About “Solo Vol. 2 - Complete Transcriptions” - Part 2 // On Interpretation and Written Music
On December 18th, 2023, “Solo Vol 2 - Complete Transcriptions” was released. This book contains note-for-note transcriptions of the album “Solo Vol. 2”, transcribed brilliantly by the great transcriber Michael Lucke. The book includes some of my notes about the interpretation of the music, which are as follows:
Many elements of piano music simply cannot be truly notated on a piece of paper. This is true of all written piano music - even “classical” music. Particularly phrasing, pedaling, and dynamic layering cannot truly be notated on paper. Unfortunately these are the elements that primarily bring “life” to our playing - the most important stuff isn’t even there! The notation that we see is shorthand for an interpretation that is implied, and the reader knows what is implied based on their experience listening to other interpretations. This is very much like spoken language: the flow and accent of language isn’t on the page, just the spelling. In music, the subtleties of phrasing and dynamics aren’t on the page, just the notes.
I mention this because someone who has experience reading piano music and playing jazz music would be able to simply read this music and play it it more or less exactly like the recording. But a less experienced reader, or someone experienced in reading but not in playing jazz music, would be greatly helped by listening to the recordings while following along with the transcriptions.
Michael and I decided not to over-annotate this music, as most elements of its interpretation are intuitive to the experienced player. To prevent cumbersome-looking music, only “un-intuitive” sections are annotated for pedaling and phrasing. Regarding pedaling, the prevalent instruction is “Pedal freely”. Technically I don’t think this ever needs to be written on any piano music, as it is always implied. It’s like if a saxophonist’s music said “breathe freely”. Unless the pedal is being exceptionally held down or abstained from, no explicit pedal marking is written. But this definitely does not mean that no pedal is to be used in these sections! Generally when playing piano, I think a great deal of active pedaling is required, but it should rarely sound like a lot of pedal is being used.
And about phrasing, particularly on swinging tunes, how notated rhythm looks is quite inadequate. If the player knows how to interpret it it’s fine, but if interpreted too literally it won’t work. One thing is that how notes are stemmed does not usually correlate to how lines are phrased. For example, here’s m. 13,14, and 15, from “Straight, No Chaser”, with accents and phrasings added:
We believed that annotating every line this way would be cumbersome, especially as an experienced player would often phrase a line like this similarly anyways. Once this sort of phrasing is in the ear of the interpreter, it becomes automatic, and it is actually preferable not to have too much annotation on the score. But a few points about swing eighth notes in general: there is often a slight “push-off” or accent from offbeats (similar to the phrasing of a “dotted rhythm” in classical music), and occasionally eighth notes are grouped in threes. Accents also tend to fall at the high-points of lines, which are often on off-beats, but not always. Also, the degree of “swing” in the eighth notes gets smaller as the tempo increases - so the the swing eighth notes in “Introspection” will be more pronounced and on the triplet than the eighth notes in “Straight, No Chaser”.
One more note regarding the chord changes written: these are provided so the player knows the basic chord changes that I’m thinking of when I’m playing these tunes. They are not “analytical” chord changes. In other words, if a chord substitution is implied, that is not reflected in the chord symbol, so at times the chord change written will disagree with the notes written on the page.
I mention all of this because of the question of whether or not the recording is a necessary reference to play this music. Basically, if you’re an experienced reader and player, this notation alone should generate the sound of the playing on “Solo Vol. 2”. The notes are extremely accurate. However if there are any questions about how something or other should sound, the recording would be the best reference. And perhaps you will see these notes and hear the recording, but decide you want to phrase something differently - that’s OK too! In fact, what I truly hope for with this music is not just for it to be played note-for-note, but also to be inspiration for you to play your own way.
-Glenn
Brooklyn, Oct. 2023
