My Improvisation on "Footprints"

My Improvisation on "Footprints"

Not the best I've ever played it, but I'm fairly pleased with my soloing there compared to videos of me playing last year at this time.  See if you can spot some of the techniques I described in my earlier blog!

Transcription Analysis - Blues by Five - Miles Davis

Blues By Five - Miles Davis's Solo

I'll be transcribing this solo by Davis on Red Garland's piece, Blues by Five, heard here.

The first bar of his solo is simple; Bb, the root note of the chord and the piece repeated twice. The next bar sees Davis alternate from the C# to the D, moving from the minor seventh to the major seventh.  He resolves back on the Bb in the next bar before leaving a bar space.  Bar 4 of his solo sees him play a G, Bb, C over the Eb7 chord.  Two of those notes are of the chord, the C serves as the sixth.  He repeats the melody in the next bar again, going from the G to the Bb to the C back to the Bb.  

Most of what he’s played so far have been chord tones.  In the next bar where the chord is a Bb7, he plays two crotchet Fs on beats 1 and 2, the fifth of the chord, again leaving space; his solo starts out fairly simple.  Playing an embellishment on the 3rd of the chord, he moves up to the Eb in preparation for the next chord, which is a Cm, of which Eb is the third.  He resolves the Cmin 7 bar on an F, the 4th; again, this prepares us for the next bar, which is an F7.  He leaves plenty of space in this part of his solo, with crotchet and quaver rests dotted around everywhere. Davis seems to be anticipating the next chord, moving from a C to a D in preparation for the Bb7 chord, using the C# as a passing note.  This is fairly simple compared to the beginnings of the Evans solo that I analyzed earlier, but it makes it no less effective.  
Davis repeats what he did with the Cmin7 bar, playing the root of the chord down to the F before leaving it hanging - he is making use of the chord tones, but is leaving space for his solo to breathe to start with.  
The next two bars are dotted with three notes only, one note of interest being the crotchet Db on beat 1 of the Bb7 bar.  The chord is major, but Davis plays a single minor third, surrounded by no other notes, meaning he wanted to emphasize this altered note.
The next bar sees him simply play over the Eb7, missing out the third.  He drops onto the 9th of the Bb in the next bar before leaving the following bar after that free.
The solo largely remains the same as this, full of space with mostly chord tones being played, until bar 25, on another Bb7 chord.  Here we see the solo at it’s busiest yet, with two whole bars filled with quaver notes.  The first bar, a Bb7, sees his run played purely with chord tones with an added ninth.  For Bb here he is simply using a Bb scale.  When he moves onto the Eb7 he alternates between the 9th and the b11th, before moving up to the Bb at the end of the bar in preparation for the next chord which is a Bb7.  He ascends to the root before ending on the 9th, again leaving a bar of space.
The two bars after that see him play exactly the same thing even though the chords are different.  At the end of the second bar this time, he stays on the 11th, rather than climbing up to the Bb.  He drops down to F, then goes from the Ab to the Bb to the F.

This first page has seen Davis play simple chord tones with simple rhythms - almost everything is either a quaver note, a crotchet, or a dotted minim.  Apart from spacing and off beat runs, we haven’t seen anything very complex in terms of timing, but if you listen to the track, you couldn’t tell it was this simple.  His solo is so well played and thought out. 
 At bar 38 we start to see some accidentals.  F, E natural up to Eb again is played over an Eb 7.  While simply passing notes, this is an indication of harmonic color being added to the solo.  Fast forward to bar 41, and we see a large grouping of accidentals.  Eb, C, B, Ab, G, Gb, F, E natural, Eb, Db - our first chromatic run!  I knew I wasn’t just making it up when I said they were used...
Over to bar 44 and we see a D# or Eb being played over  Bb7 chord, as he runs up onto E natural, to F, G, A, B and C - almost a C melodic minor scale, starting on the D#.  This proves interesting, as the chord in the following bar is in fact a Cmin7.  For the rest of the solo, we see that Davis continues to bass his notes on the chord tones on the beats, though as it progresses, he leaves less space outwith his solo and puts more rests inside runs, stopping briefly before running back in with a chromatic lick into the chord tones.  Crotchets turn to quavers and quavers turn to semi-quavers as the solo intensifies.  This is a fine example of development in a solo, and Davis’ sparse use of well selected notes shows his craftsmanship and knowledge of his art.

Transcription Analysis - "Beautiful Love", by Bill Evans

Thanks to http://www.jazztranscriptions.co.uk/ I've been able to find transcriptions of various solos online for my transcription assignment.

The first one I'll be looking at in depth is the first chorus played by Evans in his solo in Beautiful Love, Take 2, from his album "Explorations", the transcription of which can be found here.

If we take it from bar 33, we see that the chord is Em7b5.  Evans leaves a gap before his solo starts, coming in on the third hit of what appears to be a triplet beat.  He ascends upwards, going from the 6th to the b5th, to the m7th and up to the 9th.  The next chord is a n A7b9, which he starts on the A, before placing the b9 twice, holding on it - we see already that he's placing emphasis on this Bb, which although it's in key, serves as the altered note in both chords.  

The third bar of his solo is a simple Dm chord.  He plays down the D minor chord tones, resolving on the F, but not before hopping onto the Bb again.  This Bb is becoming a recurring note in his solo already, though if we look at the left hand we see something interesting; Evans plays an F, A B natural and an E, over what should essentially be D minor.  This discordance and harmonic separation between left and right hands is a trademark of Evans work.  

His right hand rests on on the D for the next chord, while his left hand stabs twice.  This gives his solo some space.

The next bar is a Gm9 chord.  Evans starts his run on the minor ninth, playing a minor triad of that note up to the 3rd, 5th, 7th and then minor 9th again, this time up the octave.  He uses the notes of the chord tones to serve as a basis for whatever he plays on the bar, with any passing notes being related.  The next bar sees him move out of the chord almost completely, playing an F#, A and G over a C7 chord.  Apart from hitting C, Bb and b9th to give it a hint of the chord's tonality, we see that Evans likes to play around and outside the chord tones, occasionally jumping out of the chord's note pool for added suspense.

Other notable parts of this solo can be seen bars 48 through to 51, where he leaps from the middle of the keyboard all the way to the very highest notes through playing a series of triplets.  Most of these are based around the chord tones again, but they are rarely directly played.  For example, in bar 49, where the chord is an Em7b5, Evans goes from playing an Eb to a D natural to an F#; he goes from the major 7th to the minor 7th to the 9th, before jumping up to the A, B and D, the 6th, b5th and 7th.  He finishes the run by playing an E to a C# over a Dm chord before playing a straight Dm arpeggio back down into the middle of the keyboard again.  

Even through this analysis of just the first chorus of his solo, before Evans has even began to delve into a more complicated note pool, we see that while he certainly plays with a wide plethora of altered notes, everything is based around the basic chord tones in his right hand, while his left hand often plays brief but heavily altered chords.  This encourages me to study the chord tones more in depth and to play around with them more.  I am challenging myself to come up with a solo for a tune over the summer using only notes linked to the chord tones.  

Examples of the tools I've acquired over the year

At the start of the year, my soloing was mostly me hitting chord tones and other notes in between without much thought, while hoping it made sense.  It didn't, though.

However, after working all year, by listening to and playing other tracks, and receiving guidance from Steve, my teacher.   I've found myself faced with a bunch of licks and riffs that I now use almost constantly.  I will list a handful of examples, along with accompanying videos.
Blues Licks
These are all in the video - I play them in the order seen here.

I call them blues licks because if I was to use them all in my jazz solos all the time, I'd be spat on by jazz critics. These are mostly used in any blues/rock and roll solos I do.

VIDEO - 1) Triplet run.  Very quick m7-6-5  m3-2-1 descending run that can be used in a wide variety of places. This one can work very well in jazz pieces if you play it in a different key of the tune you are playing, working especially well if played in the subdominant of said key.  Also works if mixed with other chords, eg. when I performed "Peace Piece" by Bill Evans, I played this run in C along with an F#9 chord and ran down 4 octaves during my improvisation at the end.  It seemed to work well.

VIDEO - 2) Descending tritone/blues note based run.

VIDEO -3) m7 - 1 - m3 triplet run.  Basic blues riff.  Can work well in jazz solos if followed by a chromatic run.

VIDEO - 4) b5 - 5 - 8 triplet run.  Another basic blues riff.  Works well in jazz solos if emphasis is placed on the b5.  

Riffs I have under my belt for Jazz
Here are some of the things I've picked up this year that I use in my solos.  They are basic ideas and will often be embellished or altered whilst playing.

VIDEO - 6)  2-m3-5-m7 run.  Picked this up whilst listening to some modern jazz performances on youtube.  It's played slow in the video, but if played very quickly and over several octaves it can sound very, very jazz, even though it's simple.

VIDEO - 6) Tonic triad, Tritone triad.  Two major (or minor) triads straight after one another.  If in the key of C, would be C-E-G  F#-A#-C# or vice versa.  Picked this up from listening to Evans and Oscar Peterson.  I'm not sure if it's exactly what they played, but with the timing I play in the video, it's a well used riff that opens up space for a fast, continuous onslaught of notes.  I like to play a blues scale just after this.

VIDEO - 7) Chromatic run.  If I feel I need to do something quickly, make my solo more jazzy, transition to the next chord or even forget where I am, I use this.  I couldn't for the life of me understand how so many jazz pianists made their solos sound so discordant but in key at the same time.  I thought this was a particular lick that I just wasn't getting, but then I discovered it was just a chromatic run.  I use this a lot.

VIDEO - 8) Suspended 4th run.  Heard at the end of the "Belief" solo, this is one of my favourites to play.

Solo Analysis- "Belief", by Bob Reynolds

What follows is my first "aural transcription" for the piano solo in Belief, by Bob Reynolds.  I played this as part of Andy McDowell's degree show.  Rather than transcribing something literally, I will instead play it to the camera.  This resembles almost exactly the solo heard in the actual track.

Where the left hand stops, there is a bar of 3/4, then it goes back into 4/4.  So if the timing seems a little fuzzy there, sorry!

Note the broken suspended fourth run at the end - I didn't play it very clearly there, but it's something that has cropped up in several pieces/solos I've been listening to/playing over the year.  I plan to use it when soloing over "Footprints" (Wayne Shorter) which we are performing this Friday - listen out for it!  I find it to be a very effective run that works over many chord sequences.  Another tool for the belt.

The first part of the solo is played over two chords or modes - essentially C ionian and A ionian.  The chords change ever bar, and the melody changes with it.  The most obvious effect this has on the solo is whether a C or C# is played.   In almost all cases, if the chord played in the left hand is the A, then the right hand will play a C#.  An exception is made in bar 5 of the solo, when a C natural is played over the A chord.  Though this is a very subtle movement, it changes the whole tonality of the entire line.  It's absolutely fascinating how much one little note can change a melodic run.

When playing down the octaves, notes that stick out a lot are E, B, A, D and C# - the first five notes of A major.  If played over the C chord, the notes are mostly E, B, A and D, with the G occasionally added in.
An important part of this solo is the rhythm and emphasis placed on the notes; a lot of the time, the same notes are being played, but what keeps the solo interesting is the different emphasis placed on each individual note.

One of my favourite parts is when the right hand simply plays a B over and over again, while the left hand fills in the gaps with a D, C and B, changing to a D, C# and B when the chord changes.  The part where the right hand climbs features many accidentals - it's all sequence, but moves up a tone, then a semi tone, then a tone, then a semi tone, until we get back into the same note pool we were in before - A, B, C#, D and E.  70% of the solo consists of these five notes.

The right hand drops down the octaves in a similar way it did before, then there's a quick break bar of 3/4 where the chords change.  This part sounds much more modal, with more accidentals and passing notes in it than previously, though the solo is still heavily based on the notes surrounding A and B.  To finish it off, the pianist plays the broken suspended fourth run that I talked about earlier - E, A, B and E.  The same notes as earlier.

This is a modern jazz piece, and is a modern jazz solo.  While it's by no means simple or easy, it isn't as complicated as that of Evans or Davis, who I'm yet to analyse; they tend to use lots of accidentals, chord tones and passing notes, while the pianist in Belief has managed to create a fantastic sounding, modern solo from a small note pool, a repeating 2 chord pattern, and clever use of rhythm and note emphasis.