Hey Guys - So I’m late to the party on this exercise, but came across in my recent work on Summertime. The past 2 days, I’ve been transposing this line thru all 12. I’ve found it very challenging and had to write out the numbers in relation to each corresponding chord. I’m very slow but it’s also helping me think thru the 13 in particular as I find that I’m not always clear on what is the b13 or the 13 for a particular chord. But it’s getting clearer, and the line today started coming out naturally towards the last 3 keys today. I’m going to keep working on this all week, and see if I can also sing along by Friday! Love this. Thanks Hayden.
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Hayden, I’m trying to get started transcribing. Is this the best place to start?
Is there an organized course?
I have trouble refinding this page fir some teason.
Hi @Ngallure 
There are a few ways to approach this:
1) Transcription Exercises
Firstly we have a list of transcription exercises here:
These are categorised by difficulty. These exercises are more focused on in-tempo performance and you will see that the PDF transcriptions have been half-completed so your job is to fill in the gaps.
Think of this as a stepping stone to selecting your own recording as a transcription project to work on. Ideally we want to pick a recording that we personally admire and want to sound like. That’s the whole point of transcription - it allows us to take our playing in our own direction based on the sounds and styles that we personally like.
The exercises above can help to get you started, but ultimately we are going to have more motivation and perseverance to finish a transcription project if we absolutely love what we are trying to transcribe. Not to say that you won’t like any of the recordings in the list above, but just something to keep in mind.
2) Solo Piano Transcription
Another approach is to pick any jazz standard that you are working on and compile an extensive playlist of recordings that you admire. I like to use Spotify for this.
Here are links to 4 playlists that I created for the ballad tunes that I like to play:
I create playlists like this for every tune that I am working on and it acts as my main hub of inspiration. We need to listen to the recordings regularly, make note of the things we like, and then transcribe from the recordings. This is a gradual and ongoing process that we follow for the rest of our lives.
After listening to the songs many times, you’ll find that you can sing or hum part of the improvisations which shows that you are absorbing the material. Of course transcribing (writing down the notes) greatly speeds up this assimilation process.
I hosted a seminar here where I share some information on how to get started with this style transcription:
3) Ear Training
We have 160 ear training exercises here:
These exercises will teach you how to hear and detect intervals, chord qualities, bass movement, and common chord progressions - all of which are very important skills for transcribing.
Spend 15 minutes per day on the ear training exercises and in the space of a few months you listening and transcription skills will be greatly improved.
I hope that helps - check out the links above and let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Hayden
Many thanks, Hayden.
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