ideas that will help me sound like I want to sound." I transcribe now as much for inspiration as anything else. When I am feeling in a rut and don't feel like practicing, I start transcribing. By the afternoon I am wailing on my sax and raring to go practice wise.........

 

[SimonJazzSax]

I think transcribing will only limit your development if you are trapped mentally into thinking all you can ever play are lines and licks that you work on and memorize. For different players the mix of creative ideas and memorized ideas is different and that's ok but when improv comes down to 99% learned lines and licks I consider that a limitation. The player might be the most burning player in the world on Cherokee at 500 but if I listen to him a couple times and after that I can predict everything they are going to play before they play it and there is no surprises for me, then I get bored. I like listening to music where I am surprised. Where I don't know what is coming next. The best players I enjoy are players that I think don't know what is coming next either. Players that are playing on the edge.........

These days I transcribe more for concepts than specific licks. I transcribed a Danny Walsh solo awhile ago where on an F7 he was outlining a D triad. The lick was cool but I didn't spend any time on the lick. What I did was spend a week playing ii-V-I progressions and outlining the VI triad on the V7 chord. I got the concept down pretty good. Instead of spending a week learning one lick in all 12 keys that would have little impact on my playing I learned a concept that I can use a zillion different ways in the moment.

At a certain age of development a player should stop wanting to sound like someone else and think "How can I be inspired and get ideas that will help me sound like I want to sound." I transcribe now as much for inspiration as anything else. When I am feeling in a rut and don't feel like practicing, I start transcribing. By the afternoon I am wailing on my sax and raring to go practice wise.........

This! I couldn't agree more. Steve has words of truth right here. I also think the concepts part is huge. Practicing concepts is something that is vital and will really help your playing.

Sent from my HD1925 using Tapatalk

 

[Bubba06]

These days I transcribe more for concepts than specific licks. I transcribed a Danny Walsh solo awhile ago where on an F7 he was outlining a D triad. The lick was cool but I didn't spend any time on the lick. What I did was spend a week playing ii-V-I progressions and outlining the VI triad on the V7 chord. I got the concept down pretty good. Instead of spending a week learning one lick in all 12 keys that would have little impact on my playing I learned a concept that I can use a zillion different ways in the moment.

I'd actually really like to hear more about what you do with these concepts. Do you have a sort of process? Or just try to shed it in different ways and then apply it to something?

-Bubba-

 

[Nefertiti]

I'd actually really like to hear more about what you do with these concepts. Do you have a sort of process? Or just try to shed it in different ways and then apply it to something?

-Bubba-

I just shed it in different ways. I will put on a ii-V-I progression vamping in one key. I will play whatever on the ii and I chord and my full focus is trying to play the concept on the V7 chord. Once I can do it in all the keys which takes a number of hours then I put on a play along that goes through ii-V-Is in all 12 keys and see if I can do it on that progression. Then finally, I try to apply it to tunes so I will play through tunes I know and totally focus on using the concept on every V7 chord in the tune.

 

[JL]

These days I transcribe more for concepts than specific licks. I transcribed a Danny Walsh solo awhile ago where on an F7 he was outlining a D triad. The lick was cool but I didn't spend any time on the lick. What I did was spend a week playing ii-V-I progressions and outlining the VI triad on the V7 chord. I got the concept down pretty good. Instead of spending a week learning one lick in all 12 keys that would have little impact on my playing I learned a concept that I can use a zillion different ways in the moment.

+1. This is the sort of thing I do also. I'm not at your level Steve, but try to discover key concepts like this. I remember some time ago when I discovered the diminished chord 'embedded' in a V7b9 chord and started fooling around with that to really good effect. Also when I find a lick I really like or have transcribed, I learn it well then start experimenting with it, adding chromatics, enclosures, approach notes etc and see what comes out. A lot of the challenge there is to fit it in rhythmically to the progression, which is a good exercise in itself.

Anyway, not to detract from the main theme here, but is that D triad (VI triad) major or minor? I'm guessing it's major which would add the b9 to the V7 chord, but let me know (thanks).

 

[Nefertiti]

+1. This is the sort of thing I do also. I'm not at your level Steve, but try to discover key concepts like this. I remember some time ago when I discovered the diminished chord 'embedded' in a V7b9 chord and started fooling around with that to really good effect. Also when I find a lick I really like or have transcribed, I learn it well then start experimenting with it, adding chromatics, enclosures, approach notes etc and see what comes out. A lot of the challenge there is to fit it in rhythmically to the progression, which is a good exercise in itself.

Anyway, not to detract from the main theme here, but is that D triad (VI triad) major or minor? I'm guessing it's major which would add the b9 to the V7 chord, but let me know (thanks).

Yeah it was D major. I knew of using it before like in a diminished kind of setting so over F7b9 you can use the diminished scale of FF#G#ABCDEbF. You can pull a F triad, Ab Triad, B Triad and D triad out of that. I knew it theoretically but I was just caught off guard by how good it sounded when Danny Walsh did it.......... The solo was this one on measure 56 https://www.neffmusic.com/blog/2018...sax-solo-transcription-on-a-weaver-of-dreams/

 

[Nefertiti]

He does something similar on this one https://www.neffmusic.com/blog/2017/03/danny-walsh-solo-transcription-on-our-love-is-here-to-stay/ Measure 21 he uses a similar shape as the last example but he is playing B triad over A7 highlighting that #11. I love it........