You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Advice on Transcribing - #169

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

In today's episode, Peter and Adam give some tips on transcribing. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Annis. I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. That's right. What are we got coming at us today, Pete? We're going to talk transcribing, right? Because we had some questions.

Yeah, we got a question from one of our listeners, Richard, who asks, Hey, guys, always look forward to your podcast, the highlight of my day. I didn't have to say that, but I wanted to. Can you do an episode on transcribing? Wait, did he actually say that or was that you adding that in? No, he actually said that. But I didn't have to repeat that. that part, but I did anyway. I feel it's an essential part of being a musician, as I know you do.

He says, thanks and change the world, one blue note at a time. Hey now. Yeah. So transcribing, have you ever done any transcribes? I've done a little bit, yeah. I mean, we are, we hate to, well, I feel like we're preaching to the choir, but I think a little reinforcement on this is always good because it's it's a grind to transcribe. I mean, I think it's very rewarding in a number of ways we know that but there's no way I mean it doesn't matter how much you've done of it how well you know the artists that you're transcribing how good your ears are how good your your your your transcribing skills are you're gonna hit a grind it's gonna be frustrating at some point so you have to find you know I

think before we even get into talking about you know some sort of tactics and hacks maybe if there are any I think the upper level thing of like get your mindset that you're gonna a stumbling block. You're going to have 45 minutes sometimes where you're just like trying to hear something. You think you've got it, then you don't, then you think, and then you're like, why am I wasting my time? Right. I mean, that's going to happen. But that's, even that

isn't a waste of time, though. Even that you're learning things about what not, you know, what you're not hearing, you know, and that can be very useful information. Right. But I just think that if you're prepared for that kind of frustration, then it's not so bad. It's one of these things where it is, you know, like you said, it's a grind, and it could be

one of the more challenging aspects of learning this music, but it, like all things, the more challenging, you know, the more reward. Right. And I think that if, you know, folks understand what you mentioned as far as you're still learning something, even at that period, that 45 minutes where you feel like you didn't have anything accomplished,

but the process is all about the process. Right. If you really not only hear us say that and hear others say that, but really believe that, then it becomes a little bit easier because you're not, I mean, of course, finishing a solo, there's nothing like that, or even finishing one chorus. Right.

Or one phrase. Oh, it's so great. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, this is where we should start. And that is, you know, as you said, it's a grind. You have to do it. Work it into your daily practice routine, even if that means transcribing one phrase. Yeah.

You know what I mean? One phrase at a time. It's a great way to do it. It's a great way to do it. I still do that, actually, where I'll be listing something on the way in to practice or whatever as I'm driving. I'll be like, yeah, I'm going to pick that up today. Yeah. Like I'm getting that voice and whatever that is.

Yep. And then I just get that. I don't transcribe a whole solo or whatever. Yeah. I still do that occasionally, but really it's, you can kind of pick and choose what you want to do, and it's still very useful for your ears. Yeah, and when you're going through phrase by phrase, I mean, you know, normally we're learning these solos sequentially in order. But you're already going to have the benefit of as long as you're listening to it a lot, before you even start, for sure. I mean, I'm always amazed at folks, you know, students that I've had and people that I've heard will jump into a solo and get frustrated and then end up kind of burning out. but they don't really know the solo before they start.

Like they'll hear it and like, oh, I really like that. And I think that, you know, you want to do something that you're passionate about. You want to learn a solo that you're passionate about. And also that you feel is applicable to what you need in your development at that time. But it's got to be something that you know preferably for months, if not years, that you've been listening to. Well, so this is going to take us right into kind of how to get started. If you haven't done much transcribing, most people, I think, agree that the way to start is to, Learn it before you get to your instrument.

You know, one of my teachers at the new school is Hal Galper, and he used to preach that you should be able to sing what you're going to transcribe before you start to write it out, before you start to play it, be able to sing it. And that way you can get an amen? Amen. You can get it ingrained in you. This is a great way to learn anything because you just, you don't have to think about it then. You just know what I mean?

I mean, think about a melody that you can sing, you can probably figure out on the piano. your instrument. Right. You're so much further ahead than you think that you are. That's right. When you can sing at least key parts of the solo, if not most of it. You know, it'll seem like, oh, well, that's the easy part. But that's the part that maybe feels easy, but it also is the part that makes everything

else easier. Yeah. You know, each little part after that, as far as learning, it becomes so much easier. How do you match the phrasing? How do you find the notes? How do you hear the intervals? all those kind of things start to fall into place. I mean, it's still work.

It's still work. It's still going to be the grind part because stuff is difficult or sounds different. But you're putting yourself in the best position possible. I mean, it's just, you know, if you're going to run a marathon, you know, you've got to run the miles at a certain point. Right. But if you've got the shoes and the shorts and, you know, you've got all your equipment, you know the route, you know, you've gone to like a psychologist for training, you know. I mean. We should do an open studio marathon or something.

Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. like a marathon solo that we learned. No, we should do like a running thing with, yeah, while we transcribe. Be able to sing what we're listening to as we're putting in the miles. Well, but you know what, that's a great, you know,

if you go running or if you're walking, get those headphones on, somebody's calling you, you'll hear it. That never happens. It might be a gig. Need answer it? Are you good? I'm good. You know, we're doing a podcast recording.

Sorry, but, sorry, right. No, but, you know, listening all the time. repeatedly. It's such a simple thing. I always feel like, man, why is anyone going to listen to this? We didn't make this stuff up. But we do need reminders. I need reminders of that sometimes. Like I'll, you know, what normally happens with this for me now is I need to do an arrangement of something. And I'll just like, you know, wait till the last minute, the deadline. You would never do that, would you? No, I'm usually... That was funny the other day. We were both in here trying to arrange at the same time for like a last minute

deadline, like a Saturday. What are you doing? No, but I mean, I'll jump right into the arranging And then I'll have to take a breath sometimes to say, hold on a second. Let me go back. Have I been listening to this? Wouldn't it have been nice if the laboring? I mean, it's like, yeah, maybe I can get away with it, but wouldn't it have been nice if I'd been listening to this for the last week? What's this melody?

Yeah. And so, I mean, you just put yourself in such a better position to be able to succeed. Yeah, that's true. So, step one is. Listen, yeah, as always. Once you can sing it, once it's ingrained away from your instrument, now it's time to kind of go and really at this point out. Now it's time to go purchase an instrument.

That's your next step. That's right. No, now it's time to actually like kind of analyze what it is to figure it out, to figure out the notes, to be able to play it with the recording. I always recommend, and this is something that's been a theme here, to get your setup at home, you know, to the point where you don't need earbuds and headphones. It's not possible for everybody if you live in an apartment or if you have small children. But, you know, I like to play to actual speakers that are filling the room because it feels more like you're on stage or you're at a gig. and it's easier to kind of get into the vibe of the music and to play along with these great musicians. Even next level from that,

if you can afford it, hire the exact musicians from the recording and physically have them there when you're practicing, but most of us can't do that. It's like Peter Martin level. We can't, most of us can't do that. No, but it's true. It's like if you can set up a speaker system somehow close to you,

I mean, there's so much great, like, Bluetooth options where you just have your laptop. The speaker system with like a receiver and a... I do have that actually, yeah, man. But then, yeah, drop the needle on. the record. That's right. Move it back.

Slow it down. The Victrola. The Victrola. And then you're actually like, you know, you feel like you're in the room. You're playing with these people. Yeah, because that gives you a, it always feels like you're hearing yourself and you're hearing the music more evenly in order to match. I mean, it can work with headphones.

But it really does. I agree. I mean, it just feels like you can, because you have to hear yourself kind of equally almost. Right. Like you have to hear. Because, you know, if you've been in a situation where you have the earphones, earphones, headphones, headphones, you're making fun of me.

Earphones. Remember the single one? Hearing aid. No, but if you hear too much of that, and it could be from the speaker too, and you're playing along, and you can't really hear yourself, you're like, oh, I got it. And then you play yourself by yourself, and you're like, ooh, don't, didn't happen. I don't have it. Yeah, yeah, that's funny.

So then, yeah, so just play along with either the solo or the passage that you're trying to get until you can play along accurately. And then do it a bunch more times, even after you get it, repeat. Repeat, repeat. Yeah, you've got to be able to do that. Then play it by yourself without the recording and see how that is, you know, if you can do it. You know, and then from there, I mean, there's so much you can do with this. You can take it through all 12 keys.

Yeah. You know, that is one, again, this is not the easy thing to do, but it's the best thing you can do. And I think for that, sometimes what I've seen people have success with, I mean, I did that a few, like, sort of simpler solos. I took them through all the keys, the whole solos. And that's like a really extended project that gets into, you know, some. great technical challenges for piano, well, would be for any instrument, some great, you know, ear training stuff, transposition, all that. But I think if you take just like one simple phrase that's super effective from a melodic standpoint that you really like, take just take that, you know,

because I mean, you know, you're not always going to be able to take the whole thing. Anything is beneficial. But also remember, like, when you learn a soul and you can play along with it, and then as you said, play it on your own. and if you're not sure how much of the kind of vibe and spirit of that you're getting in real time as you play, record yourself. Absolutely. Record yourself and listen back. You're never going to get it perfect just like the player because it's them, but you want to see how close you can get it. And make sure what you're hearing as you perform it is the same as when you hear recording back.

Because that's where you can really tell how attuned your ears are. That's right. And the very last step of this, and some people jump to this first, but this should be the very last thing you do, is to actually, like, you know, write out the passage, analyze it theoretically. You know, why does, do these notes work over this chord? Why does this rhythm work in this phrase? Are you required to have a master's degree in jazz? No, but this would actually be the equivalent of that. You don't need to go to school if you do this enough. But, you know, the more you do it, the more this kind of becomes instant. Right? Like, I don't know about you, but I don't really have to do this part of it as much anymore

because as soon as I kind of hear it, I can, you know, because the more you do it, the more you know it, the more you know. Yeah. The more you know, the more you hear. You just kind of have this understanding of how this work you are. Yeah, and I think that, you know, I've kind of been back and forth on the, I used to be very dogmatic and about do not write it out because that's just going to slow you. down, don't even transcribe. Even though I'd be like, transcribe solos, but don't write them out.

Well, that's not actually transcribing. That's just learning them by ear. But I think that there is a skill and some benefits you get from writing it out, but it's disproportionate to the amount of work that that takes. Like, once you've learned it and can play along with the solo and then play it on its own and you already haven't memorized and you haven't written it out yet, you're already gotten like 80 to 90% of the benefit of learning that solo. Now, there are benefits from writing it out and some additional, you know, things that you learn about it. But to me, that's more the process of notation, which is important in its own way. But, you know, if that's going to be at the expense of you moving on and learning another solo or learning maybe some of those

phrase and other keys, I would say you can even skip the writing it out. If it comes easy to you. That's why I put it last, man. That's right. That's right. Hey, I'm just dovetailing what you're saying. You know how we're doing here. Well, Richard, hopes this helps you. hopes it helps old Richard. Thanks to the question. If you have a question, you can go to you'll hearat.com. You can leave us a question there. You can leave us a voicemail there.

We have a cool little speak pipe system to recording voicemails. Previously known as voice memos. Voice memos. You can just pop in and say hi. Hey, do you use the voice memos on the iPhone? All the time. Really? Yeah, that's how I record myself when I practice.

Oh, no, not voicemail. I'm sorry. You know the voice recording on the text message, you know? Oh, no, but we have a mutual friend, Brian. Owen's. Oh, you're going to call him out, but okay, yeah, let's call him out. He doesn't listen to the podcast. He's a vocalist.

They don't care about this stuff. Ouch. But he, that's all he does. Yeah. So, you know, you have to like play it and put it up to your ear. He needs to speak pipe us a question sometimes. And the worst is they erase after like 30 seconds. Yeah.

So he'll ask me about a date or something. And I'll be like, wait, what? I have to text him. You're like, what date did you say? Right. Just write it. It's so close to a voice message. I mean, a voicemail, but it's not.

It's a disappearing ink. It's a hipster voiceman. Good. So did you already ask for the ratings and reviews? No, do you want to ask for the ratings and reviews? Can we have some ratings and reviews, please? Seven stars? Yeah, I mean, we accept them. We accept any of them. You can go to iTunes or Google Podcasts or Stitcher. We are on Stitcher, by the way. Or Tune In? Did you know we're on that?

Are we, though, really? We have been, we absolutely are. Actually, Stitcher, I'm not sure. I still am in. But there is a thing called Stitch. I think we've got to apply to that. We're on tune in, though. I just want to say, just look over there for just a second. Oh, he walked. Brian Owens is here. We just said your name on the podcast. That's so awesome.

Ooh, hashtag awkward. Well, that's good. Well, you'll hear it.