Strategy 6: Solo Transcription and Jazz Vocabulary
Most students are soon able to apply their active listening skills to a transcription project. Start with the easiest solo you can find (try Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Dexter Gor- don for starters) or isolate segments of an appropriate solo. It is imperative to learn these passages from the recording by ear and not from a published transcription. This trains the ear, speeds up the internalization process, and builds confidence. Be able to sing along with the recording, before attempting to play along. Slow down recordings, using software such as Audacity or Transcribe!, to make technical passages more accessible. Once the student can play along with the record- ing, only then should they notate pitch, rhythm, articulation, and stylistic nuances on staff paper. With the solo internal- ized, the student will have authentic aspects of the jazz lan- guage available to use in an improvisational setting. Create exercises in which “words” (as little as two-beat fragments) and “sentences” (whole phrases) from the transcribed solo are applied to a tune the student is comfortable with. The application of this vocabulary may be predetermined (play X phrase at Y measure), but the delivery should be as expres- sive as possible.
Conclusion
The mastery of improvisation is a rigorous and time-in- tensive endeavor, but the first steps should fill the aspiring improviser with a sense of possibility. Fear has no place in improvisation. Students will enjoy listening to master im- provisers and learning to play in that tradition. The educator will relish facilitating their students’ discoveries of practices that allow them to be more creative and confident musicians.
Trumpeter, composer, and educator Jon Ailabouni is an adjunct faculty of music at Luther College in Dec- orah, Iowa where directs the Jazz Band, coaches jazz combos, and teaches trumpet and jazz improvi- sation lessons. A summa cum laude graduate of Luther College, Ail- abouni went on to receive a Master of Music degree in Jazz Studies from
Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Jon can be reached at
ailajo01@luther.edu.
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