You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Are You Listening for When You Transcribe?

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Where do you start when you decide to tackle transcribing a tune? Peter and Adam walk you through how they do it.* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, what's up, Adam? You got any noodles in you today? I got noodles. I got noodles for days. You got any poodles in you? Oh, yeah. I'm Adam Anas.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music, advice, and inspiration. Coming at you. Coming at you. Today is sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com for all of your jazz lesson needs. Peter, we've got a plethora of speak pipes this week.

I know. We opened up the flood. I know. It's actually great to hear from you all again. It is. So if you want to leave us a voice message, you can go to you'll hear.com. You can leave us a message right there in our speakpipe. And you might get your question answered here on the show, just like Jake here from Austin, Texas. What up, Jake.

Adam. Peter, poodles. Whoa. This is Jake and Austin. Quick question for you guys. When you sit down to transcribe a song, are you thinking harmony, melody, first, really just depend on the tune. I know I have a problem picking out the chords underneath the melody oftentimes. Originally a bass player, kind of switched to piano three years ago,

two, three years ago, avid listener of the podcast and big-time consumer of the courses, even make my kids watch them. I've a 10-year-old aspiring pianist who's probably much better than I am. And a 12-year-old trumpet player and got both the Sean Jones courses for him. So thanks for all you guys do and look forward to, you know, sending you shouts out from Austin. Peace. Nice. We love Austin, Jake. And thanks so much for all the support. Glad your kids are in on the courses as well. I love it when the whole family is in on the open studio courses. A family that practices jazz together loves together. That's right. I think I heard a kid practicing in the background if you go back right at the beginning.

That's great, man. Also, a little familiarity from Jake with the poodles, man. You really thrust that poodles on us. Yeah, but you know, you don't get to pick your own nicknames, Peter. That's true. I should start poodling and noodling. Wait, where did poodles come from? Well, it came from noodles.

People started calling you noodles, and you really embraced noodles. But then someone on one of our YouTube lives started calling you poodles. Oh, I think it's Peter and noodles. Yeah. Well, I got to always noodle when I'm hearing this. I love it. Everybody loves the noodles. This is dual noodles.

Doodles. That would be something you might be interested in. Yes, very much. Thanks so much. So, Jake, to your question about what are we listening for when we transcribe, we've talked a lot about transcription here at Open Studio. And, you know, first of all, I have to say, no matter what you feel like you're doing with transcription, any transcription is good transcripts. So whatever you're trying to figure out, even if you're having a hard time with harmony. Well, hold on.

Any transcription is. Well, I mean, just the time put in. It's like just showing up to it is sort of like a win, right? So it's great that you're doing that no matter what. But some is better than others. Some is better than others. Or more productive. So I'm just curious, Peter, when you sit down to learn, and we say transcription, that really implies writing.

And I don't know about you. I don't really write at all. No, anybody got time for that. Yeah, yeah. We're just learning the music off of the records. Learning it by ear. I don't know why it became the vernacular really focusing on transcribing. But I think we all can agree that we're going to use that.

correctly. That's right. Yeah, yeah, which is fine. So when you sit down to learn a solo by ear,

are you, are, how, what's your process like for like, what are you listening for? Because it's hard for us, Jake, because at a certain point,

you just kind of like understand that, oh, here's the harmony, here's the color palette of what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. So I think,

you know, I definitely went through a period and I probably still do sometimes where I'm hearing from the bottom up. Now, this would depend on the kind of, like,

obviously, if you're, if you're transcribing a saxophone solo, like just that part, and you know the tune, then you're kind of focusing in on the melody, the single line. But if you're really trying to learn the whole thing, like say, learn the tune first,

which is a great way, you know, great thing to do. It's a great way to learn a tune. It's a great way to learn a tune. Totally. Then I love the sort of bottom-up approach, and especially Jake, since you say you are a former bass player. And look, if you're a one-time baseball, you're always a bass player.

That's right. Come on. If you like to gig, that is. I mean, if you're a piano player, you're kind of a bass player sometimes. Exactly, exactly. But I like to try to hear the structure of the tune. Now, again, this does depend on the type of tune.

This doesn't work for all types, but I would say a majority of. If you start to hear the root movement, the foundational root movement first, and then hear the harmony and possibly even the melody on top first, and then like the harmony in the middle last, I think is a really valuable way. And like this especially works good if it's a, if it's a, something, a recording that you've listened to a lot, which we always highly recommend that you really know it before you dig into it, sit down at the piano or the bass or whatever and try to actually figure it out. It's just to listen to it a lot. And then to go through that

process of like really knowing what it sounds like, but then start to move into the territory before you're even at the piano of like, wait a second, what can I identify in there? Maybe you don't have perfect pitch. That's okay. But maybe you're like, I think I'm pretty sure that's G and you start thinking about and that's a, you know, it might just be one thing that you can identify, but try to find something to hold on to. But then I would say really going from the bottom up is where I like to start. So I'm going to go, I'm going to push back on that a little bit. And I'd say bottom, yes, but straight up from the bottom, maybe not.

I like to go from the outside in. Yes. Well, that's kind of what I was saying. No, so the bottom and the top. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. And then the inside harmony. And then the, yeah, exactly. So like if you were doing something like Donnelly, right?

So if I'm playing this line and we get to this. Okay, there's an F in the bass. Yeah. I'm like, well, what is that? If I look at all these notes, right? I'm like, well, that's definitely not an F major seven. There's an E flat in there. It's not a minor seven because there's a A natural.

It's probably an F7 as the harmony. Yeah, kind of outlining the harmony. It's kind of outlining the harmony. So you don't even actually have to hear the chord to really figure out. Right. And these are the kinds of things that you can start to hear a little bit, even before you get to the, like, these are the kind of things in the melody you could start to hear

as you're listening to it. I mean, even the very next part of the B flat 7, if I analyze that, I'm like, oh, that's just a B-flat-9 chord. Especially if you're hearing that B-flat. If you don't hear that, it might be like a D-de-minant, half-diminished. So I would say going from the outside. Or an F-minor. The bottom-up is Peter said, getting the baseline, and then just kind of like when you're on a particular chord or a bass note, particular bar, and you just notice what is in the melody compared to the bass.

Sometimes the clues are all there. well that's probably a B flat 7 B like 9 chord you know that's the best way I think to go about finding the harmony another thing I would just add too is like you know top bottom and top and then the middle last

bottom up these are great strategies but there's also like this is all kind of what's happening vertically in the music yeah like you want to think about the overall structure of the tune and like this is something that you'll be rewarded for really listening to it a lot you want to start

thinking about the form. Now you don't have to be like oh is this a sonata allegro form that doesn't matter yeah yeah but ABA blues rhythm change like you can kind of do process of elimination if you can kind of get an idea for the structure I find that that helps once you go in and do the dirty work

the nitty gritty yeah of having to just sort of guess it some notes sometimes at least you know structurally where it fits in because you still want to learn like the most efficient way to learn something by ear to transcribe it if you will is to break it up into musical chunks, chunks that makes sense

artistically. So that's not going to be note by note or measure by measure. It's going to be phrase by phrase. Well, and Jake, it seems like you play a lot of instruments. If you ever play the drums and you thought about learning a tune Peter, it's funny when drummers talk about tunes because they'll be like, they're not like, what's the changes? Because they don't know them. They don't know.

No, but they're like, what is it? 32 bars? And then if you're like, well, it's 34 bars, then they do crazy stuff like, so it's like 8, 8, 8, right. All of a sudden they become math wizards. Yeah, exactly. No, but it, but they couldn't graduate high school, but they know math somehow. But for them, but this is an important lesson, though. For them, that's an important thing to know, right?

How to where, like you said, like knowing the form, what are the sections? Yeah. What do I need to do? That also can help you inform, like, what are the chord changes? Because if you know, it's like an 8 bar A section, you know, for me, and depending on what era of music we're talking about, that's going to tell me kind of what's happening at the, at least at the top and the bottom. Yeah.

Like, it's going to help me sort of decide like, oh, okay. like so if it's a 32 bar a b a i know at the end of that second a we're probably like ending the phrase on bar of seven of that on the one and it's likely going to the four or up a major third or somewhere like that you know all of those are clues that you can get it's kind of like looking at a map and we talk about the roadmap of a tune you know it's like looking at that a little bit advanced starting to plot that out as opposed to just jumping out on your hike or your drive totally you know it's a little bit like you don't have to to know you're not going to be able to know every twist and turn and but it's beyond just knowing what your destination is it's kind of knowing the approximate length and then you're filling in some stuff and look i mean sometimes especially as you're learning to do like this is something that you will get better at the more that you do like it it becomes simple i think part of our hesitancy at the beginning is now we're typically able to jump in and kind of get all this stuff at once a little bit i mean not like we can instantly hear it but we don't necessarily have to just do the

root movement. You know, like we can kind of start. Totally. You know, just experience. You kind of know what to expect. But the way that you can get to that is to build up your skills. So sometimes that means like identifying a part of the tune that's maybe a little bit easier to transcribe. That's maybe the bridge. Like if the bridge is super simple, but the A sections are really hard. Learn the bridge first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because then you've got those going and you got your juices flowing and you've already heard the whole tune. So when you go back to the A, I used to do this. I learned that really from practicing classical music.

Most people are like, okay, I'm going to learn it from the beginning to the end. But with classical music, it's kind of the reverse of this thing. You have to, especially when you get more advanced, you need to be practicing the really technically difficult and musically difficult parts more. So you really have to start there. It's a painful thing because it's like, you know. And sometimes that is at the beginning or it could be anywhere. It's humbling. Yeah.

It is humbling. I did, you know, I don't do very much like written classical music, but I did one of those, that tut sweet. know, Claude bowling. And, you know, most of it is totally readable and very easy, even for like a lame jazz musician like me. But there are a couple spots where I was like, oh, boy, this is going to be in my next few weeks. Yeah, yeah. It's just like waking up, working on this eight bar phrase, waking up, waking up, waking on

this eight bar phrase. Yeah. Jake, great question. And, man, it's so great to talk about love transcribing, always willing to go down that road. Again, leave us to speak pipe. Please, if you want to get your question in. Okay. Hey Peter, speaking of transcribing, you know, we are very close to launching a brand new course called Language of the Masters.

This is going to be one of my favorites. I know I've said that before, but this really is. Did we have fun making that? Oh, my gosh, did we have fun making that? And it's also like, we were just talking about how like transcribing isn't writing down anything. However, on this course, there's a lot of writing. We have everything beautifully written down by her in-house transcriber Mexicans. and we just picked five of our favorite solos on the blues. Witton Kelly on No Blues, Thelonious Monk on Bags Groove, Oscar Peterson on Sea Jam, Blues, Chick-Corea on Matrix and Herbie Hancock on Eye of the Hurricane.

I'm smiling again, just thinking about it. Hold on. Would that be something in my business? Yes. I think so, yeah. We've had all those solos fully transcribed. Peter and I break it down for you. You'll hear it style almost. Yeah. And then I do 10 guided practice sessions all on each one of these solos and some different concepts. increasing concepts, line concepts.

It's really, you know, sometimes around here at Open Studio, we get to do different things, and I'm so proud that this is like a unique thing that we do. And we did it together. We're back together. We haven't done a course together in quite some time. It's been a while. Back by popular demand of us. Look for that. If you're an Open Studio member on your dashboard in the next week or so, Peter, what's a dashboard? And how do you get one? Well, you might want to look into something called the piano access pass.

Go to Open StudioJazz.com and follow where it says, become a member. And this is a great way to experience all of our courses. You don't have to watch them all in one day. Yeah. But at a really reasonable membership price, you can peruse things

without having to buy it. You can buy them individually, no problem. Yeah. But this is a great way if you like to kind of sample some things and make sure it's right for you. But yeah,

you'll get access to Language of the Masters as soon as it drops. Actually, you get priority access as a member. That's right. Yeah, you get it before anyone else. Cool. That's a pianoxist pass. Go to openstudiojazz.com to learn more.

Yep. All right, Peter. That pretty much. much that does it for today. That's right. So please keep the speak pipes coming to us. And if you get a chance, leave us, you know what? Even if you don't get a chance.

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