Re: Beginner transcription...

reed ( (no email) )
Sat, 28 Dec 1996 12:50:35 +0000

At 10:28 AM 12/28/96 -0800, you wrote:
>I've been dabbling in jazz piano for a while now, and I'm ready to
>start putting in some serious study. I've been playing piano for about
>15 years, so my chops are decent, I just don't know much about jazz
>theory.
>
>Who is the best pianist to listen to for transcription purposes? Bill
>Evans seems to deviate too far from the melody, and Oscar is, well,
>nearly impossible to imitate. Also, this may be a stupid question,
>but, by transcription, do you mean physically writing the notes out, or
>merely learning by ear and playing?
>
>Thanks,
>Mitch
>
>
>
I'm not sure what you mean by Bill Evans deviating from the melody
too much. That would only matter if you were trying to learn
the melodies by transcribing.

What you want to do is start off transcribing some simple solos.
Forget about transcribing the melody for now.

Melody playing tends to have alot of rhythmic complications that you
don't need to deal with in the beginning. Just learn the melody from
a lead sheet for standards (not for jazz tunes like confirmation
since the lead sheets are usually wrong. Learning those melodies
presents alot of problems).

I recommend starting off with medium tempo Chet Baker.
Slow chet baker has too many rhythmic problems like playing behind
the beat, etc.

By transcription, I mean writing out the notes on paper.

Some people transcribe by ear and never write them down but my experience
is that that leads to really poor transcriptions and the people that do that
often exhibit alot of misunderstandings in their playing from having
done that.

reed