One of the best ways to improve your jazz playing is learning other people’s solos or songs.Different people have different ideas about this.Some people think that you must learn them by ear and memorize them as you go.Others say it is okay to write them down as you go.Try starting off writing them down and as it becomes easier, do it exclusively by ear and memorize as you go. Eventually, you may not even need an instrument!
There are many benefits to transcribing.First, it is a great way to improve your ear.Second, you have a chance to learn directly from a master or someone you really enjoy listening to.You can find out exactly what they would do over a certain chord, type of harmony or over the tune you are learning.
Don’t feel obligated to start off learning an entire solo.Start off with just one chorus, a 4 or 8 bar section, the melody to a tune or even just a lick.
How to transcribe:
1.Pick a solo or melody that you really like, preferably a song with a familiar chord progression or one you have been meaning to learn.This is important so that you understand the soloist’s note choices in relation to the chords and you are able to recreate those sounds yourself on your own solos. I recommend starting with a blues or rhythm changes tune since they are so common. At first, pick and learn solos played on your instrument.As transcribing becomes easier for you, try learning solos by other instruments.
2.Listen to your selection over and over again until you are really familiar with it.The more you get it in your head, the easier it will be to figure out the notes.
3.Learn it one section or phrase at a time, just as you would a classical piece.Depending on the difficulty of the solo, this may be four measures, one measure, or even two notes.
4.Write it down.If you are learning the solo by memory, take the time later to write down the solo for reference and analysis.Sometimes, this helps you figure out something you may not have heard or noticed as you were playing it by memory.
5.Try to incorporate these ideas into your own solos or playing.If you hear a particular idea or lick that you really like, learn it in all 12 keys.
Be careful to imitate exactly what the soloist is playing.Listen for inflection, articulation, timing and tone quality.The idea is to be able to sound exactly like the soloist and be able to play the solo along with the recording convincingly.
A few recommended solos (for saxophonists) to transcribe: Illinois Jacquet, Flyin’ Home Ben Webster, Cotton Tail (rhythm changes) Lester Young, I’ve Got Rhythm and Lester Leaps In Sonny Rollins, Blue 7 and St. Thomas Benny Goodman, Honeysuckle Rose
Almost anything by Dexter Gordon, earlier Hank Mobley, and Stan Getz are great because there is so much jazz vocabulary, they are fairly easy to hear and understand, and they play a ton of standards. I would avoid Wayne Shorter and later Coltrane for a while (as much as I love that stuff!).
John Ellis from New Orleans is one of the great saxophonists around right now. He is soulful, creative and melodic. I love what he has to say about playing his original music in an interview from “All About Jazz” by Jason Crane…
“All About Jazz: You’ve spent so much time playing either your own original music or someone else’s original music, as opposed to mining the standard repertoire. Has that been an intentional choice?
John Ellis: It has been for a variety of reasons. I guess I feel the most at home when I’m playing music either written by me or by friends of mine that we’re interpreting for the first time. I think there’s such a weight of tradition and a burden of tradition in jazz. I love the tradition so much, and I’ve listened to it so much, that to do a half-assed version of it—or like “Look at me, I can play like so-and-so”—has never been something that I was motivated to do. And in many ways, I don’t think I was ready to make a strong statement on the standard material. I still have an ambition to do that in the future, but I feel like the more I can spend time trying to cultivate a perspective and nurture the music I’m interested in, then maybe I’ll have a hope of playing some of that standard material with a personal spin.“
I just found out that Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svennson passed away on June 14th in a diving accident. His playing was beautiful and melodic… It had an interesting blend of classical, jazz and rock styles. His trio had been playing together since 1993. He was the first European jazz musician to grace the cover of Downbeat.
5 wrong notes
2 missing turns
3 notes that they added which didn’t exist
1 missing note
3 wrong rhythms
And that’s just the first song!
I recommend checking with the recording before you assume any transcriptions are correct. Why don’t they hire me to re-edit and re-release it? Anyway, it keeps you on your toes when you learn those solos. Happy practicing…
David
**The Charlie Parker Omnibook is a book of transcribed Charlie Parker solos.
If you want to call yourself a musician, this is the minimum that I ask: Be able to play a few songs at a party without any music. Someone asks you to play and you don’t have to dig out a book of songs and read something from it, you can just pull something out of your head, or make something up on the spot. (I think quite a few college students studying music and classical musicians would be disqualified) I really don’t think that is asking very much at all!
Check this out, I think Bireli Lagrene qualifies (watch this all the way through, you’ll be glad you did!):
David
PS Thanks to Beau Sample for sending me this video…
When I play with different people, everyone has their own idea of the way a song should be played. Some people learn the song from a fakebook, some from the original sheet music, others from a recording.
Every once in a while, though, I meet someone who will try to tell others that they are playing the wrong chords. To me, this makes no sense, especially when dealing with an old jazz standard.
With certain songs, there is a more absolute way of playing the chords (a song like “Recordame” by Joe Henderson or “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane). With older songs, a lot of times they have been played and recorded so many ways that right and wrong is subjective. A good example of this is “Honeysuckle Rose”. Many people play this tune in slightly different ways (particularly in the 2nd half of the A section). I-I7-IV-#IVdim? I-VI-ii-V7? I will say that I respect the folks that seek out the original sheet music to those types of tunes in order to try to find out what the composer intended (though I can’t say I have ever done that myself).
Check out Anita O’day doing this tune (I-I7-IV-IVmin):
Or check out this other Anita version, with different changes (I-I7-IV-#IVdim):
Anyway, it is always good to be open to different interpretations of music. As soon as you start seeing music in absolutes, you start sounding like a curmudgeon and close yourself off to things which you may learn from or appreciate…
That being said, a lot of people play weird chord changes because they haven’t taken the time to learn the song from a good source other than a fakebook (which often has mistakes). A good example of this is the song “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter. In the illegal fakebook, the changes are definitely not from the recordings I have heard…
It seems like a lot of people coming out of music schools with a jazz degree are all learning the same songs, transcribing the same solos and listening to jazz from the same era. Are there programs out there that encourage people to learn stuff from before Charlie Parker? Don’t get me wrong, as a saxophonist, I love Bird:
Wayne Shorter, Cannonball, Sonny Rollins and all the usual suspects.
Why aren’t students told to start with learning Don Byas, Lester Young, Benny Goodman or even earlier guys? I think that it would have helped my ear develop more quickly and I would have had a stronger harmonic foundation if I had done that sooner. Plus, those players from that era had such a beautiful sense of melody (What happened to playing melodically in jazz these days??).
How is it even possible that I would learn the tune “Donna Lee” by Charlie Parker without having ever heard the song “Back Home Again in Indiana” which it is based on? Also, the older jazz seems to be less focused on virtuosity and and more focused on just making nice music. (That doesn’t mean that guys didn’t have the technique… Check out Art Tatum or Benny Goodman…)
I wish when I was in college trying to learn how to play Giant Steps
or some Joe Henderson tune that someone wiser would have smacked me and told me to learn how to play V7-I first.
Also, it seems like so many jazz guys these days have access to all sorts of great tools for learning how to improvise. We now have countless books and playalongs and ways to slow down recordings… Is this making the learning process easier? In some ways yes… On the other hand, it is almost a handicap. We are so overwhelmed with information, that we don’t know where to start. I bet Charlie Parker had a small handful of records that he would listen to over and over again and really internalize. Nowadays, we have countless mp3s and CDs and we don’t even remember what we have and don’t have. Do you have a recording of this song? I don’t know, let me check…
And once again, people all look to the same fake book to learn a song, instead of finding a good recording and learning it from that. I don’t know how many times I have played with people who have learned a song from a fakebook and have never heard the original or a good version of the tune (I am sure that I have been guilty of that as well… but I don’t do that anymore).
On top of that, we are all learning from the same source books, learning the same licks and learning the same tunes. And then jazz musicians have the audacity to complain about the fact that no one comes to hear them play… (More on that some other time!)
That being said, I think it is great that we have access to so much music, so many books and so much information. It can just be a bit overwhelming …
