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.
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