An Ornette Coleman transcription resource

Don Cherry on trumpet and Ornette Coleman on saxophone, performing at The Five Spot in New York City, 1959 – Photograph by Bob Parent

Silent Form is a UK-based research project that aims to rethink the emergence of the free jazz movement with a particular focus on the music of Ornette Coleman from the late 1950s until the early 1960s. A central part of this research has been a major transcription project focussed on Coleman’s recordings during this period.

The aim of this website is to make these transcriptions freely available, but also to encourage engagement with the transcriptions themselves. All the material found here has been notated using MuseScore – an open source programme that can be downloaded here.

Musical transcription is an inherently subjective process, and the material presented here represents one way of interpreting what can be heard on record. Consequently, we invite you to download, play, edit, and resubmit you own versions of these transcriptions in order to open a debate about the music, the process of transcription, and what the ultimate objectives of notating improvised objectives can be.

We will upload new transcriptions at regular intervals, so followers of the project have time to explore and engage with each new piece as it is published. The most recent upload is presented below: