You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Important Is Transcribing Really?

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Peter and Adam get into the nitty gritty of how important it is to transcribe something.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio��� Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Peter, you got a pen and a pad? No. I'm going to need you to write everything down that I'm saying. Oh, really? You're going to have to transcribe it by hand. Okay, got it.

Can I do it on the computer? Nope. No. No, you actually have to use analog tools. Okay. Write it all out. Got it. And then we can analyze what I say later.

Let's do it. Okay. I feel overdressed. You are. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll hear a podcast. Music advice coming at you.

I'm worried, Adam. About what? I just looked over at producer Caleb and as we were doing our our intro. Yeah. Made me self-conscious because he went like this. I think he was checking

the sound though. But it kind of looked like I hate listening to what you're saying. Caleb came over there? Can you recreate it for everybody? Can you do what? Yeah, show what you just do? Show just what happened there.

Okay. One of these? Yeah. There's a fine line between checking audio and stop talking. I'm trying to hear it better. Right, I know.

Okay. It was a joke. It was a joke. I'm super nervous about, I've been reading the comments. You've read the comments on YouTube. I try not to, but I read every single one. You've been on vacation. I'm going to pull you right back into this. It's going to be like, what do they call it a soft landing?

This is going to be a hard landing back in zero. It turns out, I realized on vacation, real life is a lot gentler than YouTube comments. The ways of the Gulf of Mexico are not like the harsh jabs that you get in the YouTube comments. That's true. No, but one thing that's a little bit controversial to me is, I mean, I can take, you know me. I don't. I don't really care. I don't about that. But there's been a lot of growth in that area. But we seem to have some haters in this world. Now, look, Mama always said that was going to be haters. So I've been prepared for that. You've got to have your critics. You got to have your critics. But some folks violently do not like our this part of the program. Oh yeah. We talked about this. Which is funny that we're talking about it

as we're talking about how people don't like it. Useless drivel. Useless drivel. We talked about it before. Yeah, yeah. But it seems to be about 10 to 1 or maybe even more love it. Well, I think they were kind of rushing to our defense in the comments from what I saw. So we don't know because maybe it's 10 to one the other way and they're just, they're just bouncing off. And they bounced off about two minutes ago from the useless drivel about the useless drivel. Right, but can't you just fast forward or jump to the part that you like?

That's what I do. Yeah, I think you could. Because one thing is what we don't do is sponsorships or ad reads in here. No. You know what I'm saying? So like that's typically where people would, you know, where they might fast forward. So I don't know. I think this part, because we're not, we're not telling you.

you, this is a C major seven, it's not of interest to people. We, I think this podcast, let's talk about the podcast little bit here because it has, no, we do, we, we ride a fine, a very fine line here. So most of the podcasts I listen to are like an hour and a half long, and they're just of people talking about various subjects that I might be interested in. Yeah. But it's like literally just two or three people having a conversation for an hour and a half.

I don't know what it is about us humans, but we all seem to really love listening to that kind of stuff. Yeah. However, I think because we oftentimes offer. somewhat, I think, without tuning our own horns, useful information about how to play jazz piano, specifically, I think some people were like, hey, piano monkeys, get to the piano, you know, instead of just, you know, us talking, they want to hear us explaining a very detailed. But then it's not a podcast, it's an instructional audio guide, which is why we have the second YouTube channel for just the podcast, because I think there is some confusion between our

tutorial videos and the podcast, which is just us being idiots talking to each other. And maybe you might on a blue moon get some useful information. But mostly it's just you and I sitting around drinking out of ridiculous looking crafts. Carras. Well, and not only do we have the other YouTube channel, we also have a little thing called Open Studio. Open Studio Jazz.com.

Where if you want string to tour has no drivel. You are going to have to pay for it, but it's well worth it. So anyway, you can check that out. The dribble is the cost of admission for the free podcast. So I know we've got a speak pipe we're going to get to, but I want to know first, you've been on vacation. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. And you don't have to take us through everything because it'll make me super jelly, even though I'm happy for you, you know, but you're with your family. But you have anything specific to being a musician, being a podcast, or just being an artist, being a creative that you maybe, you know, can take away from that time. I assume you're away from the piano. I always think that's an interesting thing is like, what do we do musically? Because I know you've got an active musical mind.

What do we do and we're away physically from an instrument? Or did you bring your melodica? I brought no instruments with me. I actually tried to purposely stay away because I'm about to enter another pretty intense period where I've got some writing gigs for the St. Louis Symphony coming up. Ever heard of them? I've got some writing gigs for my own little string orchestra pop pop pop coming up.

We've got a lot of amazing open studio content that we're going to be recording the next several months. We've got your quartet album, which I hope to be around and helping as much I can. Can you be producer of that? On a serious note, I wanted to ask you that. I can ask you right here. I'll do whatever you need for me to help. And so I just know that the next three or four months are going to be pretty intense.

And I just wanted to have a week where I didn't think about any music. But that doesn't mean that like I think when you take a step away from your normal routine, whatever that is, there's just so much that you can learn about yourself and the world. So what I love about vacations and tell me, you probably have experience with this too. Like we can do all this planning and here's what we're going to be doing. But the most fun stuff are these themes that happen on the vacation organically. Like for some reason,

our entire family just got into watching Seinfeld. All the kids and me and Heather, and we just watched literally dozens of episodes of Seinfeld on this week-long vacation. Yeah, exactly. Just like, you know, we were at the beach mostly. We were 30A down there on Florida. Beautiful, little stretch of the Gulf Mexico.

And we were... Big shout to the Redneck Riviera. That's right. When we weren't on the beach, we were inside watching Seinfeld or eating some delicious seafood. But, you know, it was just so much fun to watch my kids watch it. But then also, I am taking away, that's a, in those middle seasons, that's a tightly written show.

I mean, it is really well written. Larry David's a genius. I think there's so many funny little quirky things that pop in and stream through all the episodes of the season. Well, think about those shows. Think about that. It's like 27, 22 minutes of useless drivel with no piano instruction. But it's so, it's not useless. Somehow they've managed to make useless drivel, move plot along,

and tell jokes and it's very, very tightly written. Like it takes a lot. No core progressions. No core progressions at all. But I was just kind of thinking about that. And then also, Peter, I know you are a big fan of being outside in nature as well. And just being, even when you're on the redneck revere of 30A, just the ocean is such a huge bit of nature staring you right in the face.

And I think there's always inspiration that comes from that just massive quantity of nature. I think every artist that's ever lived has, even if they don't think they have, has taken inspiration from nature. It's lifetime champ of art. It doesn't get better. Totally agree. Totally agree.

And let me just be clear here. I'm a native Floridian. So when I say redneck Riviera, I bring a certain authority. I also have a lot of redneck in me. And so, no, that's one of my most, that's one of the most beautiful parts of the state, I would say. Gorgeous.

I actually was born in central Florida, but I spent a lot of time. on the Gulf Coast, the Panhandle, as it's called. Even Alabama coast, Mississippi coast, from when I was living in New Orleans. I've traveled that many, many times. We used to go to the beach in Florida for the days sometimes. We drive from New Orleans over it, which is quite...

You know what I liked about it is most of the people that were down there seemed like they were either from Florida, Alabama, or Mississippi, and it was just a nice, like, it was a nice vibe. Yeah. There's a lot of nice people down there. Yeah, yeah. No, and I agree with the ocean. I always like, you know, the waves, the timing of,

like to be able to be in... around the musical aspects of the world, you know, and like to slow down and really like take that in. It's, it's a magical thing. It really is. Yeah, really. So I didn't, well, I didn't work on, I spent a little time while you were there down by River to Perry. It's got, it doesn't really have waves. It's more wakes. It's a wake zone. Yeah, more just, you get some waves from them, you know, the mobsters throwing the dead bodies into the River to Pear or whatever, or someone, or the, the, shout out River to Pear. The Hoosiers throwing the couches into the river to fair, yeah.

Cool. Well, it's good to have you back. We missed you. And so are we going to take this question? Because this is always fun for us. Yeah, this is question. Some of our best episodes come out of these. And thank you guys for the questions. I know we have a little bit of a backlog on them. I don't want people to think that we're We're pretty good now, actually. Are we? Okay. Yeah, we're pretty good. This is anonymous, but it's a great question about transcribing. Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. I have a question about transcribing. Since so many people have different opinions on that some people say it's the key thing you have to do to learn the language and other people say,

just play along to the recordings and kind of play off what the other people are playing, the people you want to learn from. So I'm kind of conflicted and I was wondering how important was transcribing in both of your developments as musicians. And if you could maybe talk about that and if it was important, how you transcribe and how you incorporated the language. of the musicians into you playing. Yeah, thanks for the question. You might be out on the beach there. You might have to go inside if you're going to transcribe.

Although you can, we're going to talk about the most important. First of all, yes, it's important. Yeah, yeah. But we'll talk about the, you know, kind of idiosyncrasies of the terminology, whether or not it's important to write it out or to just learn by you. Like these terms have become interchangeable, right? And we don't want to be dogmatic about that. But when you say transcribing, isn't it implicit in that that you are actually notating the solo that you do?

Well, the word transcribe itself means some kind of written form of it. Do you scribe. Right. And trans. Exactly. But I don't think that a lot of jazz musicians take that literally, because you could still, quote, unquote, transcribe without writing down a thing. Right. You can learn a solo or what anybody's playing just by ear from the record, play along with the record, learn it, have it memorized, and never write it down.

And I think colloquially, we still describe that as transcribing. Yes. That's still learning something from the record. So we've kind of co-opted that word, I think, as musicians to mean, it's kind of own thing. I do think, though, what he was talking about, about just playing along with records and playing off of what other people are playing, can be super useful. I don't know about just as useful, but I think they're just different things. But the whole point of transcription, I always say it's really not to learn. what other people are playing. Like it's not, it can be a theory lesson. Oh, listen to what, uh, you know,

Red Garland played over this part of what, what is this thing called love? Or you can kind of break down. Here's a, here's the theory of what was happening. That's great. Yeah. But it's more important that you are honestly getting the inflection, the articulation. Yeah. The swing feel. The vibe of Red Garland. The sound of Red Garland, right? And to live in his world for a little bit as you're learning the solo. That's what transcription is to me. That's the most important part about it. And then what he's playing is interesting. It can maybe help you to recreate some things, but I don't think it's the most important thing.

So I will say, Anonymous, that just viving with a record, playing along and I'll add, mimicking the vibe, mimicking what's happening, like seeing if you can be a good mimic is can be incredibly useful. You know, I haven't actually transcribed a ton of Bill Evans, right? I think I did Beautiful Love. I did a solo and Beautiful Love when I was a kid, a teenager. but I just made this short where I could recreate,

kind of recreate how he sounded on Israel, right? Because I know the kind of what, I've mimicked him enough that I know how to get that sound. Even though I'm not transcribed to solo in Israel, I can kind of fake it, like how, you know, what's going on there and... But you've listened to it a lot.

That's the point, Peter. It's like you deep listen to it. You really focus in on it. What are the, what makes this sound like Bill Evans? What makes this sound like McCoy-Tiner? what are the, even if you don't get exactly all the notes, which can be helpful, but even if you don't do that, just, you know, making these decisions, I'm going to see if I can really try to, you know, figure out what are the key components to their playing. Yeah. Yeah. Now, that's so great. I mean, it's making me think now a whole other way of looking at transcribing or, you know, we'll talk about learning a solo a lot, but for the sake of this way, it's really interchangeable. But it's like, it's as much, it's not more, I think about learning and breaking down. the story that a solo represents than it is the theory or the fingering or the articulation. It's like, you know, by transcribing it, you're learning all that for that instrument, you know,

or like say if you're learning a trumpet soul on the piano, like how to sort of transfer it here. But I think about it as like you might drive in a car that you enjoy a lot every day and like you really know the car. But like, have you ever, you know, looked onto the hood, opened up the hood and looked what's in there? Like that's what transcribing is. It's not just, so like, if you just listen to Bill Evans over and over again, but you never look under the hood, which I think the equivalent is applying it to the piano, if not every single note, transcribing every single note, at least like, wait, how does he do that? How does that, like, what's his concept? Yeah, what's under, and then like you're looking around and understanding. So like the theory or the analysis would be like, well, the carburetor relates to the spark. Wait, do those exist anymore? Carburetor? I think they do. Yeah, they still get stolen in my neighbor.

So yeah. But I mean, like to understand the theory is like you can appreciate how the engine is put together why this goes to that, the beauty of it, like the story of the people that created this and everything. Or you can just never open the thing and just be entertained by, you know, the usefulness of the vehicle. He was just a passenger at that point. But it's like learning the solo puts you in the driver's seat, but puts you, it's like

the mechanic understands the theory to all that, right? And so we, depending on, it's just like anything alive, you can take it as far as you want, but it's not like, do I need to do this or whatever? Well, how good do you want to be? Yeah. Like how much do you want to be able to understand not? See, this is where I think people get tripped up and they can kind of convince themselves out of having to do some hard work. Yeah. They're like, well, I don't want to sound like Bill Evans. I love Bill Evans, but I want to be myself. And so they think that if you really go deep and you learn how to play like Bill Evans through learning a solo, first of all, you're not really going to learn how to play. No, like it because you're

never going to sound like that. You're taking out that, yeah, you might be. You might be. able to have little techniques that you can use, but you're taking out that storytelling component of like how the creation of that. That's right. But we, but we talk about like what are you actually getting out of that process of learning? It's not to just be able to ever play that solo, but it's to be able to understand how he constructed that, that solo. Yes, it's to be able to understand how a voicing worked over specific chords. You get all these ancillary kind of benefits from that. But it's like to look under the hood and be like, oh, that's connected to this because this and that's why it works. And on this Mercedes, they always do it,

to the side because it gives that cool sound or efficient you know it starts to get fun because the story of it is revealed to you so the deeper you go on these things the more benefit you're going to have so i would always caution people when they're like do i have to do this or can i just do this do both yeah do you know you're not going to go deeper and deeper yeah and there's some sort of like lack of benefit or you're going to you're only going to get more now we can't go deep on everybody and that's what's cool about like getting your favorites or or new discoveries like bill evans is somebody that i've been getting into more, you know, recently that I had learned some, I had transcribe some of solos, but I never had like the depth of understanding. So like you'll go through seasons of like,

totally. Oh, I want to check this out or whatever. But go deep. Go as deep as you can. Go as deep as you can. And then there's, there's another gear to that too, which is like the, you know, when you go deep like that, it's almost like you could think of it as as another analogy might be an actor, right? A lot of great actors are really good mimics. And then it's not like when they act, they're just, I'm just doing my Robert De Niro impression or whatever, but they have all of the people that are their influences, right? They know what makes those people, at least on a, you know, a superficial level to a deeper and deeper level, depending on how deep you go on that other artist, they know what makes them, and they're sort of this amalgamation of all of their influences.

And it's the same way with music as well. So it's like, you know, again, I've only transcribed that one Bill Evans solo, but I've really listened intently on what, makes Bill Bill. I've done a lot of playing along with some of those records. And it's not like I'm out there trying to sound like Bill Evans and using all that stuff in my playing. But it is one of those things that will come out. And I'll even notice it. And I mean, it's with Bill Evans. It's with McCoy Tyner. It's with Herbie Hancock. It's with Brad Meldow. It's with all of these pianists with you. All these pianists that I've listened to a ton come out in my playing because I've spent that time being like deep listening. What makes Peter Martin, Peter Martin?

what's the Peterisms, what's the Bradisms, what are the Herbieisms, right? And then if you really want to go on a deeper dive, if you have the time and the energy, and you really want to hone your ear, try to transcribe. And that doesn't mean you have to transcribe everything that Herbie's ever played or even a whole solo. You can just take it one phrase at a time. You know, take it one phrase. Find the phrase you like. If you're just starting, what's your favorite phrase on Herbie's one finger snap solo? Can you figure that out? If you can figure it out, you are a transcriber. And if you can do that, you can build on that. And it gets easier. On our transcription club at Open Studio Pro, the people that have been doing it regularly for now over two years are getting insanely fast in transcribing. Like they're, they can do it. No, Noriko can transcribe anything at this point. Chela can transcribe. I mean, like they're so good. Yeah. And it's fun, too. It's like its own little skill that a lot of people enjoy just on its own anyway. And I would, I'm not, I'm not trying to speak for them, but I don't think that they would be able to do that without that regular work that we've done in that class.

Well, because the sort of side benefits, and I mentioned, are so, like, in terms of actual tactical, musical skills, I always think that that's the most important part. I know I'm talking about still learn how to tell a story like Bill Evans, learn how to tell a story like Herbie Hancock on All of You from My Funny Valter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that's an amazing thing. But it's also, like, learn how to, you know, put your hands in the position of a Thelonious Monk voicing that you'd never actually had the technique because you never, like, and then it's like, whoa, I love that sound. and like how do you make that comfortable? How do you finger it? Like those kind of things are so much like when you have the musical placement for them

in the context to be able to learn it as part of a story as part of a soul that's so invaluable or like you have to learn a Miles Davis line. And maybe it's like, oh, it's so simple and beautiful. But then when you play it on a piano, it's like, wow, it doesn't have the simplicity of the finger and you have to work out a finger. What a great technical exercise. go through. Yeah.

So it's like the musical, the technical, the ear training to be able to find the notes. That's what I was going to say. Sort of then there's this big picture training that happens, the more you do this. Yeah. Which is you're really doing big time ear training. Right. And so think about this. That's kind of the most important.

It is kind of the most important. Because it actually is practical when you're performing to have that kind of ear training, when you're able to hear things and understand where they fit. And then like, it helps if you ever want to do any arranging or orchestration. You know, then you can go to records you like and see if you can figure that out. the arrangement, the orchestration, from the big picture to the small details, your ear gets better and better and better. And then all of the world of music starts to open itself up.

The colors become more vivid. You're able to see fine lines between stuff or hear fine lines between stuff easier, and you learn at an accelerated rate. It really is exponential. The more you work on your ears, the faster you develop. Yeah, so great. And I mean, it's like, it's kind of the ultimate reverse engineering of the improvisation process, the improvisational process.

Yeah. Right? It's like, how do you create something from nothing? Well, it's like, look at something that has been created from nothing and back channel that and learn how that was put together so that your ears become attuned to the same types of skills that you would need to have. Connection with your technique, connection with the story, connection with the context, connection with the rhythm, you know, whatever else is going on these recordings.

It's like the ultimate reverse engineering of how to become a great improviser. Totally. Well, Anonymous, even though you didn't leave a name, you left the impression. You're a little salty about that. I like that. No, it's all good. You don't have to... Hey, listen, you can leave us a speak pipe. You can go to You'll hear it.com and leave us a voicemail.

Yeah. And you can leave it anonymously, as we've just seen. You know, he might have done it by accident. It might not be a way to put your name. We don't know these things. We actually just hear to answer questions. And then if you're watching on YouTube, we do have something called the gala, which stands for the gentleman and ladies agreement.

And it has a theme song. How's that go? Yeah. Keep talking about it. The gala is our. agreement with you is we make this podcast for free. And we put it up on YouTube for free. I'm going to the gala.

Oh boy, he's going to sing. And then all we ask... All we ask is that you do what? It's like we're in an improv troupe. All we ask is that you like and subscribe and leave a comment. Just gala or agreement adhered to going to the gala. We're going to the gala. You better be there.

Until next time. Till next time. You'll hear it. I'm out of practice, man.