Hi I'm Jamie Anderson, welcome to Get Your Sax Together! This video is part
two of my series on transcription. In part one we learned the process to get
the best out of transcribing a solo. In this part we're going to run it through
in practical terms. I've got a really simple solo lined up - I'm going to show
you all the steps in practice. Let's do it!
This free sax lesson follows on from
part one on transcribing so make sure you go and follow the link to find part
1 if you haven't already watched it. There's a great PDF that you'll find
linked down in the description to accompany this lesson and, as always,
if you enjoy what you see please do subscribe and ring the notifications bell.
So what we're going to do in this video is I'm going to take you through
the eight steps of transcription with a very simple easy example that I've put
together myself. Normally you would find a famous solo that you like but I've
just done a simple 4 bar phrase to demonstrate this process. So, to recap
from the first part of the video, that eight stages of the transcription
process, are... number one: choose your material. Number two: listen to it loads
and get to know it really well. Number three: sing along until you can
sing it perfectly. Number four: learn the notes. Number five: copying the sound and
phrasing exactly. Number six: write it down. I say pen, it might be on
the computer. Number seven: analyze what you've done.
Number eight: practice to incorporate what you've learned.
Let's start with
part one - choose your material well. Normally I would choose something which
is really going to help me grow as a musician and something that I absolutely
love. In this case I've chosen a little four bar phrase with a short jazz
chord sequence just to demonstrate this process, so that's number one done.
Number two - listen to the material. So let's have a listen...
[alto sax jazz plays]
Really simple. Just a four-bar alto sax jazz phrase. So we've done part one, which
is choosing, we've done part 2, which is listening, I've been listening to it a lot.
Part 3 is singing along, so... [scat sings]
One more time... [scat sings]
Just sing it in whatever range suits you basically. I'm such a bad singer! But it
doesn't really matter how good you are singing this to process that matters. And
then what you should be able to do is sing the whole thing without the music
so in this case it's, four, one... [scat sings]
Okay, Stage four of the process, which is learning the notes. Now obviously this is
a little bit fake because I just wrote this for this video but I'll pretend to
learn it, so here we go...
Right, I'll do that bit [ gradually figures out the notes]...
Yay! so now I've got the notes, let's move on to stage five now, which is the
phrasing. This part of the process involves copying every nuance and
inflection of the person that you're transcribing, so let's have a listen.
obviously this is phenomenally easy for me because it's me playing lol
Go back to the start... [jazz plays]
So [scats] - a little lean on that second, on that third note.
so I don't go... [plays it wrong]...I go...
I need to copy that Bend. Bit of vibrato on the end. so let's try it on
this example there are two clicks into it...
So part six is writing down what you've learned. Now, you can either write it down
by hand with a pen and paper or you can use music notation software which is
what I now do, Sibelius or something else like that. Now, I'm not going to do
that now, sat here, so if you go down to the description find the link
and get the free pdf you'll find the music for this example written out which I've already done.
Part seven, which is analyzing the music, is really really valuable and important.
Once you've got your free pdf I've written some things in there to help you
analyze this little four bars of music, but I'm going to skim through it really
quickly. So first of all we've got the chords, and I'm talking in alto sax pitch
at the moment, we've got Cmaj7 - F7 - Em7 - A7b9 -
and then a two five one Dm7 - G7 - C. I know I'm skimming through this very
quickly, but to cut to the chase what I can hear in that line is there's a pivot
point at the top which is the G which happens twice and then beneath it
there's a moving line with B...the fifth of a minor seven, Bb... the flat 9 of A7
..then A, which is the Dm7. So having analyzed it now I can see how the line
moves through that chord sequence.
And finally part eight is to practice what
you've learned from analyzing it and incorporate it into your own playing. So
very quickly then what have we learned from this solo? Well one thing I could
practice based on this is to learn how guide tones move through chord sequences.
In this case you've got that B-Bb-A line and I can practice three six two
fives in every key with the moving guide tones going from 5 to 9 to 5 to
9 to 5 to 9. Might be a flat nine in the dominant chord. So that's one
way of practicing. Another way is to look at the structure of the solo and I've
got a pivot note at the top and in this case it's a G, and then a moving guide tone
beneath, so maybe I could play over this chord sequence again except
have B at the top as a pivot note - I then have another moving line beneath it.
let's have a go at improvising using the same theory as the original...
So this is a very brief youtube video and I can't go into all the analytical points that I've
made but I just want to show that you need to take something from the solo
you've learned - analyze it, practice it and bring it into your own playing.
Alright, really hope you enjoyed the lesson today.
There's a wonderful PDF down there linked in the description if you haven't
got it already I would highly recommend doing that that's really useful and as
always please do ring the notifications bow and subscribe to the channel if you
enjoy what you're seeing. Make sure you check out the other parts of the
transcription video and I'll be back with part 3 which is a fiendish bit of
Michael Brecker to really wrestle with! So I'll see you then!