Seems like a natural progression to me. 'Home', Goldberg's latest CD (feat. Reuben Rogers and Eric Harland, as well as Mark Turner on a few tracks) is one of my favourite purchases this year. It prompted me to go back and pick up Goldberg's earlier CD with the same trio 'Worlds', which I'm now enjoying a lot too. They're quite similar records in some ways, with simple but beautifully constructed melodic tracks interspersed with some mad hat arrangements and rhythmic polytechnics. It's the delivery of clear rhythmic ideas that has led me over the past few months to delve deeper into tracks like 'Shed' and the arrangement of Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely' (both on Home).
Holding down left hand grooves whilst having total freedom of improvisation in the right hand is one of the most difficult skills to get to grips with at the piano - real 'pat your head and rub your tummy' stuff. 'Shed' has a great example of this. Here's the L.H. groove:




Looping this, it's a pretty standard 5/4 feel (dotted minim + minim), but with the quaver C at the beginning making the resolution sound like it is on the 1 'and'. Good groove to play with - not too complex, but with a little quirk that gives you something to work with. I'm not putting a whole transcription up, but if you listen to it you'll hear the right hand layering some really interesting groupings on top. He starts with groups of three quavers (a dotted crotchet pulse if you like) over the top, which creates a pretty 'hip' (couldn't think of a better word!) pattern of rhythmic tensions and resolutions with the left hand. And then there are triplets, what sound like septuplets, all sorts of things I haven't quite got my head around yet...
Anyway, the point of all this is that I've been trying to forge a closer, more intimate relationship with my left hand. You see, on the piano our melodic creation comes out through the right hand most of the time - that inner singing voice that drives improvisation is wired in so strongly to the right hand that, in a lot of jazz situations, the left hand is really just supporting. That's fine most of the time, and I'm not a great fan of pianists whipping out loads of flashy 'hand independence' stuff in a group setting just because they can. But being able to hold down a groove in the left hand in a solo passage is a fantastic thing to pull off and requires the left hand to 'be the boss' for once - it's the bedrock of time and harmonic rhythm that your right hand plays on, and in order to keep it solid it has to be more than muscle memory. It has to be in the same creative, melodic place as the right hand.
So here's what I've been doing - if you fancy some punishment, give it a go! Learn the left hand groove. Sing it. Then....keep singing it whilst you play with your right hand. Simple things - just scales in crotchets or quavers, triadic patterns. Sounds easy? If my experience is anything to go by, it is a world of unimaginable pain. After 5 minutes you look up from the keys, your brain wondering why you've been trying to rewire it and your eyes barely able to focus. But it feels good.......

I've been working on this on and off for the last 3 months, trying, just as with the previous transcription, to learn everything purely by ear and through my limited vocal abilities before notating it. I have to say I took on a pretty big plateful with this one - Tristano's incredible Line Up, an improvisation over the chord sequence from All of Me from the record Lennie Tristano (Atlantic). This is a notorious recording. It seems that Tristano took Peter Ind and Jeff Morton's parts, slowed them down, recorded his part and then sped the whole thing up again, hence making it appear that he could deliver this monument of linear invention off the cuff and at breakneck speed.
Some people dismiss this, therefore, as not 'real' jazz. I'm not sure it matters a great deal - the end-product is astonishing. The strength of his articulation, especially whilst trying to make us doubt we can actually count a 4/4 time signature, combines with a clarity of phrasing and control of harmonic colours to mesmerising effect. Here's the transcription; I need to leave it a while before I go and do any real analysis or my head may explode. When I do I'll put it up. There is a copy in bass clef and one in treble (the range of the solo is very low - pianists, I would recommend just reading it in bass clef). Once again, I've added only particularly important and unusual articulations to clarify the trickiest bits in terms of groupings. The recording is the place to start for the rest of it...

Download Line Up in bass clef
Download Line Up in treble clef

Tags: lennie tristano

I recently picked up the Cannonball Adderly record 'Live at the Lighthouse', featuring Sam Jones, Louis Hayes, Victor Feldman, and his brother Nat. A lot of people don't really 'rate' Cannonball. Poppy, too accessible, too many licks and clichés, etc...maybe all valid points. The guy was an entertainer - he loved audiences, loved to crack a joke and dish out some suave patter. But the reason we love him is because of his feel. His swing is so deep that all those all-too-familiar licks sound musical and expressive, rather than just filler.
I decided to transcribe his solo on 'Big P' (a minor blues) following some of Dave Liebman's advice, first learning to sing the whole solo and then working it out on the piano aurally. In fact I've done the whole thing, including transposing into 4 different keys, without writing anything down, only producing the written pages below this morning as the end of the end of the process rather than the beginning. This is a new thing for me, and I have to say it is a revelation-- any kind of melodic transcription I do in the future I will do this way. It makes things like transposition a thousand times easier to have every note available on-demand from your own voice, and seems to be a much better way of capturing some of the 'feel'. So here is the transcription; there is no articulation or phrasing marked (or chord symbols - just a minor blues), as I see it really as just a reference point for anything notes-wise that is tricky to get off the record. Still I hope it's useful....


Download the solo in C
Download the solo in Eb

Tags: Cannoball Adderly, transcription

Normally, I go through a patch of maybe a week or two with an album I really like; just a quick look at my iTunes stats tells me that this is actually my most played album, and for the last 2 or 3 months I would say I’ve listened to at least 2 or 3 tracks from it pretty much every day. And now I find myself trying to get a handle on Bill’s beautiful solos; they’re short, usually based around the tune, but with the clarity of the recording they’re really little gems for any pianist who, like me, just wants to take them down, learn them and work out why they sound so astonishingly good. There’s no simple way of putting it; the way I often think about Bill’s playing is something like this - “I’m pretty sure I know what he’s doing there, but why does it sound so much better when he does it?”. It’s all in the detail....
Nowadays we’re all taught a lot of the things that Bill brought to the piano - crystal clear, rich voicings, completely fluent in all keys and available in all shapes, colours and inversions you care to think of. There isn’t a note in anything I’ve transcribed of his that I’ve thought ‘what on earth is that?’. What it is is just an utter, peerless mastery and encyclopedic knowledge of what has become a fairly universal harmonic language, meaning that every note in every chord is entirely intended, understood, and has a specific role to play. No superfluous filling out of voicings just because the fingers are there; I’m astonished at just how much richness and colour he gets out of so few notes in a voicing sometimes. It sounds great because he really knows the colour of each voicing, and exactly when to use it to shape a melody or comp Tony. There are a lot of us out there who’ve studied harmonic language that owes a great deal to Bill, and there’s a tendency to think ‘bah, it’s only a minor 6 upper structure, the simplest thing in the world...(sorry non-pianists!)’. But that voicing, at the right place and the right time, can be something pretty special. I think there’s something to be said for going back to what you know, and knowing it better - transcriptions to follow....

Tags: Bill Evans, tony bennett