The Easy Way To Get Good At Music

look here's the truth there's an easy way to get good at music there's an easy way and you already probably know about it and you avoid it at all costs because in the back of your mind you think this is hard at first you might have even tried this easy way to get good at music a few times you may notice that something happens every time you try this we're talking about transcribing today what is it why do we need to do it how do we do it it is not going to be easy you're going to make loads of mistakes you're going to fail again and again it's going to feel hard it's not going to be as comfortable as playing in f blues for the 1 millionth time in the same old you play every time you do it but that's the beauty of it that's how we get good that's the easy way to get good and as we go on this journey together just keep in mind [Music] this video is sponsored by open studio go to openstudio jazz.com check out courses from yours truly as well as grades like fred hirsch peter martin jeffrey keyser shawn jones christian mcbride gregory hutchinson and many many more you've probably heard it again and again and again transcribe learn it from the record from experienced musicians from teachers there's a ton of youtube videos a lot of these are really good youtube videos about how to transcribe why to transcribe all of it's great even here at open studio we've made a ton of courses about transcription second part of your vocabulary will be transcribing today we're going to talk about transcribing the transcription process is extremely important transcribing solos is one of our favorite things to do as jazz artists you're going to have this beautiful transcription we've made a ton of youtube videos about transcription [Music] how to absorb what you transcribed do [Music] it can be overwhelming you go on social media you see what everybody else is transcribing you're like well i want to get in on it you've taken it about 45 seconds too far these are all great and we're not going to stop that because they're really really useful to analyze the music and to demonstrate and to explain what's going on beneath the surface but the people who are benefiting the most from all of these transcription videos are the folks who did the transcriptions now before we get too far into this let's talk about the word itself transcribe if you're playing black american music or really anything that's not western classical music transcribe doesn't necessarily mean to write out what you're doing to put thought speech or data into written or printed form yeah sometimes but really it's all about listening to the record absorbing that record internalizing it and and playing along with it really getting the feel of it here's the great christian mcbride from his open studio course the fundamentals of jazz bass and beyond explaining exactly that i think when you're transcribing a solo instead of really learning the notes it's most important to transcribe as much of the feel as you can when i say transcribe i don't mean notating down on paper with their playing do that if there's something you really really want to analyze but in terms of transcribing things you should try to do it as much with your ear and internalize it as much as you can because if you just kind of listen to something and you write it down you're not really getting the full meaning of what those lines are supposed to mean you can't write down the feel so when you're listening to a particular track and there's something you want to learn get the feel of it that's the way you get the real the effectiveness of transcribing something one note here too you might have like a ton of these transcription books and just be honest here how much of those solos that you've read or that you've taken from a written copy that someone else transcribed how much of those have you actually absorbed yeah maybe some kind of lick is stuck around but in general you probably don't sound like charlie parker just from reading from the omni book and how many tunes that you've learned from the real book do you actually memorize in that way have you ever learned a tune by ear i love this clip from robert glasper who's one of the greatest musicians on the planet right now talking about learning music by ear check this out okay listen i couldn't hit herbie or chick when i was learning how to play this music i couldn't hit herbie and could you give me a chart no you listen to it and you learn it and you write it out yourself that's how you get good that's how you get to the level you can't be great and be lazy those two things don't match those two things don't match the faster you recognize that the better now that's of course very easy to say but we all know that in the back of our minds we're thinking this is pretty hard especially you haven't done it much and it gets easier and easier and easier trust me the more you do it of course the better you get which is one of the benefits of doing it there's a direct correlation between how much a musician gets music from the record and how good they actually are i've seen it now for years and years and years and years so just bite the bullet get into the hard stuff now one other fact about that is that when you do this you're gonna fail kind of a lot maybe you don't believe in me i do believe in you i just know you're gonna fail i mean not to be a downer but you're gonna have to accept that that's part of the process that is helping you to be better all right so how do we do this how do we actually transcribe it's actually a pretty simple process when it comes down to it we're going to break it down into three simple instructions the first instruction is to listen 21 times to what you're transcribing this is a lot of times to listen to something and maybe you listen to this 21 times today maybe you listen to it 21 times tomorrow maybe 10 times today maybe 11 times tomorrow the point is before you even sit down with your instrument you listen listen listen listen and listen again step two and we're still not even getting to our instrument is to sing it all of the greats sing all of the time it's the famous lester young quote he stopped playing in the middle of the solo because he forgot the words right this is a huge part of internalizing it so that you don't have to overthink your way through these solos that you're trying to learn spend a whole day just listening to it and singing along with what you're trying to transcribe and then finally take it to your instrument sit down try to learn it from your singing voice right from that internalization see if you can figure some of the stuff out on your instrument this takes some discipline you're going to want to do this the very first 10 minutes that you're trying to learn something again take a few days to just absorb it really really try to absorb it i think you're going to find that it comes out way faster on your instrument if you've taken that time then when you get to your instrument now you're trying to figure out now you're really learning it at a very deep level this isn't just to read through the real book or ireal b level this is like i'm actually understanding what's going on listen to the melody of the solo listen to the bass line try to figure out where's the bass moving try to figure out the thirds and the sevenths of the chords that the bass is playing around all of that stuff is going to be super helpful and remember what christian mcbride said it's all about getting the feel more important than the notes is to really walk in the shoes of these masters don't just let silly youtubers do this for you get your hands dirty get in there and really do the work that's going to make you better again this is the easy way to get better at playing music now maybe you're wondering what should i even transcribe what should i pick to transcribe well i'm going to fix that for you right now i'm gonna fix that for you right now thank you harry you're best off picking something that you absolutely love something that you probably already know really well would be best i also have three suggestions here for you i have three tunes loaded up in soundslice check the description for the soundslice links soundslice is the platform that we use here at openstudio for all of our transcriptions it's our living notation system it's amazing i have charlie parker's billy's bounce i have clifford brown sandu and i have wynton kelly solo on freddy freeloader now the cool thing about soundslice is that you can slow it down without losing pitch so you can take your time with it so i'm going to challenge you if you're a beginner start with one of these solos probably billy's bounce is the best entry point learn the head which is pretty easy and then i want you to learn the solo four bars at a time see if you can listen to it again 21 times the minimum see if you can sing through the whole solo and then when you get to your instrument take it four bars at a time just learn four bars at a time couldn't be simpler do this for five to ten minutes every day you don't have to kill yourself here you don't have to say okay in the next six months i'm transcribing every chick career solo ever done now just start very simply get in the habit of transcribing so we also have a challenge here we're gonna make a video of you playing your transcriptions of one of these three great solos you can pick one or all three of these great solos all you have to do is go to instagram you can tag us at openstudio jazz we're going to use the hashtag the easy way for this challenge so post your video instagram hashtag the easyway and you might see your clip on a future open studio video we're going to make a compilation of everybody working on this together as you get to this remember a couple of things first this is hard and that's a good thing second keep in mind that you're gonna find there's a lot of there's so much failure involved with this and that is also a good thing but in the end we have to frame it in a way that's helpful for us so let's remember the mantra of this session which is [Music] thanks everyone for joining me today i can't wait to see your videos don't forget to smash that like button go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already until next time happy practicing

Channel: Open Studio

Views: 5,136

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Id: oRdkepq3ARk

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021