I recently had the opportunity to make a couple of videos for young students on learning music by ear. The opportunity was through the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra’s Jazz Scholars program, of which I am proud to be a part. I believe that learning music by ear and transcription is an invaluable part of playing […]
Tag: transcription
Learning By Ear
Transcription Clip – Joe Henderson, “Song For my Father”
When I was 15 my family went to Berkeley CA to visit my brother at college, and the Tower Records store there had a CD called “The Best Blue Note Album Ever”, a double-disc compilation. I was getting into jazz/BAM at the time but I don’t think I knew what Blue Note was. I bought […]
Transcription Clip: Shanice, “I Love Your Smile”
I learned this short solo for fun for my wife a little while ago after we put the song on our wedding playlist, but lost the video on a broken phone! I decided to try it again and put it up here. After a little bit of research, I discovered the saxophonist is the great […]
Transcription Clip: John Coltrane, “I Hear a Rhapsody”
Playing Alto Saxophone exclusively when I was studying in college means that most of my knowledge is still pretty deeply related to that voice; I didn’t learn songs or jazz solos in all keys (which I should have), and for most of my time as a musician I heard ideas on alto rather than on […]
Transcription Clip: Melissa Aldana, “Free Fall”
This clip is from a solo from Aldana’s first album, released in 2010. I’ve really gotten into her playing the last couple of months for a few particular reasons. I think she’s one of the tenor players currently on the scene that really explores changing tone and expression while executing technical ideas […]
Paul Gonsalves Continued
Some more Paul Gonsalves from Diminuendo in Blue. I really like the mix of traditional and modern (at least to my ears) in his playing. The last chorus on this clip gets me every time!
Paul Gonsalves
I have a new project! I’m not sure how long I will last but I have begun working on Paul Gonsalves’ famous 27 choruses on “Diminuendo in Blue” from Duke Ellington’s 1956 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. There is a lot of backstory surrounding this performance, none of which I can verify as true […]
Junior Walker
My earliest memory of “Shotgun” by Junior Walker & the All Stars doesn’t actually involve the song, exactly. I remember watching the Cosby Show with my family a lot as a kid, and I thought, when I was younger, that “Shotgun” was the theme song, at least for a couple of seasons. As it turns […]
King Curtis
A little yakety sax for your Thursday! One of my grandmothers had a bunch of old records that she would let me look through, and one of them was a Boots Randolph album. Randolph was famous for the record entitled “Yakety Sax”, the title tune of which became the Benny Hill theme song and was […]
Short Transcription
Hi all! I have one more David Fathead Newman transcription to post, very short but really great and possibly one of Newman’s most iconic solo breaks: his solo introduction to Ray Charles’ “The Right Time”. I plan on diving into any interviews I can find with Newman after this; I tried to find any relevant […]