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Showing posts from December, 2012

Two Holiday Transcriptions: Bird and Mark Turner

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I find jazz Christmas music to be a strange cultural phenomenon, having not grown up with it playing around the house during the late Nov.-late Dec. seasons. But, after playing a couple holiday party-type gigs around campus this year, I understand why the tradition is so deeply rooted in the winter consumer cycle: the melodies are simple and catchy! And so they're also easy to pick up if you haven't played them before, which is a huge plus if you're being asked to play x  or y  holiday song by a frantic hostess and have to transcribe the bass player's sotto voce  rendition of said song in a couple seconds.  I thought I'd transcribe a couple more involved holiday tunes for Christmas: Charlie Parker blowing on Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," live at the Royal Roost on Christmas day, 1948; and Mark Turner's solo on the Willy Wonka classic "Pure Imagination," from the curious Warner Bros. Jazz Christmas Party  (1997) compilation, recorde

Woody Shaw on "If"

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Today is Woody Shaw's birthday, so I thought I'd share a transcription of one of his earlier solos from the classic Larry Young record Unity  (1965): Joe Henderson's F blues "If." I transcribed this solo shortly after finishing Art Farmer's solo over "Sippin' at Bells" from Cool Struttin'  (1958), another blues in F, and there's an expected but refreshing contrast between the two players on these specific tracks. I like how Shaw repeats some notes in his lines, like in m.17 or twice in m.28, which adds some texture in 8th note lines that are otherwise in smooth, continuous motion.  And it's impossible to not mention Shaw's harmonic choices, which seem surprisingly clear when put on paper: Gm7 pentatonic, Abm7 pentatonic (over I, I7 leading to IV, IV, and even over ii-V-Is based on the melodic context), and also pentatonic shapes over dominant scales that suggest a G7 or C7 pentatonic (maybe 1-3-4-5-7). But what really makes the

Art Farmer on "Sippin' at Bells"

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Last month, I picked up Sonny Clark's  Cool Struttin'  (1958) from Princeton Record Exchange after remembering how my friend Luke Celenza once told me it was one of the first records that persuaded him to get into jazz. I've been listening to it plenty since and decided to lift Art Farmer's ear-catchingly clear and melodic solo over the bebop blues "Sippin' at Bells." I don't actually own any records of Farmer's as a leader and hadn't transcribed any of his playing before, but I was struck by the exceptional logic of his lines and how balanced his phrases sound; the voice-leading here is really something. Also, Sonny Clark's comping behind him feels great on this track. Here's the transcription: * * * * * For whatever reason, the majority of the trumpet solo transcriptions I've done recently have been over a 12 bar blues: Clifford Brown on "Wee-Dot," Freddie Hubbard on "Birdlike," Art Farm

DIY: Recording and Releasing a Jazz Album

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Check out this guest post on the nuts and bolts of planning, recording, designing, and releasing your debut record! It's written by my good friend, drummer, and trivia-master Curtis Nowosad, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada.             My name’s Curtis Nowosad and I'm a drummer from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. I recently released my debut album, The Skeptic & the Cynic , and Kevin asked me to write a post about what exactly it is that goes into the recording of an album and putting out your record.             Intro           In the broadest terms, you need three things: time, money, and music. No matter how much you plan, you’ll likely get run into problems that will delay the progress of your project (more on that later). For me personally, the entire process—from the decision to record to the album release—took almost one year to the day. As I started thinking about recording, it occurred to me that I had done a lot of arrangements of pop/rock/R&B/

Freddie Hubbard on "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum"

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Some time ago, I posted a transcription of Wayne Shorter's classic solo on "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum" from Speak No Evil  (1964). Here's a transcription of the other horn solo on that track, Freddie Hubbard's concise but forcefully direct one-chorus statement.  It's the immediacy from the first few notes that really struck me hearing this solo: straight out of the head, there's a declarative quality to the solo (there's something about the fifths in bars 2 and 3 that stand out). How Freddie gets around the horn registerally is also noteworthy, I think—I've heard other trumpet players talk about how trumpet players like he and Woody Shaw got out of the stereotypical trumpet-centric style of playing (smaller intervals, very chromatic) and incorporated a saxophonic flexibility to get around through different octaves quickly and cleanly.  Even with that in mind, the way Freddie plays the bridge is also distinctly instructive: how he carefully paces the solo