Tip for Trumpet 2

Tip for Trumpet

#2 Listening and transcribing

Listen to the language
I can't stress enough the importance of listening to the great players of the instrument you want to get good at. There are countless reasons for this, but the most basic and obvious is that jazz is like a language, and so if you don't listen to it a lot you won't ever be able to speak it very well. You can read lots of books about learning languages but if you never hear them spoken, you will never know how they are actually supposed to sound, and thus you will never know why people don't understand you when you are trying to talk to them! So in jazz, that means you have to listen to as many great players as you can, certainly more importantly on your own instrument but also quite importantly on other instruments too.

Listening a lot is also important because you might reach a point where you start to come up with lots of creative new things in your improvisation, but it's actually been done before. If you hadn't listened to lots of other players, you might think you were inventing something new when you actually were not the first. But if you've done your listening, then you'll know when you actually are really doing a new concept.

When you're learning to play jazz, listening is also going to be what roots you to the music, keeping you inspired as well as moving in the right direction. It's especially important to find new things to listen to if you ever find yourself losing motivation or feeling bored with your jazz practice.

Transcribing - the fastest way to improve
When you start to get more advanced, the single thing you can do that will make you get better at your instrument faster than anything else is transcribe (and then play what you transcribe). Transcribing means writing down what you hear on staff paper, so that you can read it and play along with it. In jazz we transcribe horn solos, licks, melodies, anything we want to remember and try to bring back to and play on our own horn. The reason transcribing makes you improve so quickly is because it forces you to work on many different music skills at the same time, including notating music, ear training, and rhythm practice. It's quite challenging at first, but transcribing solos gets easier the more you do it.

It's crucial that you really practice what you have transcribed. But past that, the part of transcribing that many people overlook when they start to actually play what they have finished transcribing is the nuances. These are the things that can't be written in a precise way on the paper, the slight bends in notes or the vibrato; the unique and subtle ways notes are accented or articulated. These are the stylistic components that will teach you what makes that player different from others, so don't overlook them in the process.

next time: recommended listening list