How to improve your time feel: Transcription Magic
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- Опубліковано 21 бер 2024
- Beginner , intermediate and advanced players
This video introduces some tricks that will make the art of learning solos from recordings easy and fun. One of the fastest ways to improve!
My goal is to grow this channel to be a resource for the jazz community- so please post any questions or comments and I will respond as soon as soon as i am able. Questions help other viewers too!
Subscribe and like if the video is helpful. And stay tuned for more videos coming soon...
for lessons , masterclasses and bookings : sam@samyahel.com
website : www.samyahel.com
/ sam.yahel
If you have a request for a video subject please post it in the comments
some apps recommended for transcribing :
ipad or iphone
www.audiostretch.com/
on a computer / laptop
www.seventhstring.com/xscribe...
Totally agree about slowing down when transcribing. I like to compare it to using a microscope. Nobody would argue that if you can't see it with your naked eye, you shouldn't use a tool to do it. But there are some musicians who are very adamant about it :)
yes, its puzzling! always helps to get the details...
finally a Sam Yahel tutorial on youtube! Great stuff, please keep them coming! 🙏
😊will do !
Thank you! I'm glad to have a modest, professional and tasteful person teaching us on youtube, its very rare! :) Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much ! I appreciate that … 😊
Thank you!
Grateful to get free advice like this from a master! Very much looking forward to any other tips you can provide for becoming a better musician. Thank you sir.
🙏
Feel free to ask questions here if you have any and I will do my best to help out …best, sam
Amazing to have a master musician giving free content like this, thank you!!
Glad you liked it!
@@samyahel Love your album Truth and Beauty" I listen to it often!🙏
Thanks Sam! This is the best video on transcription. You are an awesome teacher.
Please do a follow up to this video on how to use and apply the language we transcribed. It will be so helpful for musicians at all levels.
Your welcome - I’m glad you found it helpful. Yes, the follow up video about what to do with the material is on my list to do soon …
Just wanted to let you know that i replied to another question here in the comments from
@Hitsko that addresses this subject- that will hopefully give you some ideas until i am able to make the follow up video...best, sam
I'm completely on board with that. Whenever I transcribed a piece, my playing sounded so much better than if I read the music (let alone if I improvise my own solo). It's almost like I can sound 'like a pro', if only for the duration of a passage that took quite a lot of work (and is learned rather than improvised).
its addictive!
I love getting into the nitty gritty of the process like this. I like grabbing the little melodic fragments or phrases and experiment with combining them in differ ways and inserting them into my playing over different tunes. So much fun! Thank you for these lessons!
Your welcome ! I’m a nitty gritty process guy myself …
I really love the pace and tone of your teaching, calm and friendly, to the point, no bs and very, very inspiring playing too! Keep it coming!
thank you. glad thats coming across in the video
Your video is very well done great concepts
Glad you like it ! Thank you
Thanks Sam, great stuff!!
Wonderful channel 📺 !
Thanks for visiting!
Very good tips. Here's another tip that I've found works best for a complete beginner like me and I never hear mentioned. Before trying this, I had a lot of trouble approaching transcription, even though everybody knows how it important it is.
It's quite simple. Load the song in the transcription software, pick the section you want and slow it down just like mentioned here. Then, start playing along with it, but not trying to imitate the record. Just pretend you are another player in the band. By way of an analogy, the normal transcription process assumes the music is a very rigid path that needs to be traversed. Rather, think of the music as a musical landscape that can be traversed in any number of ways. Initially, it might not sound great, but as you keep looping over the section, you naturally start landing on the right notes. You also realize that there's so much music contained even in the smallest of sections. I can take four bars of a good song and play over it for 15 or 20 minutes easily and not get tired of it. You can hear how "wrong" solutions sound next to the "right" one and begin to paint outside the lines and develop your own sound.
This has been a game changer for a complete beginner like me. I can learn from music that would be otherwise completely inaccessible to me if I tried to start by getting the notes "right". Then you can go on to trying to be more faithful to the music, having already a good idea of the main ideas of the passage.
very interesting! this is another approach 'ive heard people talk about , "playing along with recordings". Ive never done it myself but people who have done it really love it. Thanks for sharing that ! I'm gonna try it tomorrow...best,sam
Your videos are golden! Thanks Sam!
Great video! Thanks for sharing! Love your appraoch (and playing btw). Cheers!👍
Your welcome !
Very well explained! These videos are gold. Thank you.
Glad you like them! Someone else recently commented they were “gold dust”😀 thanks , sam
Thanks, Sam. I do a lot of transcription and one tip in particular excites me, the building block approach.
I usually go measure by measure. Transcribe! allows me to define a playback window of a particular length, which I then advance as I notate. However, I find it challenging to remember rhythms and must play a measure back a lot of times. I believe your building block idea is a better approach that will align with how I understand what I’m hearing.
Here’s an idea I offer for you to try. Do the building blocks in reverse!
Backwards practicing is a time honored learning method that goes back at least to Heinrich Neuhaus, who taught Horowitz. I use it constantly when learning notated music. It works because, as you play, you sequence to material you’ve already learned.
I never thought to try transcription that way. Work on the last building block of the solo (or passage, or whatever chunk), then the bit preceding, then the one before that.
I’m trying that today! Besides getting the music notated, I bet I learn to play my transcription all the more quickly.
Wonderful presentation on transcription . Thanks ! I watch of these to stay encouraged .
If these videos can encourage you , that makes me happy !! And let me encourage you too, keep going ! We are all just trying to get better no matter what our level is …
Best,
Sam
Thanks a lot Sam, this is really helpful !!
Glad it was helpful!
Hi.
Thanks for the video, do you write down some of your transcription?
I have from time to time. I usually don't but I always tell my students- transcription can serve many purposes, depending on how you do it. Writing it down can be helpful for developing writing skills. Sometimes it can even help the ear in a different way. For helping my time feel I wouldnt write it down usually, but rather play along with the parts i had memorized, a little more each day. But both ways have their benefits!
So glad this is available online! Thank you!
Your welcome !
Great video. Thanks Sam.
😀
Definitely give Soundslice a shot when transcribing. It's got high-quality slowdown, looping, and a built-in notation editor so that you can immediately write down what you've figured out. It results in a synced transcription that's great for practice, because you can navigate the solo by looking at the notation instead of a waveform. There's also a "speed training" feature, where it gradually speeds up each time through a loop. Plus a ton of other features.
Will check it out ! Thanks
I do everything without app just on youtube
Great video! So do you use the app. or your ears for determine notes? Just curious…
i use my ears - and the app makes it easier...you can slow it down or even "scrub" if you need to.
however, if you need to use the app to help you find the notes, thats fine too! just enjoy the process at whatever level you are. The more you enjoy, the more you do it- and the more you do it , the better you get!
Sam This is a great tutorial. What APP do you use to transcribe.
Thanks . App I use is called AudioStretch. Link in the description …. Best, sam
Hoping this video helps me to play "swing" without sounding cheesy lol. That "lazy" playing swing players do sometimes when they're behind the beat as well. I play the exact notes but inside I cringe because it feels like its missing something...every time 😢
🍵 ☕️ 🫖
This stuff will definitely help with that . Just make sure you are transcribing someone who’s swing feel you like! Have fun with it
@@samyahelMichel Petruciani 😍
@@nezkeys79Another great player
@@luxolontamo4440yeah man the way he phrases his notes / feel / rhythm when doing a RH solo, and his choice of harmony with LH is always cool voicings
Listen to the solo in "Home" for an example of this. There's a transcription video on UA-cam by Andrew Soojin. I play the notes but the feel is nothing like him 😢
@@nezkeys79 I like his playing and my friend is a huge fan.
I'll check that out for sure, you did a good job transcribing that, as far as feel goes it takes a while to nail down but nothing beats listening to the recording over and over while try to scat it.
Thank god for Timestamps ❤😂
Thank god for the UA-cam algorithm for creating them - I had nothing to do with it …
Hello Sam. I have been a fan of yours since the Joshua Redman Elastic Band times where I first heard you! Could you do a video on your process of ear training? Especially getting the skill in recognizing chord voicings, qualities and extensions instantly and intuitively! Thank you for these lessons!
Thanks! Yeah, ear training is a big subject. I’m not sure if I feel qualified to make a video on it. I’ll think about a video but in the meantime I can tell you a few things I like to recommend to my students.
1-Sing a lot! It can be any way that you like, you can sing along with yourself while your playing or sing along with a solo you love or take a scat solo for fun or do some sight singing from a simple melody book. Sing for pleasure. This helps the ear tremendously.
2. Memorize music. Learning a new tune and memorizing it I always find very helpful for the ear. Once you learn a new tune you might hear it internally as well that’s always a sign the ear is happy with some new material .
3-study harmony and voicings . If you study harmony, voicing etc it’s much easier to “hear” it from recordings because you might be familiar with the language already. Contrary to public belief there is no magic ear training that will allow you to hear every note combination . It is language dependent. For example if you study 4ths voicings for awhile and then you try to transcribe someone who plays in that style you will have much better success than if you sing a bunch of random intervals and then go to transcribe someone playing voicings in 4ths.
4- whatever you do in ear training , try to enjoy it. Don’t test yourself too much or repeat endless boring drills. Remember the more fun you have , the more likely you will do it more which can help you improve , which will encourage you to do it more which will help you improve …. And on and on
@@samyahel Wow! Super insightful and useful advice! I would say this definitely makes you qualified for a related video! Thanks a lot for your time!
Hi Sam, what about a video about improvising over a jazz blues pattern, I love blues and really helps when we are learning jazz improvisation. I known there are tons of videos about this in UA-cam, but they barely explain how to improvise with good time feel and rhythm, or how to really incorporate a line from a transcription and adapted to your line incorporating dynamics or more chromaticism as you mentioned below. Finally, it's totally different when the lesson is provided by a master musician like you.
there's a good course by jeff schneider that helped me, its literally called improvising over the blues without sounding like an amateur or something like that.
Yes! That’s a great idea and it’s on my short list for a video I want to do next… actually , that’s 2 subjects . How to play over the blues , and also how to use information from transcription. I plan to make both those videos soon …stay tuned !
ok so stupid question.. you've transcribed a solo. What's next? If you don't do anything with it after learning it, you will soon forget it. Replaying complete lines in your solo is also strange. everyone recognizes c jam blues for example... Do these transcriptions "suddenly" come out while soloing or how does this work?
This is not a stupid question but rather gets to the crux of one of the mysteries of how to learn to play jazz!! Unfortunately the answer is a little complex; I want to make a video about this soon. For now let me give you a few examples :
lets say you play a line from a solo you really like. What do you like about it? Can you make more lines at that use one of the things you like from the person you are transcribing?
Perhaps you like the fact that the line is based on an augmented triad. Can you make some more lines based on an augmented triad, but at your skill level? Can you make lines using this device that sound nothing like the original?
Maybe you like the dynamic shaping of the line. Can you make lines at your skill level that use similar dynamic shaping?
Lets say the line uses chromaticism in a particular way you find inspiring. Can you use some chromaticism to make up some lines at our skill level? Again, if you do it correctly, the lines should sound like something you might have played at your existing skill level, but perhaps just a touch upgraded.
These are some examples of how to use material from transcription. Once you get good at working with the material in this way you will find that every solo can provide an infinite amount of ideas to work with and inspire you!!
What i don't recommend is memorizing lines from the solo in order to insert them into some future improvisation. That wont sound natural , and it tends to take us out of the flow of improvising at our actual level.
Thanks for asking this very important question ! Hope this helps...
@@samyahel Haha improvising is such a strange thing to learn. Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I have become a bit wiser now. I'm looking forward to the video.