New transcriptions of Django solos

NylonDave

Hi there. I hope I don't seem ungrateful, I do appreciated your hard work, writing out a transcription is a lot of hard work. You might enjoy taking some lessons in sight reading rhythm if you can find a good jazz sax player who specialises in that kind of thing.

Most often in the transcriptions you place a note on a down beat on beats one and three when in fact it is played just ahead of the beat.

Also if there is a two note or three note pickup to a syncopated target you sometimes place all of the notes slightly late to place the note being approached on a downbeat. I understand this is because you are hearing a pickup in smooth quavers and it seems obvious that they should land on the beat, but more often than not they land on anticipated chord tone or tension.

I know it is tough to notate swing rhythms, conventional notation wasn't really set up for them. But it can be done accurately, and it will really help you to get into Conrad's rhythmic concept and to work on your own improvising and to get a clear concept of rhythm, call and response and how call and response is used in motivic development if you work on hearing (and writing) rhythm more accurately.

It is important to remember that although an inexperienced player may not be reading the rhythm and is just using the score to help find the notes and adding an approximate rhythm to them based on their familiarity with the original an experienced reader will pick up the rhythm first and play straight through in time. If the rhythms dont make sense then a good reader will be extremely confused, and actually misled if they pursue the transcription without listening to the original. It looks like this....... itlo oksl iketh is, to them and (sorry) than can be really irritating.

If you are in contact with Mr Givone, maybe he could proof read future transcriptions for you ? He has obviously gained a lot of experience and expertise and might be able to give you some good feedback and share his own proofreading procedures and tips.

All the best for your continuing and much appreciated work. The website is obviously a labour of love and is very smooth and looks great. The Grilles look excellent as well with just the right amount of detail, please keep at it, we do appreciate it.



D.

PapsPier

No no no offense taken, of course.
One of the goal of this transcription project was also to improve on sight reading, rhythm etc. but it is a slow progression...
I get your point and obviously I am in the first case you described: an inexperienced player who wants an approximate sheet music to remember how to start and who already knows the original recording.
Ideally I would like to be more accurate but it is just beyond my knowledge... I understand the flaws you point at but I would not be able to write a better version right now.
Ben Givan won't have time to proofread all the chords and I don't think he is interesting by that task, but if somebody wants to correct them, I would be more happy to see these corrections and learn from them!

Best

NylonDave

Yeah you have set yourself a huge task and I applaud you.

As you have guessed the proof reading would be a task of a similar size.

No doubt the quality will improve as you proceed and that will take time.

But if everybody waited for perfection before starting nothing would ever get done.

Bon route et bon courage !

D.