Analysis "Ma Belle Helene"

Here is an analysis of the Abercrombies solo.
These are the scales I think he is using (even though he is probably not thinking about that when he is playing). Most of the time he is playing very inside the harmony, which makes sense since the harmony is so complex. To play outside on this tune would be kind of redundant in my opinion. Notice also how smoothly he makes the transistions from chord to chord; he often switches to a close note in the next scale. Sometimes on the beat, other times he anticipates the next chord or stays on the previous. Sometimes its hard to tell because the note can belong to both the "old" scale as well as the new one.

There are however some strange note choises:
In bar 19 Abercrombie playes (I think) a G melodic minor scale over D/Ab!
This doesn't make any sense but it sounds good. I think what is happening is that Abercrombie is almost ignoring the root of the slash chord. Sometimes when we hear a slash or poly chord we tend to hear the top chord and not so much the bass. I am guessing Abercrombie is using his ears more than his "thinking" and he simply hear this harmony.

Same thing in bar 30: Abercrombie appears to treat the Db/Gb as a Db lydian chord. This makes sense if we ignore the root. I experimented with this and it does work. The root is so low anyway and is not going to clash with the "out" note (dont tell your music theory teacher I said this). Breaking the rules, right?!
The g does stand out a bit, though. Espesially when I slow down the recording.
In conclusion: what we can learn from this solo is that when we solo over complex slash chords we can ignore the root and focus on the upper structure of the chord. The upper structure tends to "win" over the bass note. Who cares what the bass player is doing anyway, right? Just kidding. :D



Ma Belle Analysis