Transcription is the process of listening to a jazz recording and then working out the notes and the rhythm using your ears. Transcribing from records is one of the most effective ways to learn and to develop your ability to improvise and it’s an essential part of your study of jazz piano.
### How will transcription help me to improvise?
Transcription is like taking private lessons with the masters of jazz piano. The best thing about it, is that you can choose what you want to transcribe based on where you want to take your sound when you play jazz piano.
Here’s a short interview with PianoGroove’s Grammy winning blues teacher – Jon Cleary. Jon explains the process and benefits of transcription and how we can select material to transcribe from recordings.
Jon Tips & Insights Video
When you transcribe something by ear and then transpose it through a few different keys, you will never loose it. The notes and rhythm will be ingrained in you and you will always have that line at your disposal. Now think if you transcribed 100 lines, you would have a huge amount of ‘jazz vocabulary’ at your disposal when you come to improvise.
This is a long process but a very valuable one for your playing and improvisation. Unfortunately, there is no ’secret’ or ‘magic bullet’ to improvising – just lots of hard work, practice and patience!
Let’s discuss some important rules to keep in mind when transcribing from recordings.
### Understanding The Chord Changes & Harmony
It’s helpful when you know the basic chords and the changes to whatever it is you are transcribing. For this reason I would recommend that you pick a recording of a tune that we have covered in a jazz standard lesson.
Knowing the chords gives you the context to analyse what you are hearing so that you can work out the melodic material in terms of scale degrees relating to the underlying harmony. Once you have the numerical scale degree information you then have the formula to transpose your line into all 12 keys.
Knowing the original harmony will also help you to identify passages that have been reharmonised or when substitute harmony is being used.
### Play Along With The Recording
Play along with the record using rootless left hand voicings so that you can understand where the improvised melody notes are falling in relation to the underlying chord changes. Once you have a decent grasp on the material, try to play along with the record and emulate exactly what is being played. This will help to develop your swing feel, phrasing, and articulation.
### Start Simple
When starting out with transcription, you should be not be trying to transcribe full solos. Perhaps start with a simple line or lick over a 251 progression and then transcribe and study this line in isolation. Slowly build up to transcribing a whole section, a whole head, and finally a whole recording.
### Focus on 251s
Remember that 251s are the most common progression in jazz music and so transcribing lines over 251s will be the most useful for you as you can apply them to virtually every tune and jazz standard that you want to improvise over.
After you have transcribed the line, analyse it to really understand why the line works, and what’s making it sound jazzy… is it the notes? The rhythm? The syncopation? Or possibly all these things? You should then transpose the line into at least a few different keys and preferably all 12 keys.
### Should we notate our transcriptions?
Imagine transcribing a spoken conversation with one of your good friends. Of course you would be able to write down the words (ie. the notes) but you would find it very difficult to write down the way they speak (ie. their pronunciation, articulation and emphasis).
The same applies to jazz. The main reason we transcribe is to absorb the phrasing and articulation of our favourite players and by writing this down, it can be easy to neglect this part and just focus on getting the right notes which is only half of the task. By all means, once you can play a transcription along with the record perfectly, then write it down in order to keep a safe copy. However remember that this is not the most important goal of transcription.
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