Beginnings

19

I got a first taste of the magnitude of problems I was in for

when I tried to listen to a piece of jazz melody on a record and
go to the piano to play it. While I could perfectly well hear a
simple melody a few times over and attain it as a singable
accomplishment with voice and hands, these jazz melodies were
by no means simple. A three-second stretch of play within a
course of improvisation Id listened to for years now engaged
me for several hours, unsuccessfully trying to grab the real
details so as to bring each of its tones to singability and then get
the strip down at the keyboard. The sheer looks of several seconds of transcribed jazz are suggestive:

(Charlie Parker, My Little Suede Shoes)

When taking a melody from a record whose improvisations I

figured I knewand recording gives improvised melodies a radically new status they didnt formerly have, as they can now be
learned at a level of detail that a one-time hearing cant achieve
I discovered a symptomatic vagueness in my grasp of these familiar improvisations. I apparently only knew the melodies in
certain broad outlines. Particularly with respect to the rapid passages, I found that when singing along with a Charlie Parker
recording, for instance, Id been completely glossing the detailed
particularities of the pitches of melodies that I figured I knew
well, since my introduction to this jazz as a young teenager. I
grasped their essential shape perhaps, but hadnt ever really sung
them with a refined note-to-note precision. And it was very particular notes that needed to be at hand now, at the piano, if I was