How to get the gig....

I finally picked up the Diana Krall ?Live in Paris? DVD with the great Jeff Hamilton on drums. Great disc! At one point Diana mentioned that when she was in high school, she would transcribe the tunes off of the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra recordings. And there she is, playing and singing with both Clayton and Hamilton in the rhythm section.

In a recent Down Beat magazine, in an article about Chick and the Elektric Band, Weckl mentions that when he was young he studied Gadd on the recordings with Chick, not only that, Ric the bass player said that when he was younger, he studied all of those early Weckl recordings!

What have you guys been transcribing?
What have you been playing along to?

Transcribing is such a great way to learn. Not only do you figure out what they're playing- you also sharpen your reading and writing skills as well.

Most of my transcribing/dissecting has been about grooves instead of complete parts..."funky drummer", "higher love", "late in the evening"...stuff like that.

I'm kinda at the point now where I can recognize certain sticking patterns or licks after a few repeated listenings- which is all I want. I guess if I was teaching, I would probably transcribe more. It's great for that...

Timbata on HOD is an incredible transcriber- one of the best...Keith Carlock and Sean Rickman aren't easy to transcribe...

A piano playing friend of mine talks about transcribing and by that, he means actually learning or getting a solo down, without necessarily notating it. As long as you are studying and working out what has been played, then I guess that's as good as notating it, although you won't necessarily remember it later!

As far as playing along to stuff, when one of my students fails to turn up I have a bloody good knock! Today I was playing along to loads of stuff: Chick Corea, Nik Kershaw, Keith Jarrett, Patitucci's first album.

There's no substitute for studying and copying your favourite players, despite what some people might say. If loads of us played exactly the same part, we will all still retain our own personality and voice, just by the very nature of being human. Stealing the odd lick, groove or whatever is healthy as long as we put a bit of 'us' in there!

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From an MD interview posted on Ari's site:

"I realized what I really needed to do at that point was listen to a whole bunch of different music and immerse myself in it, as well as play along to it. And I did that to everything from Tower Of Power to Oscar Peterson to Thelonious Monk records. I just went through all the stuff that people told me to check out that I hadn?t really gotten into up to that point. In everything I found something that improved my playing, something that I could take mental or physical notes from.

I would play along to these records over and over, maybe playing along to the same record every day for a week. I learned so much from doing that. It was a process of really getting to know how music works and how interaction works in all kinds of different settings?jazz, R&B, funk, and any kind of music I wanted to play.

The result of that was, when I would do a session, I?d have all of these different ideas to draw from. Depending on what the other guys were playing, I could somehow relate it in my head to other things and easily find something that complemented it. Of course, this is all in a subconscious way. It?s not what I?m actually thinking when I?m playing."

And from his bio:

"Since 1996, Ari has appeared on nearly sixty recordings as a sideman and three as a leader."

Quote:

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Originally posted by Andy Vermiglio:
From an MD interview posted on Ari's site:

"I realized what I really needed to do at that point was listen to a whole bunch of different music and immerse myself in it, as well as play along to it. And I did that to everything from Tower Of Power to Oscar Peterson to Thelonious Monk records. I just went through all the stuff that people told me to check out that I hadn?t really gotten into up to that point. In everything I found something that improved my playing, something that I could take mental or physical notes from.

I would play along to these records over and over, maybe playing along to the same record every day for a week. I learned so much from doing that. It was a process of really getting to know how music works and how interaction works in all kinds of different settings?jazz, R&B, funk, and any kind of music I wanted to play.

The result of that was, when I would do a session, I?d have all of these different ideas to draw from. Depending on what the other guys were playing, I could somehow relate it in my head to other things and easily find something that complemented it. Of course, this is all in a subconscious way. It?s not what I?m actually thinking when I?m playing."

And from his bio:

"Since 1996, Ari has appeared on nearly sixty recordings as a sideman and three as a leader."

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To me, this is a more productive and efficient method of practice than transcribing. I've transcribed parts before (never an entire song), but for the most part I don't think it's an efficient use of time. And I rarely have the patience to do it.