#BRAD MEHLDAU TRANSCRIPTION PDF MERGE HOW TO#

You don’t have to spend months transcribing dozens of solos to isolate and ingrain this important concept in your playing, you can simply take one phrase.Ĭheck out Clifford’s solo over the jazz standard Confirmation:Īt the opening of his solo, Clifford plays the line below: However, if you transcribe twenty Clifford Brown solos and analyze the way he constructs his lines, you’ll notice one technique popping up over and over again… enclosure. Imitating his sound, his articulation, his flowing melodic lines… Nearly every serious improviser has studied, or at least closely listened, to the solos of Clifford Brown.

To switch to the mindset of less in more.īelow, we’ll take 4 master musicians and extract one important technique from each, using a single solo.

#BRAD MEHLDAU TRANSCRIPTION PDF MERGE HOW TO#

Today we’ll show you how to extract important musical concepts from master musicians with just one solo or even a few musical phrases. Remember, the goal at the end of the day is to leave the practice room with specific techniques that you can use in your own solos. If you’re smart about the process you can save time and effort, quickly isolating & ingraining important techniques. You see, transcribing as many solos you can or trying to absorb long complex lines every time you get into the practice room is not exactly efficient. But for musicians looking to quickly gain musical techniques and change the way they improvise, there is an easier way to locate and learn important musical concepts. Sure, there is great value in transcribing entire solos – we’ve written a ton about that here. And you could painstakingly transcribe 20 Tommy Flanagan solos in a row…īut at the end of all that work you’re going to find the same musical concepts… over and over again. You could write down every note from Hank Mobley’s entire recorded catalog. The truth is, you could spend a year transcribing every John Coltrane solo from 1958. It’s all right there for the taking… Time for a new approach

Every phrase contains the musical concepts they’ve developed, their harmonic “tricks,” and years of technical practice. This is the secret every solo from a master holds. You don’t have to spend years transcribing dozens of records from one great player to learn their language – you can focus on just one solo. He pauses and says, “ You know, you could probably get all of K.D.’s language by checking out the album Showboat. That I’ve been searching for records and trying to understand his musical concept.Īnd I also concede that I haven’t been exactly successful in my pursuit. I tell him I’ve been trying to learn Kenny Dorham’s approach to chords. I’ve just stepped outside of Smalls, the last note of the show still ringing in my ears…Īfter a few minutes, a well known trumpet player steps out and we start a conversation. I’m standing on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan as garbage trucks rumble by and panhandlers hustle for loose change.

Brad mehldau transcription pdf merge