Whilst sifting through old drives for B-Roll for another video I found this old overhead shot of me working on a Till Brönner transcription from a few years back.

Obviously I don’t set up the camera and makes videos like this every time I transcribe something, but I do make a habit of transcribing on a regular basis.

As my ear gets stronger, the material I’m transcribing tends to change. It’s quite rare these days to be transcribing linear ideas for instance as I’ve done so much of that over the past three decades. I’m more curious now about harmony and chord voicings, and how those might work for orchestration and arrangement purposes when I’m in writing-mode.

As you can hear from this very raw voice note made with my phone, I’m focusing on harmonic development for this new album I’m planning to record in Europe later in the year.

I’m working towards recording the trio (possibly Jojo Mayer and Tom Cawley) in the south of Germany, and then hopping over to Sofia to record the New Bulgarian Voices on top of the trio right after.

Layering elements of Jazz, European folk music, electronic music, and some of my biggest influences from the classical world like Chopin, Brahms, Messiaen, Mahler, Schubert, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, is something incredibly exciting to me.

Knowing I have access to some of the greatest musicians, engineers, and studios out there gives me a lot of hope that no matter what we do in the studio, we will make music we love. And when you add in the possibilities a choir could generate… I start to get a real buzz about the project even when we’re so many months away.

This is a clip from my daily practice routine that I’m constantly documenting to make sure ideas aren’t lost. The one recurring melody throughout this improvised clip could end up being the main theme for a choral arrangement for instance. You just never know.

That’s why I felt compelled to share these three things today.

* The transcription clip represents where I’m coming from and the crazy amount of hours I’ve put into transcription and ear training over the years.

* The audio clip gives you an idea of how I’m constantly making short voice notes of compositional ideas.

* And the video clip is looking forward to this year’s recording projects as I continue to write as much as possible every day, and get used to a new instrument so I’m in the best place possible when the red light goes on to record.

As always, be sure to stream the latest album with Mark Turner, John Ellis, Gretchen Parlato, Jojo Mayer, Elliot Mason, Gregoire Maret, and Tim Miller for free wherever you listen to music.

My listening platform of choice happens to be Spotify.

If you’re a fan of physical media, you can now pre-order vinyl of this latest release

More soon,

Janek

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