I am happy to say that I have finally got some transcriptions uploaded to my site, brooklynbrassreed.com My good friend Matt “Sully” Sullivan was in town with his band, “Bruce In The USA“(They played two nights at The Brooklyn Bowl.), and he came by the shop and he showed me around Word Press. How to upload PDF’s and gave me a short tutorial on blogging.
The transcriptions I have uploaded are all Jackie Mclean solos from his Blue Note CD – NATURE BOY. They are free to download but if you feel like making a donation to the effort there will be a Paypal link where you can donate or I also take Venmo @brooklynbrassreed
These are all great standards, You don’t Know What Love Is,Nature Boy,I Can’t Get Started With You,What is This Thing Called Love, I Fall In Love Too Easily, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Star Eyes,A Nightingale sang In Berkley Square
I did these transcriptions about a year ago during the Covid lock down.
I have a lot more Jackie Mclean transcription that I will be uploading to the site so stay tuned. Swing,Swang,Swingin’, is an album of Jackies that I just finished transcribing. There are seven tunes on the album. I’ll take Romance, I Love You, I Remember You, Stablemates, What’s New, Let’s Face the Music and Dance,116th&Lennox. Jackie has great bands on both of these albums and I highly recommend that you give them a listen. I included all the chord changes on these transcriptions along with a tempo marking.
A very interesting note about these solo transcriptions is that they are a lot easier to play than they look. some of the long note grouping / flourishes can be intimidating at first, but nothing Jackie plays is awkward or even difficult to play.
A good way to practice them is to first go to Youtube find the song and copy the URL into a wave form converter. They are all over the internet. I use YT5s.com
After you have the song in a wave form drop it into a music program like GarageBand,Pro Tools or Abelton. Now you can slow it down and even loop it as you play along. You will be surprised how easily every thing lays on the horn.
The first thing most musicians say when I tell them that I am into Jackie Mclean is something like “Yeah Jackie’s is cool man but he plays sharp”. This tells me that they have not really listened to much Jackie. He had a unique sound, edgy, gritty, organic, he even growled, and yes there are some recordings where he is playing sharp, but if that is all you take away from his playing, you missed it. You better go back and listen to Bluesnik , Hat Trick or Consequence or any of over 50 albums he recorded as a leader ( and just as many as a highly sought after sideman) and you will no doubt realize Jackie is the real deal.
I gave one of my Jackie transcriptions to a musician I met at a jam session . He thanked me for it then said “You don’t need to transcribe solos just listen to the masters”. For me transcribing is listening at the highest level. You really get inside the music.
I regret to say I never heard Jackie live. I have been listening to his recordings and transcribing his solos for almost two years now. Here are some of those transcriptions. Just click on Ruben’s Transcriptions at the top of the page.
I have more solos that I will be uploading. I just have to convert them to PDF’s. I have solos by Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, George Coleman, David Sanborn, Maceo Parker, Joshua Redman, Eddie Harris, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. I Even have a couple short clarinet solos, one of Barney Bigard with Duke Ellington and one of Edmond Alman with Louie Armstrong. I also have a PDF of an out of print Eddie Harris book called “Jazz Cliche Capers”. It’s pretty cool. It is kinda Eddie Harris stream of consciousness. It’s about fifty pages of Eddie just playing his musical thoughts. There is a short introduction with some Eddisms. It’s cool. I copied the book into FINALE so now I can easily transpose the book to E-flat for alto sax, concert key or even bass clef. All that, coming soon!!
And if you appreciate these transcriptions you can click open the link “Ruben’s Transcription” and you will see a donation page , click on the Paypal link. I also accept VENMO send donation to:@brooklynbrassreed
Thanks Ruben
