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Musical Discussions
Topic: Musicians transcribe many things all the time

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-05-2024
Both are standing, but the second is improvisation!!!




Posted by Gargoyle on 08-06-2024
The first video has notes that neatly fall into fractional timings, wheras the second video could almost be described as a series of arpegios.

It's not that you can't technically transcribe the second song, it's that you likely wouldn't have. The transcriber would not have been there for the improv, if they were they would be unable to transcribe this song due to lack of memory or playback during Bachs time. 
Not only that, they could not interact with the artist at all. Improv is almost random and reflexive in the sense that changing even one note, an accidental slip of the pinky finger can, but not always take the song in a whole new direction. You can't stop playing while someone dips their feather.
If the recorder and artist were to work together, the song would resemble less like an improvisation and more like the conventional "work" music of the time, structurally. It's the difference of recording/performing vs creating.

It seems the problem of preserving musical detail in performances precedes our tubes and diodes.  The first video could be easily scripted to come from an air-powered player piano, but what has that lost compared to Bach noodling around on the piano amongst friends?

Posted by rowuk on 08-06-2024
The jazz student generally becomes VERY proficient at transcription as that is the tool to learn style. Neither of these pieces is a huge challenge.
Additionally, improvisation is mostly a creative use of patterns that we have committed previously to memory (certainly not random). So, with time, we are transcribing the patterns and forms that we recognise, not the individual notes. Slips of the pinky that change direction are "seldom" from the accomplished players.

Posted by Gargoyle on 08-06-2024
...to transcribe that Oscar Peterson song.  You can even use the video, pause and replay as much as you like.

As somewhat of a musician myself, I understand that a lot of patterns that he plays have been done before. 
I am aware that sometimes musicians like to say that things just flow, when it is not true.

I disagree about the pinky slip, you do not understand improvisation. You view it as frozen food.  You can see his natural pauses when his mind is hunting, the notes are just placards. That is what makes it interesting, the subconscious flow of notes. 
It's 3rd person experience, you have to "fall backwards" mentally.
You don't remember too many specifics, because you did not command them in the first place. You are spectating like everyone else.

The "new" sounds that come from improvisation are not easily repeatable by the artist, he would struggle himself to recall and manifest actual new sounds.
There is no way your jazz student could transcribe a legitimate live improvised song. It appears that you miss the point. It's OK.


Jordan Peterson: "Bach wrote so much music it would take a talented copyist...someone who just copies music... 40 years of eight-hour days just to transcribe it"

It took me 10 minutes to edit this post so you only have 50 minutes remaining. I'll check back in one hour for your script.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-07-2024
They are so different work that is ridiculous to “compare” them. Still, there is some very similar inhumane geniuses in Back who composed that amazing ride over the fugue and Peterson why in a way “composed” that improvisation. You, rowuk, might be right and it is the “creative use of patterns… committed previously to memory” but me, not being a musician it is an act of true creative magic. I do not want to know that Peterson pre-rehearsed this in his head of Bach reapplied his previously found his chromatic and rhythmic patterns.  I also do not want to know that rabbit was skillfully hidden in the magician’s sleeve before it appeared in the hat.

Posted by Paul S on 08-07-2024
For me, one of the great things  about Jazz is that it is "taking place in the here and now". However much the artrist practices and/or reherses, my own experiences suggested to me at the time that the "improv" I heard was very much in/of the Moment. And hearing "the same" number on different occasions, there were differences, to be sure, ie., the piece was not "played the same". Certainly some artists were/are better than others at improvisation, whatever that entails, and this is true whether we are citing Miles or Gould. Perhaps the listener has to "grant something" to the musician in order to hear and "relate to" improvisation. It makes me so happy that I can still relate to "expression" in recorded works that I have heard MANY times.

Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-18-2024

Ok, I will share why I feel that those pieces might be “compared”. It is personal and I was very surprised what I recognized that there is a similarity in them.
 
When I am listening to music, not playing with other that i also like to do, but actually listening to music (which might be on my main playback or even YouTube I don't care), I am get in controlled by whatever musical work does. This is very interesting, controlled mode when I become were instrument and very personal this those musical harmonies to the point that I begin to feel that I own them and development of those harmonies is a subject of my consciousness. It is irrelevant if I know the musical piece by heart or I hear it for the first time, in my mind I feel that I am recomposing the musical piece.  They are great musicians, great composers and great conductors. To me personally their greatness is described by how large delta between what they do and what I expected within my imagination what I would do if I were in their place. Bach is very particular bitch because everything that I imagine and everything that I feel would be the best imaginable way to go with a melody, or harmony or tempo or anything else, Bach Does it not just better but he does it in a level which clearly indicates that I'm not even stay close 300,000,000 light miles away. I have my own ego in my sense of identity but in term of development of musical theme Bach treat me as Michael Tyson would treat me at the ring: I am just nothing. For whatever reason I hugely addicted to this masochistic squashing of myself by genius Bach, Bruckner and many others…
 
Now we come to t Oscar Peterson. When I heard it for the first time a month ago I was absolutely destroyed but my expectation “of what I would do”. It was literally the same Michael Tyson effect. Oscar Peterson absolutely blew me away and it was in a teasing, playful and effortless manner. It is not the music that I am listening, but I have absolutely the same feeling how distantly imperfect I am compared to the Oscar Peterson genius. 
That was why I brought those two pieces together

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