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

[Jon Trimble]

Another agreement from me...:)  I actually have transcribed classical solos 
but in a different sense.  My mother (step) was a Viola player and I used to 
transcribe her stuff.  That was a bear but very usefull.  I also would 
transcribe the old Vegas shows to play along with.  Very useful in ear 
training I felt.

Jon Trimble
>
>> 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
>
>
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