Transcribing as a path to improvisation....

wordy

Hey all,

I have a question about transcribing..... I've been trying to get the hang of playing blues improv for the last year or so.  Managed to learn Minor Pentatonics through CAGED, Major ones are coming along too... fretboard definitely starting to open up which is great.

I've learnt licks.... I've done the thing with hitting the chord tones on beat one of each measure.... all fine, sounds quite cool, melodic certainly but not really like music.

Then about a week ago, I stuck a Freddie King track 'Yonder Wall' on my little Boss player/phrase trainer thing, and decided I'd try to have a go at transcribing it.  I was shocked to discover that I can do it.... and its not even all that difficult.  I recognise the shapes from my CAGED study.... it seems mostly Minor Pentatonic with the 9th/13th sometimes added.  I actually bought a Freddie King tab book but I haven't looked at it, and don't intend to yet.... but I'm trying to transcribe the songs in that book.... well actually I haven't actually been writing it down any more.... I'm wondering if I need to really.

Do you think I should just carry on transcribing.... or at least learning to play blues tracks I like by ear?  What happens if I keep doing this for twelve months.... will I just be able to play any bluesy lead that I can hear/imagine?

I do have a chord tone soloing book which has you learning the major scale in all positions, and then learning the sound of intervals, then arpeggios etc.  I've also got plenty of licks that I could learn.... but really, they don't feel anything like as musical as what I'm doing now.

What do you reckon?  As always, thanks very much for your two cents....

frankus

I think you've hit exactly the right path. Especially blues - it's built on licks.

Take the licks in the patterns you know and write them down, then transpose them to all the other CAGED places - in some positions they'll play easier and others harder (if you take licks from a more recent player you'll find a wider variety of where the licks play easiest - cos those guys move around more).

Definitely record them - i have to keep all my ideas on paper or I forget them, that can be licks, ideas for midi scenes or inventing a new system of government.

The beauty of writing it down (in tab - I'm not going to get sniffy about notation) is you can return to it, enhance it, reinterpret it.. and embellish it. Leonardo Da Vinci is only admired for having a shitload of ideas because he wrote them down... there's evidence, jot it down and see where it takes you.

Where notation does truly kick ass is in rhythm, most good licks don't start on the first beat of a bar - where they start seals the deal and notation captures that for you... but it's not mandatory, if your fancy takes you that way you can turn your tab into notation... or name them, llabel them as working over a particular chord, group them together by chord types, try them over different chords.

If you do it for a year, your vocabulary will be amazing. Think about it, when you say something to people do you use words and phrases or the alphabet? Licks will mix in your head or fingers and make new licks - they'll procreate in a way that scales and arpeggios don't (they're like primitive single cell creatures).

More important than "should" is "is it fun?" the creative mind learns through play.

mike_l

Thing is, you've already learned the major pentatonics......

They're the same as the minor, but the relative major - IE Aminor is C major....

frankus

hmm they're the same patterns.. that's nothing like "the same thing".

but C major pentatonic is all the notes of the C major scale less the semitone clashes on 4th and 7th degrees of the scale (F and

and A minor pentatonic is all the notes of the A natural minor scale less the semitone clashes on the 2nd and 6th degrees of the scale (B and F)

now that might read like left and right twix but it's a big f***ing deal when you play it

Bellycaster

You definitely will improvise better by transcribing and you will get the added bonus of getting better at transcribing too. What takes you one hour to transcribe now might only take 5 minutes in 3 years time through repetition. Your knowledge of Guitar theory will expand, it's just in the hands of time and how much you get stuck in.

Transcribing is very liberating, early in learning, some chords you may think to yourself "What the F**k is that Chord", 3 years later it's "Jeez, it's that chord again"

Definitely transcribe stuff from various musical styles too, I'm not that keen on Rockabilly, but every time I check out some Brian Setzer stuff, I am blown away by his mastery. Rockabilly is great for chord tone solos.

This is mainly what I do, I'm obsessed with learning "known" solos and "known" songs and when I look at my "songbooks" and see how long my descriptions were 4 years ago and how brief they are now, it must mean some improvement has taken place.

Go for it.

close2u

@wordy

to learn & blend major / minor pentatonics go here
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/16904/

to help develop your transcribing try here
http://www.justinguitar.com/en/TR-000-Transcribing.php
and
http://www.justinguitar.com/en/PR-021-BluesSolos.php

Phil_aka_Pip

wot everyone else has said about the benefits of transcribing. Even @frankus. (!) IMO some blues rhythms or timings can look scary when written down, but if you know what it sounds like and the tab reminds you of the fingering then the job is done anyway. Congrats if you do manage to notate the stuff!

I think if you get into transcription you learn to recognise stock licks, & phrases, the sounds of chords etc so it makes them a lot easier to identify in future.

Best Of!

EricTheWeary

If I had a time machine I would visit my younger self and tell him to transcribe, transcribe, transcribe.

frankus

I used to have lessons with Justin Sandercoe and he made it clear how useful transcribing is.

The real knack is accepting your ear as a listener is more developed than your ear as a transcriber - to begin with... so nursery rhymes and simple tunes or just 3 bars of a tune are fine to begin with... a lot of people decide they'll start by transcribing Satch Boogie and don't stick at it.

There's room for an app that plugs into mp3 players and says - I want that lick! then stores them in a database as references to songs and points in the tune... hopefully pulling stuff like bpm from the mp3 headers... so they can be stolen more easily - remembering 1:53 of Ronny Jordan's Heaven is a faff. .. tag them too and you've an entire system for understanding them.

wordy

hey thanks for all the advice and encouragement..... it does feel like one of those eureka moments.  It is a huge amount of fun, and what was a mystery before starts to become clear.

I realise now its difficult to appreciate the subtleties from just playing different licks.  I've heard before that you should play around with one lick.... try to find variations.... but its hard to do properly without examples to copy.

For example there's the bending upwards of the 4th, then back down with a pull off to the flat 3rd..... King does this so many different ways, and I don't think you can write all the subtle dynamic variations down.  Could be its the speed of the bend, or the force of the pull off.... just small things but they make a difference.

The CAGED thing definitely helps..... I found a lick in the G Minor shape yesterday, and then could shift it up into the E Minor shape, which I think is where it belongs.

One thing I did wonder.... if I'm to notate..... I've got a total greenhorn question..... I realise that the centre line on the staff is B..... but which B is it on the guitar?

JAYJO

I think it can be any b on the guitar. up to you what position your playing in. Do you want a high or a low b. Do you want to jump to the top of the neck or just grab the nearest. If your playing open chords then you may play the open b string etc.  I do stress I think!!
:)There are also b notes below and above the staff to consider. Up or down an octave. feck it im confused now.

digitalkettle

'Guitar music' is generally written an octave higher than it sounds due to the range of the instrument.

So your centre line is the open-B string* (a semitone below 'middle C').

This pitch has a scientific name of B3 (middle C is C4...it goes C-to-C).

*you can modify the octave you're writing in by annotating with '8va', etc.

e.g. if you're writing a passage of high pitches and want to avoid lots of ledger lines.

GuyBoden

Yes, transcribing is the way to enlightenment, but you need to know what the notes are and how they related to the underlying chords/harmony/rhythm.