Just a few ideas for jazz piano players to transcribe: Red Garland on any of
the Miles albums he appeared on like Round Midnight or Milestones; or one of
his own recordings like "A Garland of Red." Tommy Flanagan played as a
sideman on many great albums, try one of the early Wes Montgomery albums or
early Coltrane albums. Wynton Kelly's trio albums are good too. You might
like how Bill Evans plays on a CD called "The '58 Sessions" with Miles Davis
and John Coltrane. For a more modern approach try McCoy Tyner, Herbie
Hancock, Chick Corea, or Keith Jarrett (he has many standards albums with
Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock). These are just my opinions, ther are many
other great piano players (like Horace Silver whom I forgot to list above)
worth listening to for ideas and inspiration.
You will probably find that most good piano players put fills in between
their melody notes and omit parts of the melody sometimes, a good place to
learn the complete melodies to standards instead is to listen to good
singers. Try Ella Fitzgerald (especially on ballads), Frank Sinatra (Miles
Davis claims him as a major influence on his melody playing in his
autobiography), Sarah Vaughan, Helen Merril, June Christy, Blossom Dearie,
Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, or Johnny Hartman (his album with Coltrane is
great).
A good place to learn the melodies to "Tin Pan Alley" type standards is to
get songbook compilations of the composers: Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart,
Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, etc. If you memorize the
words to these songs as well as their melodies it can help make your phrasing
on the piano more natural with the option of accents on key words in the
lyric rather than haphazard phrasing. I heard from my college piano teacher
that Bill Evans sometimes kept sheets of paper on his piano with only lyrics
printed on them to remind him of the songs' forms and phrasing while he
played them.
When transcribing solos it is often suggested that you do a significant
amount of the transcribing away from your instrument so as to not be
prejudiced by your pre-learned ideas (you can guess the soloist's ideas
incorrectly by thinking "I know that lick already"). Therefore, it is
important to figure out and write down the transcription one note at a time
then later play it on your instrument to gain facility with it when the
desired section is fully transcribed. This method also is incredible for ear
training because it forces you to hear the intervals between the notes
without the familiarity of your instrument's keyboard and the tendency to use
the "hunt and peck" method of finding notes. Reed has some excellent ideas
on transcribing in some slides available from his website's downloads page,
these ar more detailed and informative than what I just synopsized here.
A book I have found quite helpful for piano playing is Mark Levine's jazz
piano method book.
I hope this is useful and not redundant for you.
Brian Oates