Hi Janek,

this is actually a spin-off of another thread in your forum, but I thought I'd avoid some clutter if I create a new one.

I'd like to know how much effort/focus to put into learning a transcription, both in getting all the notes correct and playing it up to tempo.

E.g., I was often given the advice that being able to play along with the record to up to the point of "being one" with the track is very important. But what if that stuff is "just a little bit too fast for you"? Say you could get it perfect at 90% of the speed.

Would you start the next transcription or work until you got that last 10%? How much transcriptions would you work on simultaneously? Would you work on, say, 2 bars for a whole day?

I'd like to get everythign totally right, but then again I'm not sure whether the time spent on the last 10% isn't better used on something new? If all I "learnt" in 3 days is 4 bars I always feel bad about my progress...

Thanks,

-Christoph

Christoph,

What you really need to be asking yourself is this:

How much do I want to get out of this?

What direction am I going in by transcribing what I'm transcribing?

How do I want to shape my musical voice through transcription?

The way I work on transcriptions work really well for me, and for the direction I want to go in with my music.

I am very focused when I'm transcribing and will work hard to figure out the exact notes being played. I think that was incredibly important in the early stages of transcription when learning the language. To get all the pieces in place and understand how harmony works, and to analyze the structure and shape of someone else's solo.

Now that I have some sort of grasp of the language of improvised music, I feel my time is better spent finding music that inspires me, transcribing some of the ideas within that music, and then taking those ideas and developing them for myself.

This is the key to creating a voice that is unique. There's much to be said for "being one" when playing along with a transcription. There's also much to be said for transcribing much and varied styles of music. But at some point you have to go in a direction that is your own. No one will come to your concerts if you sound just like Jaco (well that's not entirely true, there are a great many listeners in the world who will geek out over someone because they sound just like someone else, but that won't last for long) of buy your records for sounding like someone else. When you look at the most successful musicians and artists in the world you'll see a common thread.

Take Sting for instance. Of course we all know his songs, and this is a guy that is playing to an audience who weren't even born when he wrote some of those songs. Aside from this, you can tell it's him with one word that he sings. If it's the Police, his solo stuff, collaborations with Craig David, Dire Straites, Cheryl Crow, John Mclaughlin..... you can always tell it's him. His writing, his sound, his bass playing. It's a unique voice. This can also be said, of course, for Jaco. Not in a vocal sense obviously. But the way he writes, his sound, his time, his phrasing, his groove. unmistakable.

The same can be said for younger players like Matthew Garrison and Victor Wooten (although not so young anymore...). You can easily identify with their music from a playing standpoint. Not so much from a compositional view, but definitely from sound, style, groove, phrasing. They have their voice. I don't think the same can be said for Richard Bona's playing. Now I'm sure I'll get plenty of stick for saying this, but it's only my opinion. His sound, and groove is so close to Jaco when he's playing the bass, it's impossible to listen to for me. I think Richard's true uniqueness comes from his singing and his nylon string guitar playing. His guitar playing while he's singing doesn't get enough focus, because there are still so many people that are wowed by him playing the bass like Jaco and they never get passed that. He has one of the greatest voices in the history of singing for my ear. I have been moved to tears when at a concert where he's singing. It's so powerful, and I hope that will be his main focus as he moves forward with his writing and his career.

Sorry to have gone of in a bit of another direction with this thread, but I think it's very related, and important to think about when you're asigning time to transcription.

So in closing.....


Always be asking yourself bigger questions. The more you can focus you time and efforts towards something you actually want, the better off you're going to be.

I hope this covers some of the answers to your question.

Easy,

Janek

Janek, just a big thanks for your time here and for your always being honest with what you have to say. It's always refreshing to me when I hear people in any field speaking frankly whether or not a majority will agree or not. Truth is, if more people were honest with themselves they'd probably agree more often......

Anyhow, I'm finding in my own transcribing right now that it's helping to get things up to speed and really concentrate on the small intricacies of the other player, especially while I'm transcribing horn players and piano players. I want to integrate their feel, timing and phrasing into my own playing.......I most certainly don't want to sound like a "bassplayer" in most circumstances. I want to have more control over dynamics that are more closely associated with acoustic players. I love how certain players swing (ray brown) and phrase (charlie haden) but it's important for me to get deep into other instrumentalists and how they sound.

I personally am hoping to see more players reaching out to musics and players from other countries. I love hearing players coming from Africa who learn jazz (Lionel). I think it's important that us as american improvisors reach out more and more to the sounds, rhythms and phrasing of other cultures to broaden our palette. And know that it's been done but it needs to happen in a deeper way (I'm a big fan of music that comes out of North Africa myself; Algeria, Morrocco, Egypt...there's some amazing rhythmic s**t coming out of there.)

Christoph,

What you really need to be asking yourself is this:

How much do I want to get out of this?

What direction am I going in by transcribing what I'm transcribing?

How do I want to shape my musical voice through transcription?

The way I work on transcriptions work really well for me, and for the direction I want to go in with my music.

I am very focused when I'm transcribing and will work hard to figure out the exact notes being played. I think that was incredibly important in the early stages of transcription when learning the language. To get all the pieces in place and understand how harmony works, and to analyze the structure and shape of someone else's solo.

Now that I have some sort of grasp of the language of improvised music, I feel my time is better spent finding music that inspires me, transcribing some of the ideas within that music, and then taking those ideas and developing them for myself.

This is the key to creating a voice that is unique. There's much to be said for "being one" when playing along with a transcription. There's also much to be said for transcribing much and varied styles of music. But at some point you have to go in a direction that is your own. No one will come to your concerts if you sound just like Jaco (well that's not entirely true, there are a great many listeners in the world who will geek out over someone because they sound just like someone else, but that won't last for long) of buy your records for sounding like someone else. When you look at the most successful musicians and artists in the world you'll see a common thread.

Take Sting for instance. Of course we all know his songs, and this is a guy that is playing to an audience who weren't even born when he wrote some of those songs. Aside from this, you can tell it's him with one word that he sings. If it's the Police, his solo stuff, collaborations with Craig David, Dire Straites, Cheryl Crow, John Mclaughlin..... you can always tell it's him. His writing, his sound, his bass playing. It's a unique voice. This can also be said, of course, for Jaco. Not in a vocal sense obviously. But the way he writes, his sound, his time, his phrasing, his groove. unmistakable.

The same can be said for younger players like Matthew Garrison and Victor Wooten (although not so young anymore...). You can easily identify with their music from a playing standpoint. Not so much from a compositional view, but definitely from sound, style, groove, phrasing. They have their voice. I don't think the same can be said for Richard Bona's playing. Now I'm sure I'll get plenty of stick for saying this, but it's only my opinion. His sound, and groove is so close to Jaco when he's playing the bass, it's impossible to listen to for me. I think Richard's true uniqueness comes from his singing and his nylon string guitar playing. His guitar playing while he's singing doesn't get enough focus, because there are still so many people that are wowed by him playing the bass like Jaco and they never get passed that. He has one of the greatest voices in the history of singing for my ear. I have been moved to tears when at a concert where he's singing. It's so powerful, and I hope that will be his main focus as he moves forward with his writing and his career.

Sorry to have gone of in a bit of another direction with this thread, but I think it's very related, and important to think about when you're asigning time to transcription.

So in closing.....


Always be asking yourself bigger questions. The more you can focus you time and efforts towards something you actually want, the better off you're going to be.

I hope this covers some of the answers to your question.

Easy,

Janek

Nice answer. Thank you for your perspective.

Joe

Hi Janek,

thanks for your answer. I understand what you are saying and I definitely always keep in mind developing my own voice.

In fact, the idea of "staying true to myself" has long enough kept me transcribing. I just didn't want to have anything to do with imitation at all. Man, I certainly decelerated my development (even though it helped in certain areas)!

Could you still give me a more specific answer to my problem? It's really something that I keep asking myself, especially since I'm kind of a perfectionist....

Is playing the things up to speed important? I'm not talking so much about finding the correct notes here - that's always the first step. Is it "legitimate" to spend one day on getting 2 or 4 bars up to speed or is the time better spent on learning 24 bars at 90% ?
What if I can play everything perfectly but that "one lick in bar 68" is just too fast for me at the moment? Should I move on to the next transcription or shed that bar all day?

I guess part of what you saying is that I should ask myself whether I got out of the transcription what I wanted/needed.
If I just want the vocabulary, speed is not as important as being able to play it from the heart, transpose it or move it to another context. But if I want to internalize the articulation, time feel and dynamics then "being one with the record" is the method use!

So how did you learn? Did you get *everything* up to speed, played everything along with the record? If not, how did you decide when it was "good enough"?

Thanks again for all your help,

-Christoph

Christoph,

I never really felt anything was or is "good enough". I'm very hard on myself and on my playing and I do spend hours working on things that aren't right for me. I spent all day yesterday working on a two bar phrase that I had written myself, but couldn't execute. It involved repeated notes on different strings and string skipping that I wasn't used to. So I spent about 4hrs working on it, running it all over in the instrument, playing it with loops, jamming with albums etc...

I have thought it justified to work that hard on certain small things throughout my developement as a bass player. I'm not messing around with this thing, and I asked myself early on how serious I wanted to be about a career in music as a bass palyer.

If there's something that's so incredibly fast like some coltrante where he's playing walls of sound, there's a good chance that it's not physicaly possible on the bass,and that stylistically it wouldn't really work. I would beat my brain up trying to match the album whilst transcribing things from sunship like on track 5 (Ascent) around 6:41 on the track. Those are saxophoneistic things that wouldn't really work on the bass. There's no excuse (depending on how much time you're willing to spend on it) for not being able to play the whole solo on the following cuts:

"Locomotion" from the blue note coltrane recording "Blue Trane"

"Song of the Underground Railroad" from "complete africa brass sessions" - Coltrane Impulse recording

"Song for bilbao" from the album "tales from the hudson" ALL SOLOS Sax (michael brecker) piano (Mccoy Tyner) and guitar (pat metheny)

these are just 3 solos that spring to mind that had challenging passages and phrases in them. But all of which I managed to play note for note along with the albums.

That should give you an idea of some of what is possible with enough time invested in it.

If you want to learn the language as deep as you possible can, then I have to answer yes to your question about getting things up to speed being important. The deeper you dig, the more immeresed in it you'll become. And the more you'll be able to draw upon a deeper palet of colours and sounds when it comes to creating your own picture.

Now I'm off to go and work on that Coltrane solo on the africa brass album again!

Easy,

Janek

Janek,

the more I read your replies I respect you more. Now I understand how you got to that level of musicianship.

Would you please name some more solos you've transcribed? You already mentioned that you transcribed lots of piano and sax solos, but to know how much work could be done on bass and of course get my butt kicked to start another transcription. :-)

Eun-Chang

Eun-Chang,

I have named a few that I transcribed, but what you really should try and do is find solos that excite you. Find things you want to emulate, things you don't quite understand from listening only once, things that grab your ear. It's important that you build up a repotoire of vocabulary that comes from music that you find. That way you'll be sculpting your unique voice more on your own. It'll be a more honest representation of where you're coming from.

There are areas that everyone should work on, and have respect for the tradition of improvised music.

Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Bud Powell, Bird, Diz, Trane, Miles, Cannonball, Stitt, Rollins, Dolphy, Grossman, Charlie Christian, Hank Mobley, stan getz....

the list is quite huge. where you take it after you have built a strong foundation, and knowledge of the music, is up to you. It's then that the real magic happens, and you start to become you, as opposed to sounding like someone else.

Easy,

Janek

Janek,

these days I am working on Dexter Gordon's and Sonny Rollins' solos. I love their melodic sense a lot. For Gordon I am working on Cheese Cake and Scrapple From The Apple; for Rollins Mack The Knife from Saxophone Colossus.

I am really digging Sonny Rollins solo. His phrasing, deep tone, rhythmic sense, motivic development and just about everything is so great. He also throws harmonically hip stuff here and there which is exciting too.

I had done about 40~50 transcriptions during my school days(not full solos though) and I have to admit that I have been lazy doing it after graduation. First your playing and second your posts really inspired me to start working on transcription again. You don't know how much you made me THINK!!

Thank you again and again.

Eun-Chang

Do you believe that I should start simple with transcription?......I am currently working on Cannonball Adderley's Sax solo on "Autumn Leaves" off the album "Somethin' Else".......I have no problem learning the solo, as far as ear and technique goes, but what I am truly pondering is the internalization of the material and how it will help my vocabulary as a begginning improviser.

So far I have learned the solo well enough to sing it along with the recording, and then play it. I have yet to write it down and copy down the changes.

The reason I ask you if I should have started out easier is because, I may be able to play the lines that Cannonball is using, but will I be able to take the lines, especially the more complex ones, and use them in my vocabulary? (I don't want to just spout different soloists licks over progressions, I actually want to have my own vocabulary to draw from, which is what you always speak of)



Did you worry about these things, or did you just go with the flow and eventually things you didn't even knew you could conceive would start popping into your playing?

I guess in a nutshell I'm asking:

What is the best way to go about transcribing, so that I can get the most out of it? ..... am I going about the whole process right?:

First I listen to the solo numerous times until I can sing it along with the recording, then I learn it on my instrument, then I copy it down and add the changes and analyze what phrases the soloist is laying down over which chords.

Is there anything you would add/omit, would you do anything different?

And Finally, In the beginning, how long did it take you to transcribe whole solos? I have been on this solo for several days (2 or 3) and I don't know if this is abnormal or I'm not shedding hard/long enough.


I greatly apologize for the mass multitude of material/questions here, and I am aware that you are a busy professional, and I highly appreciate that you take time out of your life to help people like me. Sometimes I over think things, and it is quite apparent by all the questions I am asking.

P.S.(I have Comcast Rhapsody which is IMO a great program for exposing yourself to TONS of music, and one of the top CD's on my playlist right now is "A Mystery To Me" I totally dig it, it is awesome music. I'm looking forward to your new CD release I am dissapointed i Didn't get to make it to the 55bar to hear its recording)

Sounds like you're on the right track to me.

that's a great solo to be transcribing.

The lines will come out in your playing at some point, just don't force the issue. You have to give it time no matter how simple or complex they might be.

Transcribe things that inspire you, and you'll always be happy to put in the time and work needed to learn the language. It took me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to transcribe entire solos depending on how difficult they were. But it's a constantly evolving thing so don't worry about the time it takes, just be in the moment of doing it and absorb as much as you can.


Easy,

Janek