ilikethetrumpet

Well, you wouldn't begin to play jazz by playing a burning Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan solo, would you? You'd start with something more attainable, something at a speed to play it not as notes, but as music. Transcribing something slower allows you to capture nuance and also to avoid transcribing something that is beyond yours (or my) ability to recreate it with all the subtle shadings of the original. The hardest thing I've ever had to do musically is to transcribe Clifford Brown's "Laura," a ballad on the "with strings" album, and then play it back along with the recording. Yikes, so great.