Many musicians and teachers suggest transcribing solos by great performers of any era. It is undoubtedly an excellent exercise from many points of view: apart helping develop our harmonic and melodic perception, the analysis of a "solo" can help us understand more deeply the style of that specific genre we're listening to improving at the same time our musical skills giving us the chance to absorb a certain kind of styles, idioms and, more broadly, jazz approaches. I personally prefer (and recommend) singing (by heart) a solo trying to imitate as much as possible the tone of the instrument performing all the accents, dynamics, ghost-notes, shouting if necessary!

As stated by Kodaly (Kecskemet, Hu, 16/12/1882-6/3/1967), singing is an "internal skill" and because the voice is part of our bodies anything learned through singing is learned more deeply and thoroughly. Singing is deeply personal as you make the sound. Learning through an instrument is an "external skill". Singing, according to himself, is also vital for developing that essential part of a musician: the inner hearing. It is not possible to sing anything that has not been imagined in the inner ear; therefore singing proves that the music has been assimilated and understood. He even states that: "A child who plays an instrument before he sings may remain unmusical for a lifetime".

Singing, then, will really give us the chance to absorb music ideas to which we have to add up ours in order to forge our own style without repeating automatically some patterns taken from some solos or, even worse, copying some great musicians' style.

I did choose as first solo to propose a tune useful, according to myself, didactic-wise. What really is interesting to my aim is that it is a Blues (in "D"), a basic form very important for the musical preparation of a student and, moreover, is for intermediate players thus approachable from the majority of those interested.

Some considerations about this solo are listed below:

• Note how each chorus begins with a melody line which lasts four bars and it's repeated the next four bars. This is a typical approach to the blues. Some would play the same line for all the extension of the chorus (generally twelve bars).
   
• The way he approaches the second chorus resembles a lot the style of saxophonist Jonny Hodges.
   
• The "glissato" as a main clarinet feature (thanks to its acoustic characteristics) and technique sometimes overused by a whole generation of clarinettists of the past or with styles influenced by Dixieland, New Orleans, 40s swing, etc. Lots of "modern" clarinet-players tend to avoid this overuse trying to have a wiser use of it (see Daniels' solo about it).
   
• Apart a minimum use of ghost-notes, there is a very small use of certain kind of dissonances indeed (altered fifth or ninth, etc.) except for some chromatic passages at the end of the solo or for the 5^th and 6^th bar of the second chorus where we encounter a sharp-fourth caused by the repetition of a pattern which comes form the beginning of the chorus and is set in "D" major.
   
• Note the complete absence of the so-called Blues Scale. We encounter a minor third (blue note) at the end of the solo caused by a small pattern where there is the repetition of an ascending half-tone