Top 5 Things to Do When Transcribing

Transcription is for improving improv!

Everyone who is a professional jazz musician or student transcribes other musicians’ solos. We do this to dig deep into the language of the music and the style/feel of the music. We transcribe licks that we hear that are cool and we transcribe to learn how to play our instruments better. When we transcribe traditional jazz tunes, our goal is to internalize the music better — how to better hear the relationship between the melody and chord changes.

How do we choose tunes to transcribe? I talk a bit about this to my students because it is important to have some sort of a strategy when choosing which pieces to transcribe:

• We might transcribe an array of artists who have sound, harmonic choices, rhythmic flavor, or unique phrasing that we want to learn and better emulate.

• We might transcribe a particular tune that we want to know or understand better.

• We might learn different solos by different artists over a given tune. (Like for instance transcribing both Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins soloing on Green Dolphin Street.)

Here are the TOP FIVE THINGS TO DO WHEN TRANSCRIBING:

1. LISTEN
   This is painfully obvious, but young students generally do not listen to enough jazz music. A few years ago I created this playlist of seven combo albums that students can hear:

   This playlist features all of the instruments and not just saxophone. I also tell students to have at least FIVE favorite artists that play their instrument—preferably at least one of those five players is someone who is alive today. There are plenty of ways to discover artists, but I recommend AllMusic because it is easy to find artists’ full discographies.

2. START EASY

   Find something that is simple enough that the material can be easily heard and can be applied to other jazz standards. I had a student transcribe Coltrane’s Countdown as one of his first transcriptions, which was incredibly impressive, but it could have arguably been more valuable to transcribe a more simple solo with phrasing that could have more directly been applicable to using in simple repertoire tunes.
   

3. KNOW THE TUNE THAT YOU ARE TRANSCRIBING
   Many of my students forget this—if you are transcribing a tune (like for instance Stella By Starlight), know the melody and how to solo on the tune. Become familiar with the chord changes and the form before transcribing the tune. This should make the transcription work easier!
   

4. BE ABLE TO SING THE TRANSCRIPTION

   Most of us are not singers, but I am suggesting that before you try to transcribe a solo that you know the rhythm, phrasing, and the shape of phrases. You want to know where the phrases start in the bar (which beat) and a general overall sense of what is happening rhythmically. Also, you should try to sing along and get the interval content of the melodies. This will also make the transcription work quicker and easier.
   

5. SLOW IT DOWN
   This is one aspect of transcription in which some musicians differ in opinion. I do think that it is acceptable to slow down a solo to hear it better.
   Many of my students use YouTube for transcription and the advantages are 1) using settings button to adjust the playback speed, and 2) using the back and forward arrow keys to rewind or fast forward. It is generally efficient, but the quality of sound is not as good as Spotify or an mp3. For this reason I recommend the Amazing Slow Downer or a similar app. I like using the Amazing Slow Downer to open pieces on my Spotify playlist for transcription. The interface is easy to navigate and the sound quality is fantastic.

The question for you is whether it is helpful to write out transcriptions? Ultimately our goal is to internalize the music, so relying on a printed transcription seems counterproductive. The advantages of writing out a transcription include:

• the ability to analyze the motivic and/or harmonic content

• the possibility of having a library to revisit at a later date