Why We Transcribe

This week's blogging concerns the nature of transcription, a practice jazz musicians have incorporated since fairly early into the history of the music and something that can be an

invaluable tool for developing and internalizing vocabulary as well as ear training.

"Taking off solos", as I originally heard it referred, means learning a jazz improvised solo note for note and being able to reproduce it on your instrument. Describing how I learned this brings up one of the great unfortunate truths about jazz and learning about jazz - the racial schism that permeates virtually all of its history. You can't tackle jazz without running headlong into race in America and the cultural differences between those that created it (African-Americans) and those that appreciated it and wanted to learn it, but came from another culture (ie: white people). Among the risks of even going near this is - and they are numerous - is the very real chance that you will over-generalize an incredibly nuanced topic, but with that being said, I think I'm on fairly safe ground in stating that various historians of jazz will point out quite fairly that jazz came from an oral tradition and then often became subsumed by a culture, and an academic community, based on a written tradition. That, by itself, is an important disconnect and something not lost on African-American musicians. You can also argue that that, by itself, has led to the current jazz scene that sounds more like an exercise in game theory than a music reflecting a lived experience.

Why do I mention this? Because when I was told of the importance of learning solos it was stressed in no uncertain terms by my teachers, who were predominantly African-American in regards to this practice, that the last thing you should do... is write down the solos! This defeated the purpose! Jazz was an oral tradition... not something that could be truly be learned via conservatory methods. Jazz had to be lived as well as played - it wasn't an abstract idea... Wow! I guess things sure have changed, huh?

So... Although I learned solos the old-fashioned way (without writing them down) which I think does very much have the desired effect of making you much more in touch with the original solo, because it becomes more than simply a harmonic exercise - you're also forced to internalize all sorts stylistic traits too, I did end up writing down a ton of solos as well. I hadn't done this for some time when a few years back, I decided to start doing them again and the positive benefits were immediately noticeable - it just forces you to sharpen up various aspects of your playing. One of the reasons I started doing them is because I saw all sorts of players doing them on Instagram - often short excerpts of some solo they had learned. It was cool to see the variety of stuff being performed and internalized.

Naturally, at first, people tend to learn solos by people that play their instrument - there's nothing like learning what the master's of your instrument actually did. All sorts of tricks and techniques become revealed by this sort of study and for a lot of people, that's what transcribing is: it's about learning the particulars of your instrument although there is a bigger goal. Eventually after some time, if you internalize enough stuff, you start to find that you sort of regurgitate some of it in your own improvisations. No, you don't play things note for note, but ideas that are very similar... start to feel natural and just come out... this happens in very much in the same ways that humans learn to speak. It's just call and response, kids... This is the true gift of transcribing - you eventually build up enough music in your head so that you reach a sort of critical mass and it all starts spilling out of you... and you sound great, and authentic, as a result.

Of course, just when you thought you've plumbed the depths of the transcribing... there's more! In a need for greater and greater challenges many people transcribe material NOT originally played on their instrument. This really ups the ante and that's because things that are easily playable on one instrument... simply are near impossible on another. Trumpet players struggle with tenor sax solos, bass players struggle with solos by horn players... this goes on and on. This is when you learn the term "idiomatic" - things that work in one area... don't necessarily translate easily to another. Composers and arrangers have known this forever and it's a part of their training - they learn straight from the get-go that there are lines you write for a violin that you'd never write for a trumpet.

With that in mind, I've started doing some transcriptions the past year or so on things never played originally on trumpet or flugelhorn (my instruments). They are an incredible challenge. Above you'll see my transcription, (I wrote it down) of Larry Carlton's great solo on Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne". In this case I decided to not only tackle a hard solo (which I considered next to impossible ) on the flugel, it's also not even a jazz solo - just a great bit of playing over some pop/rock that borrowed heavily from jazz (but who's keeping track anymore?). Let's see how that went.

I've gotten all sorts of kind words from various trumpet playing and otherwise musical people, but... this is hardly perfect and the truth is I may very well have bitten off more than I could comfortably chew with this one. For one thing, it took me some moons to get this together enough so that I could play it at tempo. This is one of those solos that just "doesn't lay well on the horn" as trumpet players like to say when something is just impossible. A lot of things make this a bear on the trumpet/flugel. For instance, trumpet players are used to certain valve combinations that are common and make changing from note to note easier. When we're suddenly playing things... that you'd ordinarily never play on one of these things... that can be tough. If you now need to do these unorthodox things at a fairly quick tempos... that too can be an issue! There is also an extended section in the middle/upper range of the instrument - most players would spend some time up there, but maybe not quite as long as you need to do on this one. And then... there are very few places to breathe and virtually no breaks, because... you don't have those concerns on a guitar (back to the idiomatic thing)! So, the above is far from spot on and if I was going to actually record something like this I would probably do so in a couple of different sections, which is what I think happened in the original recording. Trying to do this... as a one take... is really tough. When I did it, the music was on the computer monitor in front of me for reference and I recorded into my studio mic here and I'm wearing the headphones so I could hear the track I was playing to. I added a little reverb and that was about it. I did seven takes and I got two I could live with (I crashed and burned on the others) and with that... goodbye Larry Carlton and "Kid Charlemagne".

But don't let the rigors of this activity put you off - it's a reason to push yourself and what you can internalize all the more. The benefits are so numerous, not only as to what you can achieve on your instrument but also into the insight you get about how various other players conceived of improvisation as a whole. If you're an improvising musician it may be second only to being a constant listener in as far as to what you can do to become a better overall musician. If improvisation truly is like Zen, as Bill Evans theorized, than the fastest way to achieve an "artless art" - something in which technique disappears and expression is paramount - is to transcribe the stuff you already love and make it truly a part of you.

Reappraising One's Pursuit

I've been doing a lot of thinking, since... August, really.

"What's this got to do with anything? It's the Potala Palace in Lhasa!" Just go with - it'll make sense soon!

I got away with my family then, and it afforded me some time to start digging into the serious territory known as, "What am I doing, why and I doing it and does any of that... really reflect where my values are now?" That can be some fairly heavy sledding and although a few days of that would usually suffice... that's not the been case. The process hasn't really ended and one conclusion didn't wrap it up. I find myself realizing that the latest thing I've come to accept about my own artistic leanings simply leads to another series of questions. I think it will get resolved, but it does mean, quite happily I think, that I'm not in some rut nor will I be and what's undeniably clear is that the landscape has changed utterly.

I've alluded to this in previous posts - whether I'm finding myself leaning towards unabashed tonality or increasingly disillusioned with the worlds of jazz and classical music; genres that no longer represent an ethos I grew up loving - now so obsessed with technical perfection at any cost that saying something - anything - to anybody is an afterthought at best. I'd always thought of myself as in league with what those styles represented, but now... I think they've overthought their own purpose and in doing so have become inescapably lost. They've become closed societies and, when you get right down to it, they're really not anything of which I really want to be a part. Everything I'm about is essentially a threat to that whole scene at this point - they don't want free thinkers - they only want people to create (if you can call what they do creating) academically approved work within carefully prescribed rules. None of that sounds artistic to me. It sounds like craftsmanship, more accurately, and it sounds like pedantic impulses run amok. It's a shame because the current group of young musicians are superlatively talented and yet, the music they're producing is frequently something less than an empty gesture. And another thought has occurred to me - virtually none of the music that I have truly found memorable over the years has been a virtuosic showpiece - the sort of thing composed to spotlight technical achievement - nor are my favorite and most treasured moments usually played by monster players doing something borderline impossible on their instruments. As a musician, you marvel at the craft on display but... that's not what music is about. I mean... it never has been and... you know that. That's self-evident.

So... It's clear I'm not part of the current pedantic movement (which is great news actually) and in fact... I don't even support any of that anymore. So where does that leave me? Well, I think our creative impulses in the musical sense always comes down to where our sensitivities take us - to what it is that's moving us emotionally. That's the only question that really matters. what are you hearing... that moves you... and distracts you! In the end that's the job! Touching... people who are not musicians! Taking them someplace else... where they dream a bit and consider the possible. And although I'm a musical person, I, like all of us, have to remain active listeners. So, for me, the music that distracts can sometimes be things with an improvisational element, but often it's stuff that's simply minimal and anything but academic. It's safe to say that I'm more interested in a single note in which I can live within its resonance than a whole cascade signifying nothing other than... their numerical abundance. I'm listening to a lot of Arvo Part again. I like a lot of music by people doing what is called "classical crossover" which I think means it's essentially classical music... that's somewhat accessible. I like a lot of downtempo electronica - instrumental stuff that may have a groove but relies heavily an ambient influences, but all of it... seems to love a drone. One big gorgeous note. As a trumpet player, I play a lot of long tones (30 second long held notes as part of one's warmup and technical part of the day) and you know what that leads to? A deep appreciation of the beauty to be found in that one big gorgeous note.

Have you ever heard Tibetan music - particularly the trumpets? The big ones? The tromba??? Can you imagine them playing from the Potala Palace at dawn? Hey, maybe it's a lousy experience, but I bet it lives up to what our imaginations can conjure at our most dreamy and optimistic.

I guess what I'm getting at is if these are the sorts of things that are inspiring me... why aren't I doing that, or something that inspires me like that, instead of worrying about what's expected by a crowd that is never going to accept me anyway? Especially when I don't even need or want that approval. I suppose the answer, at least partially, is that there was a time when I would have lived and died for that sort of approbation and acceptance but that... since the early 90's, I've been watching jazz become irreparably lost and disconnected from what it was - from what drew me to it in the first place. The intense divisions within the music - the various schisms etc are fights I really don't care to take part in any more, especially since they solve, as far as I can tell, not much of anything.

I'll also openly admit that knowing what you don't want to be doing is only part of the answer - that that's not enough to have an artistic direction - an aversion is not, by itself, a direction. Something needs to be affirmed. You need to at least know generally where you want to be going. Well, I know what I'm hearing as I mentioned with the list of somewhat related styles above and I also know that I'll be making it within the production environment I can do at home which will rely heavily on things you can do with synths and samplers and the addition of my horns and voice.

So, that's a start, but I also think nobody gets anywhere by waiting until they have some sort of perfect plan worked out before they produce some work. The journey of discovery, by itself - is about not having it all worked out. That's also an important part of all this - the uncertainty keeps things vital. I'm reminded of a great quote by E. L. Doctorow when describing this uncertainty in the creative process in regards to writing. Doctorow said:

"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Yes! That's it, in large part! You don't have to have it all worked out - you only need to know what the next step is so that... you keep going down the road.

A New Tonality

One of the things musicians wrestle with, particularly if they compose music is the problem that... everything's been done. From the Age of Polyphony to Schoenberg (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 years) or in jazz from Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman (about 40), the harmonic palette has been explored to its utmost. You can argue that although music is essentially made up of three constituent parts, melody, harmony and rhythm, that it's the stretching of harmony to it's breaking point (that is to say the stretching of what the listener will accept and imbue with meaning) that has defined its progression more than anything else. Early in the 20th century the last harmonic boundaries were broken with the advent of the atonal and... we ran out of notes! There are only 12 after all and now... they had all been used up.

What to do? It was a crisis to a degree! Would everything now have to leave tonality behind to even be relevant any more? These were open questions in the early part of the 20th century and in many ways it brought things to a standstill. Plenty of tonal music kept getting written - much of it brilliant - but there was always a question lurking in the shadows regarding any new works - does it, any of it... matter? Sometimes it takes decades to come up with answers to these sorts of things and we're only just starting to get there now. Although there's nothing wrong with atonal music, it's fascination mainly lies in the world of musical theoreticians. Most people, even those who love classical music and have tried to make themselves like the avant-garde, often... can't! So, is atonal music a failure? No... it's just not a popular thing to listen to - it has it's place, but it doesn't really effect people all that much emotionally. And... that is a problem. You can make a very convincing argument that effecting people emotionally, distracting them and getting them to think and view things differently than they have previously... is the whole purpose of art. If a thing of theoretical interest can't do that... maybe it's just not all that important.

But if that's not the future... what is??? Minimalism? Well, it has definitely had its time and place, but that seems past now. Maybe, the avant-garde, minimalism or the various fusions of late romantic ideas with modern techniques really don't cut it either. It seems quite possible that none of those things are the next step, just stuff people were doing while the culture went its own way - which is to say away from all of those musical forms.

Maybe there is no next thing! Perhaps music will have to, and in fact already is, starting to learn that the art form itself has now reached a point, not terribly different from fashion, where all it can do... is reinterpret the past in a way as to make it relevant for the current consumer. What do I mean? Well, I don't claim to understand fashion like a fashionista or even close, but I think it's fair to say that there really aren't any more pants being invented. There's that and the human form isn't changing terribly - we aren't growing extra feet or heads so as to require new garments heretofore unimagined. No, we're pretty much stuck with ourselves as we are. And what does that really give fashion a chance to do? Not all that much when you get right down to it. They're at a point where they try something that hasn't been done for a while and see if it'll work with today's sensibilities. Hem lines go up and down... Ties get fat and skinny... It's almost a game they play for themselves while pumping out enough stuff for the masses to pay for their indulgences. Music already has lots of insular folks playing and trying to out-do each other at forms the general public could care less about. That's clearly not the answer either, but I think something along the lines of fashion, without the inward looking aspect, could be what music has lost and could lead to quite a renaissance.

So what would that sound like?

Well, I'm willing to accept the "terrible truth" that we've run out of notes. There's no getting around that. And I further understand that, like fashion, our job now will be to reinterpret what's happened before - that's the only originality really left - having the cultural awareness to be able to match up the zeitgeist of the moment with something from the past. If you do that right you can be relevant and impactful... to all sorts of people, not just an insular club... and it doesn't mean you have to sell out! Is there anybody doing that? Yeah, I do see little vestiges of what I'm talking about starting to take place. I hear techo/chillout/electronic music people that have another life as somewhat serious composers and the stuff they're writing (sometimes referred to as "classical crossover" by an industry to trying to figure out what the hell is going on) is tonal. It has more in common with Schumann and Chopin than it does with anything Schoenberg ever did.

I'm in the midst of writing a ton of new stuff and this direction is what I find hitting me - it's what I'm hearing and what I want to do. It's extremely simple and tonal but I think also effective. It borrows all sorts of modern techniques and wraps them around the simplest of forms. Although I refer it to as simple - and it is in many ways - I think it also reflects a world living in an information glut. The music can borrow from everything and everywhere because... we're all already doing that anyway. I also feel that tonal hits people in a way that nothing else really does - there's still a part of ourselves, that even today yearns for the romantic in the sense of Beethoven and Brahms - we hear that approach and innately feel it has a certain truth - and that's music at its most powerful. I've long since left the game of being a prognosticator, but I increasingly feel this is the inevitable direction it's all going to go and, on the whole, I think it's good news.