[TPIN] Good or bad,..here it is

[Jeff Helgesen]

On 11/2/06, Reaban, Derek (MCOE) <derek.reaban at honeywell.com> wrote:
>
> I truly believe that transcription is one of the absolute best forms of
> "Active" listening.  Not only are you focused on getting the notes and
> rhythms, but all of the other "inflection" that is present in the music
> is finding its way into your mind.  That's what makes it interesting to
> listen to!  As David Krauss would say, play it with "schmaltz"!

This is true, though there are some (I believe Wynton Marsalis is in
this camp) who suggest that it's more productive to memorize without
transcribing.  I think you really have to be engaged to get this to
work optimally.  Much of the benefit from transcription can come from
actually seeing the horizontal (linear) flow of a line against the
vertical (harmonic) reference of the chord change and the staff.

> Just out of curiosity, how many people have transcribed classical
> trumpet solos or big orchestral excerpts, instead of just finding the
> music and playing from the part?

Even many smaller excerpts would serve a similar function, and might
be easier to digest.  Add in multiple transpositions to the mix and
you're effectively teaching yourself to play by ear using classical
literature.  Then the only thing missing to being improvising
effectively is getting the melodic raw material in your head so that
you can not only play what you hear, but also hear something that'd be
interesting to play!  :-)

An example of a classical application to this skill would be the
ability to create effective descant parts to church hymns on the fly.
My dad (a TPIN lurker) is quite good at this (hi dad!).

Another way to go at this for classically trained players would be to
take a common piece of literature (the Haydn, the Carnival of Venice
theme and variations, Charlier #2, whatever) that you can play from
memory and transpose it to different keys without looking at the
music.

> I'm guessing that if more students who
> are focused on symphonic or solo playing did this, they would find their
> own mature sounds MUCH more quickly.

Absolutely, and this is another reason why divesting from the written
page is very helpful for jazz players.  Memorizing the music frees
your brain up from the process of translating the dots on the page to
do other things, like concentrate on sound concept.

It's probably also worth pointing out that, while studying
transcriptions from a book or downloaded from a website has value,
reading other peoples' transcriptions really is just good sightreading
practice.  Unless you can integrate some critical analysis into the
reason things work, and generalize that information into something you
can apply away from the written page, you're not getting nearly as
much benefit.

That having been said, if anyone's interested in looking at what
transcriptions of jazz trumpet solos look like, grab some here and
have at it:

http://www.shout.net/~jmh/transcriptions/

-- 
Jeff Helgesen
http://cdbaby.com/cd/jazzmayhem