Well, I spent the last week (yes, it took me a week) transcribing Sam Gendel’s solo on Lonnie’s Lament in this live performance with “Tiki” Pasillas and Fabiano do Nascimento:
You can find a link for the PDF on my brand new Transcriptions page. I figured I might as well have a page that indexes these, assuming I’m going to do more. (And I do plan on doing at least some more of them.)
I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to trying to transcribe improvisations. Other than one hurried study of a Charlie Rouse solo I did in undergrad for a lesson, this is my first attempt at transcribing improvised music. I ended up doing it all by ear (no saxophone in hand), mostly directly off Youtube (but for a few tough sections, with the help of the Transcribe app, which is handy for marking beats and measures and figuring out what’s going on in difficult bits). That said, I don’t know if I’ll be memorizing or practicing this solo all that much. I suspect Henry Threadgill is right that too much of that can crowd out your own voice, though I’m sure a moderate amount of doesn’t hurt. For me, the bigger benefit is really seeing how other people skin the cat, and learning from their solutions, rather than collecting licks I can deploy in my own solos.
Incidentally, the toughest measures to write down were measures 45-47 of the solo, which isn’t surprising: that’s the most hectic and florid bit of the solo. What did surprise me was that it was not the pitches but the rhythms that were hard to figure out in that section. (I’m still not 100% confident I’ve got them right, so if anyone has feedback, feel free to offer it.) I should also note that the ties are intended primarily as phrasing markings, though they roughly follow Gendel’s articulations too. It’s hard to be sure, since he’s playing very softly and legato throughout, but I think those markings are correct too. The quarter-tone tuning markings are exaggerations and guesses, too, definitely not meant to be taken literally; I could as easily have written “lip down” on some notes and called it a day.
One more thing: I’m pretty sure they are just using the original chord changes, but if they’d changed them subtly, I can’t tell. I don’t really have such a great ear for harmony, but at least going by the bass line that do Nascimento is playing, this seems right. Again, feedback is welcome.
I didn’t transcribe the improvised coda at the end, even though I think it’s very striking. Maybe I’ll come back to it sometime. For now, I’m happy with what I have accomplished with it, and I’m ready to try something else.