I’ve wanted to learn this whole solo for quite some time. I’m a huge a fan of Tigran Hamasyan, on whose album this song appears, and Ben Wendel takes such an amazing solo on it!
I tell my Jazz Improvisation students about the importance of transcription in learning jazz all the time! Though it occurred to me that while I’ve done a ton of solo transcriptions where I write it down as I go, I’ve done very little where I work only aurally, memorizing as I go. I believe that the process of solo transcription for education is certainly valuable doing it either way, but the second method allows you to internalize the material more fully.
I also think that transcription alone is only worth so much–it’s what we do with it afterwards that is at least as important. I’ll be experimenting with different applications and analytical techniques in the next couple weeks, but so far I’ve applied a lot of these lines to Bb rhythm changes with great success.
Christopher Herald 