“EFFENDI” is a nice McCoy tune that was recorded on an Impulse date called INCEPTION during his tenure with Coltrane, this date features Tyner in a trio setting with Elvin Jones and Art Davis on drums and bass. “EFFENDI” features a simple harmonized melody line in the piano’s right hand which is answered by the left hand and the bass. the form is ABA and the same form is used for soloing…
MCCOY TYNER- EFFENDI (mp3)
For some time now i’ve been hoping for a chance to post transcriptions and commentary by other people. i have my particular musical tastes which perhaps make the stylistic range of this blog a little narrow. as an antidote, contributions by others may fill in some cracks that i neglect. although the transcription below is in keeping with much of the material i cover, i’m very excited to present it… i met Craig Morrison, a pianist living here in Japan, on a job i was doing in Yokohama and in the course of our conversation we talked a little about this blog. i mentioned my hope to present material from other people and he took it from there. we threw emails back and forth discussing the material and agreeing upon how it should be presented. apart from the transcription itself, i was very keen to have him talk a little about it, which he did nicely. Craig’s words are below…
Here is a great version of the Charlie Parker chestnut “Ornithology” as played by Bud Powell on his seminal 1951 recording THE AMAZING BUD POWELL VOL. 1 The track clocks in at only 2:20, microscopic by today’s recording standards. Bud was a victim of the technology of the times. 10″ 78 rpm records had to be kept at or under 3 minutes. Fortunately for us (and for all jazz listeners) an incredibly fertile musical imagination was pouring out of the man. With no time to spare, Bud was able to spontaneously craft dozens of incredibly strong melodic statements in this one very short solo. For a bit of historical perspective, Powell is THE prototypical bop pianist and was, perhaps, the leading proponent on his instrument in that emerging idiom in its heyday. He, along with all the other canonical figures of the bebop movement, Bird, Diz, Max and Mingus, was a member of the now legendary “greatest concert ever” band, or “Massey Hall” band. In keeping with his reputation and status within of the jazz pantheon, his vocabulary IS bebop. It is pure, undiluted bop, straight from the “voice” of one of the music’s founding fathers.
It is notable that Bud chose not to make even a single full statement of the original melody here. I believe he chose to do so because he wanted to maximize the time in which he could express himself and his musical voice. So, of approximately 100 measures of recorded music, about 80% of what we get is Bud blowing. It’s a good thing too, because he offers up so many great nuggets for our collective study and assimilation. If you’ve listened to much Powell, you’ll know that he was an amazing talent who really did have ideas just gushing out of him, and could sound almost out of control at times. Technically, he was an amazing virtuoso on the instrument. On this recording, there are several instances where this “off the rails” vibe shows itself, via passages of Bud “spewing” notes out of his instrument and into every nook and cranny, to the point where metric delineation is almost impossible to notate or follow. In these extremely rapid passages, I was simply unable to notate what was going on, even with the benefit of software to slow down the original recording. Enter James Mahone, the creator of this blog. He is a stellar musician and a very interesting cat to talk with. He took my unfinished transcription, and was able to somehow quite accurately fill in all these jaw-droppingly fast runs that were too much for me. Thanks James! It was a true team effort. I appreciate you posting this, so that it can be of benefit to musicians, students and jazz enthusiasts everywhere.
The “wow” factor provided by all the aforementioned fast passages notwithstanding, I believe that everything else in the solo is Bud’s TRUE legacy: hard swinging, perfectly constructed and harmonically impeccable bebop phraseology. Simply put, no other pianist at that time was capable of playing bebop the way Bud played it, with such a high level of fluency and creativity in the bebop language. Perhaps only the likes Bird himself could give him a run for his money. There is a wealth of material here for students of the music. Do yourself a huge favor and check out this transcription. You’ll be glad you did. I have purposely forgone a detailed technical analysis of the solo. I leave that to the folks who are interested enough in my transcription to grab it and learn something about the details of Bud’s style. Enjoy!
BUD POWELL- ORNITHOLOGY (mp3)
“Theme For Malcolm”, written by Donald Brown, is another song featured on the Donald Byrd record GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS. it has a catchy rhythm section vamp with the piano and bass playing what sounds like a flattened out reggae pattern. after the eight bar intro, the horns play Brown’s choppy melody in unison over a static harmony. the initial melody is sixteen bars long. the twelve bar bridge is a variation on the original melody and vamp. the last section has an interesting chord progression. the piano plays it alone the first time and the horns join the second time through the form (ABC). the transcription that Yuko, a pianist here in Tokyo, sent me was written out in 4/4 but listening to the recording, it seems that the drummer is playing the first half of “C” in 3/4, so i wrote it out that way. there’s a lot of underlying activity happening, especially in the piano part. it’s hard to say what’s written and what’s composed on the spot so keep in mind that this is a rough sketch. thanks again to Yuko who brought this lead sheet to a gig that we did together…
Sorry it’s been so long since posting anything of substance. but I’m finally back with a nice solo by Thelonius Monk on the song “Black And Tan Fantasy” from his great record THELONIUS MONK PLAYS DUKE ELLINGTON. it features Oscar Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums. it’s a unique record because it (obviously) contains no Monk tunes. the album was intended as a soft-sell approach to attracting listeners who might have been hesitant to purchase a record by the “far out”, “weird” Monk. the record is indeed very subdued, not necessarily a bad thing to me. in fact, this is one of my absolute favorite Monk records. Monk’s respect for Ellington is obvious in his beautiful interpretations of a few of Ellington’s most well known compositions. the eerie thing about this record is that there are so many similarities between the music of Ellington and Monk that a listener could be forgiven for thinking that Monk is playing his own music. Monk’s solo from “Black And Tan Fantasy” is three choruses over a twelve bar blues form…
Here’s another song from MIRROR MIRROR, a date led by Joe Henderson and features Chick Corea, Billy Higgins and Ron Carter. i featured other music from this CD in an earlier post. when i listen to “Blues For Liebestraum” blues is not the first word that flashes through my mind. nonetheless it is a pretty cool, modernish melody with a challenging progression…
Below is a transcription of Barry Harris’ solo on “Moose The Mooch” from the record BARRY HARRIS AT THE JAZZ WORKSHOP, a trio record featuring Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. Harris, even after all these years on the scene and tremendous acclaim as an educator, is still imho a very underrated pianist, not as quickly mentioned along with some of his contemporaries, as one of jazz’s foremost performers. the solo here is an example of Harris’ beautiful, undiluted bebop conception…
“Blue Silver” is from the Horace Silver record JODY GRIND which features Silver on piano along with Woody Shaw on trumpet, tenor saxophonist Tyrone Washington, James Spaulding on alto sax and flute, Larry Ridley playing bass and drummer Roger Humphries. “Blue Silver” opens up with a four measure introductory passage. the three horns, voiced in fourths, are answered by the rhythm section’s unison line. the horns then play pentatonic figures over a moving harmony, following with a bluesy shout answered by rhythm section hits. the mood and feel changes in the next section as the horns play a pretty, very Silverish melodic line that starts in the key of Ab minor then moves on to Eb minor. the horns play another line, shaped similarly, but in the key of G major, which is followed by another line, also shaped like the others, that leads back to the opening passage. Silver plays the song’s only solo, blowing over the whole form of the song in his one- of- a- kind, spare, bluesy style. “Blue Silver” is a great song from a really good record that i wasn’t familiar with until recently. i decided upon hearing it to sketch it out. some of the horn lines are difficult to pick out but i think it’s pretty close. below is a lead sheet and a transcription of the top line of his two chorus solo…
HORACE SILVER- BLUE SILVER (mp3)
OPEN TRANSCRIPTION WINDOW (LEAD SHEET)
OPEN TRANSCRIPTION WINDOW (SOLO)
Mark Turner recorded this piece some twelve years ago on his self titled record. it was composed by Mercedes Rossy, a pianist and composer who passed away at only thirty four years old from illness. her brother is Jorge Rossy, a frequent Turner collaborator. it’s a gentle waltz, played with an almost classical mood by Turner, Edward Simon on piano, Chris Thomas on bass and Brian Blade on drums. the melody built from a four note motif, D-F-Eb-Db. the motif moves down chromatically a minor third to start on B. it then move up a minor sixth to F# and finally down to Eb, where it’s altered slightly. the harmony that accompanies runs through two thirds of a cycle:
instead, the harmony moves back to the beginning of the cycle, but this time under a different melody in measures 9 through 11, then to the variation of the original motif in the next four bars. i really like the way this set of chords fit together color-wise… the previous twelve bar section is repeated with the addition of a nice counter-melody before moving in to an eight bar vamp over an ostinato figure (which also serves as the intro) and then onto the solos which are over the same form… an album of Rossy’s music was released around the same time as Turner’s record. i plan to find it.
During the late 1980s and early 90s, French film maker Claire Denis released her first two movies, CHOCOLAT and S’EN FOUT LA MORT (No Fear No Die)”, that featured music by Abdullah Ibrahim. i haven’t had a chance to see the second movie but i was really impressed by her debut, which addressed the legacy of French colonialism in Cameroon and the consequences one faced upon stepping outside of the rigidly drawn lines of social place. i saw it many, many years ago, and besides being moved by the powerfully understated performance of one of my favorite actors, Isaach De Bankolé, i remember being thoroughly hypnotized by the beautiful camerawork and the evocative music of Ibrahim. after seeing the movie i tried for a long time to find the soundtrack which unknown to me, had a different title than the film. MINDIF, released by Enja records 1988 featured Ibrahim on piano, voice and flute, Ricky Ford on tenor and soprano sax, Craig Handy on tenor sax and flute, Benny Powell on trombone, David Williams on the bass and drum master Billy Higgins, also playing an instrument called the gambray. the song “African Market” sounds just like the name suggests. Higgins and Williams start the song with a sick little vamp to set up the rest of the band. the three horns come in with the melody which is simple and singable, while Ibrahim riffs around it on the piano. i love the way the melody is harmonized. it’s as if Ibrahim wrote this for a choir; the harmonies sound like those you’d hear in a Baptist church. the song form is quite long (AABA AABA CCC¹ AABA). it could be called a compound AABA form. it’s an expanded version of the traditional thirty-two bar AABA structure. each section is eight bars long. the harmony essentially moves between the I the V chord. during the C sections, the V chord is altered to give it a bit more of an ominous quality. it’s such a joyous song; it never fails to make me want to move. “African Market” is the liveliest track on the record which is generally quiet and meditative. it has some really awesome moments, especially the sweet, sweet horn arrangement in the song “Pule”…
ABDULLAH IBRAHIM
Another Herbie solo for you, this one from the Miles Davis record, THE SORCERER, on the song “Prince Of Darkness”. another cut that had me saying to myself, “more, more!”
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