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I'm doing a bit more transcribing these days. On the plus side, even after just a few months I can sense my ear improving, I'm finding things more quickly, and hearing things without having to slow the tracks down so much. However, I'm conscious I'm making some mistakes. Almost every piece I've decided to transcribe - be it Kenny Burrell, Miles Davis, Grant Green, Django Reinhardt, or Charlie Christian - already has a "professional" transcription out there, on a website, in a book, on YouTube. So it's quite easy to mark my own homework, as it were. And often I've got a note wrong, or I'm playing it in a different position / shape to the published version.
Secondly, I'm quite often finding lines - sometimes whole solos that I can't play up to speed - with Django especially. So I can play along at, say 75%, but no faster (often slower!). Or I can play along to 90% of a solo but 10% just beats me.
I guess my question is, is this one of those times when it's okay to practice mistakes? i.e. allow these imperfections? Sometimes when I relisten to a note that I've got "wrong" compared to the professional / published version I still hear my choice as being correct. I guess my ear will continue to improve, and hopefully my speed (which seems to be a right hand issue, mostly - I just can't move that pick that quick!).
So maybe the question really should be - is bad transcribing still better than no transcribing?
Cheers
Derek
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09-25-2024 09:05 AM
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Definitely better than no transcribing.
Honestly I wouldn’t worry about this a bit. If it’s close enough that it sounds like the lick you want, then great and practice it like the real thing.
The main work of transcribing is not collecting licks, but all that focused listening.
Practice them up to speed as best you can and no worries if you don’t get all the way there. Definitely practice the parts you can get up to speed along with the recording but do what you can.
I know from experience that you’ll go back in a year or two and be embarrassed by how bad your ear was, but that’s a good problem to have.
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Mistakes happen, I would trust my ear over someone else's transcription. You just don't know how much effort they put into it.
As a slight pivot here's a video below of Adam Manass from Open Studio teaching Donna Lee and in his presentation he realizes he's been playing it wrong, for decades, and everyone he's taught it to is now playing it wrong too.
Everyone messes things up, but you just let it go and move on. Or in his case, fix the PDF on the fly and keep teaching.
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The usual approach to transcribing is to start at the beginning and work through it to the end. Then learn it the same way by playing from the start until you reach the end of what you can play, then learn to play some more of it, extending what you learn to play from start to finish.
However; after you have learned to play the whole thing, you know the earlier parts much better than the later parts, which produces a gradient of speed, control, memory, and confidence... a downward gradient as you play through it. Because the earlier parts have been played through more, you may be able to play them faster, more accurately, remember them better, all the good things etc., but as you play through the whole thing your overall confidence may diminish as you approach the parts at the end you just recently learned. This is not how you want to feel when you play or perform it, especially since the more musically important parts of it may be nearer the end of the thing.
An image of this might be hiking through the mountains where you start in for a bit, then go back and start again this time making it a bit further, and repeating this process. By the time you are halfway through, there is still no path in front of you, but a very well-worn path behind you.
There is another approach that you might consider (people differ in how they think about these things). This approach starts by looking at the whole thing and identifying the "peaks of musical importance" which are the characteristic parts (the parts that come to mind when you think of the song, the parts that make it that song).
The idea is to see the whole thing as a profile or a landscape that has peaks, steep mountain sides supporting the peaks, foot hills, valleys, lowlands, etc. Then you learn the thing from the top down, meaning you start with the highest peak (might be a dramatic phase at the musical climax of the thing). That is the thing most important to learn, then work down in elevation with attention to other peaks and the slopes that support the peaks (the supporting phrases that lead into and out of the peaks). This method of top down ensures that the most important parts of the thing are learned first and learned best. The parts that support those peaks are progressively learned as your elevation in the landscape profile gets lower as additional parts are added.
Advantages of this approach:
- Top down helps memory of the thing's structure because it is focused on the occurrence of peaks and their progressive lower elevation connections. Your musical judgement is engaged identifying the important peaks. Your view includes structure connection aspects about the peaks (emotional peaks, harmonic targets, pivots, modulations, distinctive or one-time events in the progression of the song, etc.).
- By the nature of it's approach, every time you are about to play up a peak you will be feeling an increasing confidence gradient because you know the peaks the best, and their supporting slopes next best, etc.
- Perhaps best of all is that the whole thing does not need to be absolutely completely internalized in order to express it in performance. The thing may become usable before the lower elevation parts are completely learned. You may play it without having learned the stuff in the lowest valleys because those parts are much less important supporting material that may tend to be covered over when performing with a band anyway (so you may elect to fill those in with something or not depending on if you think they will even be heard).
An image of this is a thin flat cloud layer descends over the mountains and is met first by the peaks, then the slopes, foothills, and eventually the valleys... this method is basically, "How low does the cloud cover need to descend before the view of the mountains is enough?"
Next tune you transcribe and learn, consider investigating results of this approach. If you are writing your transcription, listen to the thing and hear the musically important peaks, then the slopes and valleys. Transcribe the highest peaks first and work your way down. Play along with the recording the parts you have learned and hear how their "peaks' feet" extend toward each other with subsequent additional transcription and learning... people think and learn differently, see if this helps.Last edited by pauln; 09-25-2024 at 01:00 PM.
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Pauln, your approach is called pulling licks. A great number of players do this instead of full transcriptions.
I think pulling licks is a great recommendation to get ear training going, just grab the stuff you like and want to play so it’s worth the effort.
A very great way to describe the process too.
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I'm sure you have heard someone play a popular solo where it is obvious what they did is use TAB to learn the thing note for note, but you can hear that is how they did it because all the notes and phrases are being given the same importance, or intensity, or effort, or whatever - no sense of actually expressing which of the phrases are more musically important.
Someone who learns the same thing by ear is going to play it more like the way the recording actually sounds, where some phrases' notes are so buried in the mix that they are left out (these are those "extra" notes you see in TAB where someone has had to use electronics to dig out and isolate them to figure out what they are).
We should always keep in mind that music is an invisible illusion - play the illusion.
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I've seen more than a few inaccurate transcriptions online, but not often in books, nobody wants to see their errors in print.
Originally Posted by digger
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Cough cough... the real book... cough. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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You've all seen this... the universal (a "no" times three "any"s) definition of transcribe.
"...no part may be reproduced or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing..."
Someone actually came up with that without realizing that as it was meant it to be read, understood, and remembered so as to comply and avoid violation, that so implies and entails storing it within and retrieving it from one's mind, but which is then now in violation.
It's just as well we let the definition of "transcribe" be a continuing mystery in the jazz world.
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[QUOTE=digger;1361641] And often I've got a note wrong, or I'm playing it in a different position / shape to the published version.
I don't think anybody knows for sure how Charlie Christian or Django fingered their solos. So, it's a question of which is closer to the original, if that matters to you.
Secondly, I'm quite often finding lines - sometimes whole solos that I can't play up to speed - with Django especially. So I can play along at, say 75%, but no faster (often slower!). Or I can play along to 90% of a solo but 10% just beats me.
Good technique and practice can help anybody play faster. But there's a limit. Some people have a nervous system that supports the movement required for speed on the guitar. Others don't. I think the bottlenecks are often in the speed and precision with which you can move the pick.
I guess my question is, is this one of those times when it's okay to practice mistakes? i.e. allow these imperfections? Sometimes when I relisten to a note that I've got "wrong" compared to the professional / published version I still hear my choice as being correct. I guess my ear will continue to improve, and hopefully my speed (which seems to be a right hand issue, mostly - I just can't move that pick that quick!).
So maybe the question really should be - is bad transcribing still better than no transcribing?
Anything that develops the ear is good. A great ear is the most valuable thing you can have for jazz. If you hear your choice as correct and the original disagrees, one way to look at is that you just took a small step to having your own sound. That's especially true if you have correctly transcribed the original, thought it over and found something you prefer.
I play with some people that want to reproduce the originals of certain tunes. I end up asking myself, "do I want to play in a tribute band? Or, do I want to play the tunes my own way?" The answer is usually along the lines of: I could play solo guitar my own way, but since I prefer playing in groups I have to be flexible.
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Originally Posted by Mick-7
The authors are anonymous, and the publisher (Hal Leonard) doesn't guarantee accuracy - which is actually rather weird. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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I would say A MILLION TIMES YES! Originally Posted by digger
In fact, Bruce Forman has a whole thing where he thinks that slight mistakes actually helped people form their own style. In the olden days people couldn't listen to a record that many times before it wore out. Slowing stuff down meant altering the pitch. So mistakes just crept in due to technological limitation. So jazz developed as a game of telephone almost. You can actually hear this on the records...
Mistakes are important. Mistakes put you on the path towards mastery. When someone points out a mistake and you realise that they are correct (and they do it to me all the time, often quite bluntly) you can either act chastened or like you failed in your task, double down egoistically - or, and this is hardest for me, accept it as an opportunity to learn something.
The last time this happened to me was regarding the timing on my Monk video. I had to cut out 2 minutes of the video that I realised was just wrong. But I could tell the commenter was right, and I thanked him.
I learned something from it.
Quite often it's my own flipping students, the classic is when I learned a tune fifteen years ago and never checked the details...(tbf some details are hard to hear.)
So, if one can get over ego, it's a great thing, and can help you hone your ear and improve your listening. If you can't get someone to comment on your transcription, sometimes you'll find the same thing transcribed somewhere on the web - often on Musescore. You can compare your work.
Most importantly - you are working on your ear, musical memory, listening, ear for detail and ability to put it all on your instrument. If you skimp on this stuff, you are robbing yourself.
The other thing is - I see mistakes in other people's transcriptions all the time, including published sources. Don't assume it's right.
I know in jazz we seem to assume everyone is a musical genius incapable of error, but this absolute rubbish. I mean Miles was a genius, but he also made mistakes playing other people's tunes all the time. He's notorious for it haha (maybe try a bit harder than he did tho...). Bill Evans made the same mistake learning Conception I did (first phrase is a Dbmaj7#5 arpeggio not a Dbmaj7), which was nice to know, although Bill Evans did not have the advantage of modern audio technology haha so.... There's a million slight variations on Billie's Bounce that creep in, and so on, and so on. As you get better you make less mistakes you might make, but you'll always make mistakes.We are all human beings.
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Also see the thread regarding writing down rhythms. You don't have to write stuff down, and reading stuff is good for reading, but has nothing to do with transcription/ear-learning as an activity.
Learn the difference between the process and the result.
Both might be helpful - if I need to learn a new tune before a gig, then the result is important,
But also, the process of learning tunes by ear is something I would practice by learning tunes by ear.
Same for solos. is the transcription the important thing, to steal other players licks, or is it about practicing hearing jazz lines and paying them back? (or both?)
Or is it about producing a written out transcription for an assignment? (Or in my case for a YouTube video etc)
Does the result motivate the process (goal oriented) or do you find that invariably playing stuff off records for half an hour every session is more your thing (habit oriented.) How do you find it works best for you?
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Sometimes when transcribing, I don’t like a note someone played in a phrase, I’m sure it was a slight mistake or fingering error (usually this would be in a fast solo). So I change it to what I think they ‘meant’ to play. Because I’m not doing the transcription to imitate the player, but to learn some good lines and ideas.
Sometimes (especially on older recordings) there are notes which are not clear in the mix, e.g. passing notes or approach notes where there could be more than one viable option. So I just choose what I think sounds right.
So there might be good reasons why transcriptions differ slightly. I think if you keep doing it, eventually you will train your ear to the point where you can trust your own judgement.
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But like, you gotta know Metheny was involved. There’s no other reason his songs are in there and Autumn Leaves is in the Clapton key. Originally Posted by Mick-7
It’s all these classic jazz tunes and Bright Size Life sticks out like a sore thumb. A big sore thumb with an Afro.
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lol The inclusion of Bright Size Life always tripped me out. IIRC the chart in the book isn't how Metheny recorded it though. I guess that doesn't preclude his involvement but is curious. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
There are a bunch of oddball tunes in there with nigh useless transcriptions though. Ever seen the chart for Portrait of Tracy?
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I’ve been reading the OG real book a lot for practice lately, and enjoy a lot of the really weird inclusions. I think sixth edition loses a lot of them.
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Clapton recorded his version of Autumn Leaves years after the original Real Book came out. His version is in Bm by the way, whereas the tune appears there in Em. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
The history of Autumn Leaves in regard to its key is complicated. Yves Montand sang it in D minor in the 1946 film version. The massively popular piano rendition from 1955 by Roger Williams was also in that key yet there a number of recordings from the same period that are in Em (and not just those by guitarists like Tal Farlow). The first US sheet music publication from 1947 is also in Em.
It seems to me that Cannonball Adderley's 1958 recording with Miles Davis as a guest artist(!) on Something Else is the game changer to Gm. Perhaps Cannonball played the tune from a concert Em chart and it transposed on his alto sax to Gm?Last edited by PMB; 09-26-2024 at 07:48 PM.
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I do like that idea. Rather than transpose the concert chart to suit the alto, make everyone else in the band transpose their charts. Whose band is this anyway? (At the same time, I suspect Cannonball could have played it in any/every key and is unlikely to have needed a chart. Spoiling a good story Originally Posted by PMB
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