| Re: Jazz, language, and transcribing
The way you learn to talk is by mimicing and spitting back what you hear. Same way learning the language of jazz. It's like learning to speak French or something, you can get a lot of words and speak correctly but with an accent that everyone can identify. It takes a long time to get rid of the accent and sound like it's your native language. Bill Dobbins always loved that analogy. The accent is getting the phrasing really right. Swinging, in other words. I had a concert with my kids yesterday, and the piano player was doing something on one tune that really swung. I mean like an old timer, I was so proud of him. He's going to Juilliard in the fall, look for him in the new downbeat coming out next week, his name is Jeremy Jordan.
Michael McLaughlin |