Hy everyone, i was wondering, yesterday i got Miles Davis "Kind Of Blue" found the
transriptions to it and starded to try following it. Now i have seen threads
were pepole say i should not follow the transcriptions, in fact y should transcribe it my self.

I do understand that this practice would help my sight reading a lot, but other than that, is there a nother perpose to it that i havent yet understood?

I had the feeling that spending time just playing along with P.C. And hearing or imitading what he is doing over a given chord was suficient to get the most out of it. Am i wrong? :eyebrow:

May I ask where you found those transcriptions? I learnt the beginning of Freddie Freeloader from the March Bass Player, and it improved my playing (and hearing!) no end.

Well, I ave a freind that play's trumpet, and i took it from him, i don't know were he got
it ... but i'll ask him. It does not show in great details what P.c. is doing all the time but
it's enought to get the picture. I'll send you a private massage wen i have the info.

If only i had a scaner, i could send them to you.. :ninja: but i dont.

The name of the book and the cover is just like the CD.
It's got to be somewere on the net.

Hy everyone, i was wondering, yesterday i got Miles Davis "Kind Of Blue" found the
transriptions to it and starded to try following it. Now i have seen threads
were pepole say i should not follow the transcriptions, in fact y should transcribe it my self.

I do understand that this practice would help my sight reading a lot, but other than that, is there a nother perpose to it that i havent yet understood?

I had the feeling that spending time just playing along with P.C. And hearing or imitading what he is doing over a given chord was suficient to get the most out of it. Am i wrong? :eyebrow:


Yes - you are wrong, one of the main benefits of transcribing is to improve your ear - so you the more you do it, the more you can hear things and know straight away, what is being played and why - you also are more likely to be able to respond instantly to what is going on around you if you can transcribe "on the fly"..

If you just use somebody else's transcription then basically your ear hasn't really improved and your ability to transcribe on the fly hasn't improved - so you are losing this opportunity for ear training and responsiveness as an improvisor.

Best to get cracking at ear training now. I find it exceptionally hard, and so I keep putting it off. Though if you know a decent amount of theory, you can fill in the gaps in what you can hear. Also, try things like recognising the sound of different intervals, if you've got that, you're laughing. There was a thing in last month's Bass Player, I think.

I see, very intresting.

Advanced players, can they instantly tell if the chord is a 7th, 9Th or dim..ext??
on the fly??

I'm not able to do that.
I usualy know when there is something more to a chord,
but knowing what in real time and improvise over it, is a real challenge for me.

Once you get really good at ear training, yeah, it's possible to hear the difference between a 7th, 9th, minor, major, whatever. It does take a LOT of practice though. I can do it somewhat, but generally not in a song. If someone plunks out a 3 note chord on a piano, I can tell you if it's diminished or augmented or whatever, though.

Good Ear (http://www.good-ear.com/) is a fantastic ear training utility. It starts you out easy with intervals and works you up to complex chords. Give it a shot :)

If you wish to improve your recognition of chords, get yourself a keyboard and use that to play them. Play the chords to a tune, then play the melody along with these chords, and in no time your perception of chords and their tonal effects will have improved greatly.

Piano/keyboard is better than guitar for learning chords in my opinion because the voicings are straightforward and easily accessible/visible for the beginner.

Another good aspect to transcribing music is that it improves your ability to pick out individual instruments in an ensemble. This will apply to playing your own bass in a live situation, so you need not deafen your bandmates in order to hear yourself :-)

Jennifer

But the BEST thing about doing the transcription yourself is that you are actually working on the mechanism of improvisation in a very direct way. When you improvise a line, you have to hear that line in your "mind's ear" and then get it out in the air by playing those notes on your instrument. When you transcribe, you do that with notes somebody else picked out.

Working on hearing with enough clarity to identify the notes and the ability to play those notes on your instrument, THAT'S what you're working on when you transcribe.

I had the feeling that spending time just playing along with P.C. And hearing or imitading what he is doing over a given chord was suficient to get the most out of it. Am i wrong?

By using your ear to figure out what Paul's playing, you're forced to analyse the line. You should start to realize the functions of the individual notes (Root, chord tone, approach note, etc.). You'll learn far more about a player by understanding how and why they use the notes they chose, than just playing along with their recordings (and it will make it easier to imitate them!). ;)

To improve your ear, try humming different chords one note at a time (like an arpeggio). Here's what I sometimes do when driving alone in my car.

I hum any particular pitch. I make that pitch the root and then hum a 1-3-5 arpeggio, then a 1-b3-5, then 1-4-5 etc ...

Simple certainly, but then I sing quad voicings like 1-b3-5-6 or 1-b3-b5-b7.

Still not too difficult, but then I make the original "root" pitch into the major third and try to construct a new 1-3-5. This makes it hard to quickly find the new root.

I go on like this, making the original pitch different tones within various chords and it gets difficult for me, but I think it helps.

Having a developed ear is a big plus for a musician. Tabs might be helpful at times, but I would suggest that musicians generally avoid them for the reasons others have already given.