My 22 month old son is constantly listening to the world around him and mimic-ing the sounds he hears. We've all seen this happening, but as a dad who is seeing the progress he is making daily, the results are quite astonishing. How many adults do you know who learn a foreign language in 2-3 years? Not very many, I'd bet. And yet this is something that every baby on our planet does. It's absolutely amazing and yet for the most part we totally take it for granted.
In the institutionalizing of music education we've almost completely ignored this most tried-and-true method of learning vocabulary. But why is that? I believe there has been an unnecessary and unhelpful academic stigma placed on the natural process of learning by copying or mimic-ing each other. It is often seen to be distasteful and even contrary to the principal of developing "originality" of expression. It's a false dichotomy, however. No one says Isaac Newton's thoughts were unoriginal because he expressed them in the same language that Shakespeare and Chaucer used. The elements they all used (the letters and words of the English language) were the same, but their combination of them and end expressions were completely different. The same goes for learning scales, tetrachords, arpeggios, interval patterns, licks, etc. which are elements of our common musical vocabulary. It's practically important to be able to recognize and use these elements to carry on a musical conversation. Repeated listening, and with the benefit of slowing music down, helps to promote recognition of musical elements. Mimic-ing / playing along with music you want to learn is the first chance to practically apply new vocabulary. With recognition of the elements and the context they are presented comes the opportunity to start using the same elements in new contexts, much like using words to construct sentences in conversations.
In music it seems there's often a lack of distinction between the practical process of learning a language and one's long-term artistic goals and ambitions. We as adults often hesitate to directly mimic musical language (the way babies would) because we are afraid that if we do we might become a "clone" of the person we are copying. To follow this logic to it's natural end, we would say that to become the most original musician we can, we should not listen to any music by other people. Poets should not read other poets, novelists are no longer allowed into libraries and bookstores, you get the picture. It's ridiculous. Babies don't get caught up in this like adults do, but why? Well, for one thing, they don't have ambitions of speaking like Barack Obama when they start saying their first words, or writing like Ernest Hemingway when they start to spell.
Transcribing a musician is a bit like getting into their head for that moment. By slowing down their music we have more time to observe the choices our favourite musicians make and the elements of their language, note by note and phrase by phrase. It's very similar to what our son is doing now. He doesn't have the benefit of manipulating the speed of our speech (though we often slow down and simplify our language for him). But he is getting a lot of repeated exposure from every direction to our language. Then he repeats the words and phrases he learns to see how they fit. This is especially neat to see - there are some word combinations he comes up with that are, well, very unique. He, and every other toddler, can be completely original without even trying because he is experimenting with and thus mastering the elements he's working on.
So the next time someone says "You're being like a baby", you may just want to say "Thanks".
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