Transcribing

This evening I hit a pretty neat goal. I'm now halfway through transcribing Wes Montgomery's famous 4-minute solo on "West Coast Blues". I've been doing one chorus at a time; the first chorus took me four hours, but it had been a long time since I'd transcribed anything; the second chorus took three hours, as I was getting better; the third and fourth both took about two hours each.

I'm leaving several days up to a week in between transcribing each part so that I have enough time to play through everything I have up until that point, so that I'm learning it, not just writing it down. It's a challenge for me, because I'm also trying to master reading sheet music for guitar. I'm not adding tab to the transcription, but I also end up cheating given time because most of it is committed to memory after a certain point. To help in this area, I also like to flip to random songs with easy melodies and sight-read them.

I remembered that Windows Media Player can play back at 90%, 80%, and even 70% speed on the fly and still maintain a somewhat decent sound, and that helped immensely with the third and fourth choruses. I sequenced an accompaniment track in Reason (took about two hours), so I can play along with some rather uninspiring bass, piano, and drums. This is giving me really great control over tempo for when I'm just running through what I've already got, over and over again.

Beyond all this, though, I know my ear is getting better. They say transcribing solos is the best way to learn jazz, and it's pretty clear why that's true. Unfortunately, I've come to a point in the solo where it's about to get a lot harder. The fifth and sixth choruses are all parallel octaves, the sound he's famous for; the seventh and eighth are all block chords, also his trademark. I guess parallel octaves won't be too great of an increase in difficulty, but it's amazing how he's absolutely no less fluent and graceful when he's playing in octaves. The block chords, though, will be something of an issue.

There's a part of me that's going "hey, maybe you should pick another solo for your first jazz transcription ever" and, you know, that may be partially right. But I'm halfway done, and I'm really enjoying this, and I picked this solo because I loved it every time I heard it, and I'm not ready to give up. Yet. Maybe I'll change my mind when I get to those block chords.