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Here are some of my thoughts:
Transcribe tunes, both the harmony and melody and then learn them in a few keys. This is a good skill to have in case you play with singers or horn players.
Transcribe lines you like because they interest your ear. You may be more likely to keep this things in memory rather than transcribing something because everyone else thinks its good.
Transcribe non-guitar players, because it will force you to get away from these licks.
Transcribe ii-Vs and turnarounds from different sources because much of the music contain these.
Learn everything in as many keys and fingerings as you can, especially in blind spots.
Try to transcribe quick. Meaning, take a few bars and see how quickly you can learn something. A good way to put this into practice is when someone is soloing in a ham or on a gig, play their last line as your first line. It helps with your listening.
I don't do all of this stuff all of the time, but I work on some of this stuff daily. Granted, I'll not be a top cat. I just want to be able to hang with the good ones, though and they seem more impressed by the musical stuff as opposed to the technical stuff.
My 2 cents.
A few observations:
Over in straight-ahead-jazz land, transcribing is a very common practice--I can't count the number of times I've heard players (and teachers) in workshops talk about how they transcribed Charlie Christian solos (and sax players transcribe Charlie Parker). This is an ancient learning tool that applies to all manner of skill-sets--imitate, iterate, and eventually innovate. It goes back to the teaching of rhetoric in the ancient world and probably apprentice-journeyman-master traditions everywhere.
One downside of this protocol is that some will never get entirely to the "innovate" part and will always be imitators. I'm not sure why this is, but I suspect that most practitioners can indeed to led to some degree of improvisation. I've watched teachers lead and nudge technically proficient players (trained fingers/vocal chords/embouchures) to get "off the page." Sometimes it's just a matter of getting them to be ear- rather than eye-led--and that is sometimes a matter of confidence rather than skill or talent. This is a dead-common part of every jazz/swing workshop I've ever been in when there's a formally trained violinist/wind player in the group.
I can't read standard notation, and I still can't identify most of the notes on the fingerboard, which has made my progress as a player a matter of decades rather than years, and I do not solo. But even I have gotten to the point where my ears and fingers can find and produce a limited range of unplanned musical events as I accompany soloists and singers. (And my own singing is full of surprises, even to me. My voice is an instrument I can control far better than I can my guitar.) I take whatever flexibility I possess to be the result of just having heard an enormous volume of music, along with having had to follow a lot of it as an accompanist. (Imitate, iterate. . . .)
The other matters that Dennis and Buco bring up also matter--especially the "iterate" part of classical pedagogy. You don't just wake up understandng the fingerboard or the harmonic structure of a tune--you repeat the physical activity of navigating the fretboard and listen to lots of tunes, and the "knowledge" of those phenomena gets stored. An effective pedagogical/practice regimen codifies and optimizes the process, and a farting-around-with-music approach (mine for 60 years) gets enough of the benefits to let (this) one approach high-level mediocrity.
"high-level mediocrity"
That has been my fear since I started playing guitar. I have only recently been nudging myself past that. I have always noted that my ears and brain are way more advanced than my hands. To non musicians,I sounds good. But I know what mark I am failing to hit.
Sadly, I took a detour at the start of my Jazz education (on the upright). One of the first assignments this Jazz teacher gave me was to transcribe a bass line. That basically scared me off of Jazz as a serious route. Because of that I studied classical bass in university instead of Jazz bass. I also "knew" you had to listen to Jazz all the time to get it in your head and heart. At 19, I was still listening to Punk and rockabilly. I wasn't ready to give up listening to that music.
Now, after teaching highschool music for ten years (and switching from bass to guitar) I am not deciding only listening to Jazz, but that is all I listen to.
It is probably partly my fear and lack of ability that I don't transcribe much. But I do learn Django and CC solos from transcriptions. But my goal is to understand what they are doing so I can use their ideas.
For a long time I valued being able to look at sheet music and interpreting it. Not NEEDING to hear was one of my goals. The one advantage to that is that it forces me to interpret it through my own sense of timing and rhythm. The obvious downside is I am not learning Django's subtleties.
As always I should be practising.
Sidenote: to be me transcribing means you are listening to something then writing it down. "Scribe". If you don't write it down aren't you just lifting a line or solo?
@littlemark For a long time I was getting confused cos all these top players who couldnt read much kept going on about transcribing. Till I realised It's changed it's meaning in jazz (or at least gypsy jazz). It just means picking out the music by ear from recordings. No writing involved.
@littlemark Thanks for being so open and sharing your fear and hesitancies, etc. Like you, music has played a huge role in my life. I will never be able to say jazz is the only thing I listen to because I like too many other genres. I realize that may not provide the best environment for acquiring the language if we use Dennis's paradigm. Like a child who grows up in a multilingual house, it might take me longer to speak as I learn to decipher the different languages all at once. But I'm ok with that. And, Django didn't just listen to jazz. Stochelo has certainly been influenced by Stevie Wonder. Joscho just put out his Beatles album. Our voice and language is a product of our experiences. At risk of mixing metaphors, just like English sometimes just accepts a borrowed word into it (kayak, kebab, kismet, and other words that don't begin with "k") you might bring a punk or rockabilly line or quote or feel into your interpretation of a certain song. In doing so, you are bringing the special amalgam of influences that is unique to your own musical journey. I'd love to hear some django-billy!
I learn lots of solos, not lately though. But even learning a couple bars gives me enough food for thought for weeks if not months. If there’s even only one measure in the whole thing that I understand, I just use the crap out of it for weeks and weeks until it’s worked its way into everything. Slow going
@Twang language is so important. People misuse words all the time. To be fair, English is stupid.
@billyshakes no doubt there are hidden influences in all of us. But I would not want to hear Django-Billy. In certain aspects I am very conservative in my tonal palate. If you want to play rockabilly throw out your reverb pedal/tank You only get one effect, Echo.
If you want to play surf music. You damn well better have a reverb tank!
Over the years I've rolled my eyes at so many bands that say they play one style or another. But really don't. This actually goes back to my point about language. Certain styles and genres are codefied and very specific. I'll use rockabilly because it is a good example. It really only existed from 1954 to 1959. It pretty much ended when Elvis signed to a major label, Eddie Cochrane died and Gene Vincent got in a car accident. If it doesn't have an acoustic guitar and upright bass it is not rockabilly. It starts to become rock n roll or rhythm and blues. I think of it like Latin. It's no longer evolving.
Bands like the Stray cats, played music inspired by rockabilly. Which is fine. Just not rockabilly.
WAY of topic :)
Gypsy Jazz, is harder to codify. Is whatever Django played gypsy jazz? I don't think anyone thinks that. His early banjo playing on the musette trio is clearly not. And his late amplified stuff is leaning heavily on Bebop. Is it Bebop or just influenced? Is gypsy jazz his late thirties stuff?
Of course it's all academic. Does it sound good? Good, do it. No? Don't!
That’s funny, Dennis... I can’t even picture you playing rhythm but not lead. Good for you!
I’ve had the good fortune over the years to be able to play with two outstanding musicians... and much like the outstanding musicians Dennis was talking about, they achieved their virtuoso technique as a sort of substitute for a normal childhood.
Toronto guitarist Jeff Healey was born blind, and started playing guitar at around eight years old... with the instrument flat on his lap.
Spending untold hours down in the basement listening to records and attempting to play along with them by ear, especially country music, was how he got started. As he grew older, he began to do the same thing, only with blues, rock and jazz.
Jeff found the early jazz of Louis Armstrong, Bix and other early jazz masters particularly exciting, and although he certainly admired Django’s genius, he was a big time fan of Eddie Lang.
Playing rock guitar all over the world became his day gig, but when he got a chance he really loved playing trumpet with his band the Jazz Wizards...and also doubling on guitar...
Jeff was a rabid Armstrong fan, and a totally self-taught trumpet player... played from the side of his mouth as you can see... and alas, Jeff didn’t take up trumpet until he was in his late teens...
He used to come and sit in with my 8 piece “ Bix” style orchestra in Toronto... and, um... well let's just say that the first time Jeff tried to play with us it was wild, loud, screechy and out of tune... but Jeff kept at it until he made it happen... check out the exciting finale at the end of this clip, these MFers really raise the roof!
The other virtuoso guy I play with is the sax/clarinet guy who leads my band in Buffalo. Sadly, his mother died when he was about eight and after that he just stayed in his room for several years and practised for hours a day.
Here he is in 1973 accompanying a young Leon Redbone in one of Leon’s early breakthrough gigs at the Buffalo Folk Festival...
Not that I have anything against transcribing, but for for both of these guys whose playing I admire so much, it wasn’t a “thing”. They probably learned a few licks here and there from records like anybody else, but it wasn’t a big deal for either one of them.
Their method was just to play their little-boy asses off, for years and years!
Will
PS ... mind you, for anyone with a spouse... hours upon hours every day practising.... any instrument!... is probably not a real great marriage builder...
(So that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!)
Will
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
Now, I'm thinking more about the definition of genres. I think any genre that lasts long enough will eventually evolve out of whatever it was too begin with. Unless, one is conciously writing in one style.
Take Beethoven. He wrote in the Classical style for half his life and arguably he pushed music into Romanticism.
Or to take a genre: Opera. Early on everyone copied Monteverdi until an innovator like Lully came along. And then you get to Wagner or even Brecht if you want to stretch the definition to musical theatre. Wagner sounds very different than Monteverdi.
I'm just rambling now.
I should be practising.