April 9-10, 2019 | Blog Repost from April 5 | Transcribing!

Wanted to post the beginning of the quest to have young musicians transcribe solos of jazz legends!

On Friday, April 5 – started 3 new students transcribing for the first time:

1. 7th grader, John K,  alto sax started transcribing Willie Bay’s Grammy Audition of Billie’s Bounce. Willie plays very cleanly and it’s easy to hear the notes on his recording and of course we’ll slow the YouTube track down to 50%-75% to hear the 16th notes.
2. 7th grader, Kayla B, tenor sax started transcribing “Billie’s Bounce” by Dexter Gordon.
3. 6th grader, Aiden B, alto sax started transcribing “Billie’s Bounce” by Phil Woods.

** ALL three kids got past 1 chorus and now their assignment is to go home a memorize what we transcribed and we’ll keep adding more each week for them to transcribe and memorize. I hope to get them through many transcriptions.

*** Knowing jazz licks and phrases are like money in the bank. You can pull money out of the bank if it’s not there, and you can’t pull jazz licks from your head if their not there either.

That’s my BLOG and scoop for today!