Miles Davis Solar Transcription

Here is my transcriptions of  Miles solo on Solar from the 1954 album Walking.
Lot's to learn here: listen to Miles time-feel. It's a challenge for any jazz musician to sound so laid back an relaxed and still be able to draw in the listener, how does he do it? Also check out how he uses the major second on the dminor7(b5) chord.

Transcription PDF here

Jazz guitar lesson #5 making patterns more interesting

  



Playing patterns or not... that's a hot potato among Jazz musicians. I
have often heard musicians accusing certain famous Jazz players of
playing to many patterns. Personally I have nothing against patterns.
It's not what you play, it's how you play it. So how can we make
patterns more interesting?



Here you need to download the pdf



Jazz Guitar Lesson #5 PDF



Ex
2: move the four note pattern rhythmically. By doing this we anticipate
the beat and create a sense of forward motion. "Forward motion" by the
way is a magic term that Jazz educators all over the world like to use.



Ex 3: Play a four note pattern as triplets. 



Ex 4: Another four note pattern played as triplets.



Ex 5: A tree note pattern played as eight notes. Pay attention to how you wanna emphasize certain notes to make it swing!

Jazz Guitar Lesson #4 Poor Man's Chord Melody

     



Jazz Guitar Lesson 4 adding guidetones





When
a piano player plays Jazz he or she can play the melody with the right
hand and then play chords at the same time with the other hand..easy,
right? This is in my opinion one of the reasons that the piano trio is
such a popular format in Jazz. Now what if we want to do the same thing
on guitar. Impossible some you say..I think not! We just have to make
the chords smaller. This way of playing that I want to show you in this
lesson comes from players like Lenny Breau. If you haven't checked him
out. Do it NOW! This technique or concept was shown to me by another
Canadian guitarist: Ted Quinlan who I was studying with a few years
back.



The point of all this to able to comp for
yourself when you are playing the melody or even soloing. In another
word: fire the piano player and the band will have more money to split
among themselves! :p



Here is the concept:



Play the melody on the top two strings with the index and pinky.



Play the guide tones on the lower strings using the second and third fingers.



That's it!



As
you can see in the video we will run into some fingering problems when
it's better to abandon these rules and come up with other fingerings.



There are other similar concepts as well, maybe you have seen Kurt Rosenwinkels clinic from Gdansk?



Kurt Rosenwinkel Clinic Gdansk (chord melody) 



Here is a documentary about Lenny Breau



Lenny Breau The Genius Of documentary

Jazz Guitar Lesson #3 How to practice modes on the guitar

Here is an exercise for you guitarists who are trying to get better at playing modes.This post could have been titled "the problem of trying to learn scales on the guitar" or something like that. As I'm sure you have noticed there are some advantages as well as disadvantages with our instrument. We can learn one shape for a major scale and then we can move the exact same shape to play in another key. Think about any other (non string) instrument. Suppose they are playing a C major scale for example and want to move it a half-step up to Db major; they have to learn a whole new fingering! At first this might seem like a problem for them but in my opinion they are in a better position to learn the notes they are playing.

When I started to learn the modes and scales and all that I had a book that showed all the scales as fretboard diagrams. So I learned the scales and jammed along with jam-tracks and thought everything was great. The problem occurred later on when I tried to learn how to play over changes. To do that you need to know what notes you are playing. You should actually always know what notes you are playing even if you are just playing over a static chord situation. We guitar players have a tendency to mindlessly let our fingers move around the neck. A trumpet player for example has to think about the note and hear it in his head before he plays it. We should approach our instrument the same way. So learning the scales/modes on another instrument is a great idea.

So here is an exercise that hopefully will help you with this problem (if you don't have the time to learn how to play the trombone) :p

Play a C major scale starting on the sixth string. Play three notes per string and play two octaves.

Here is the trick: when you go to Db major, you should stay in the same position or area of the guitar neck. This way you don't move the shape but instead you have to think about what you are doing.

So play a Db major scale also starting on the sixth string but this time START WITH TWO NOTES on the sixth string. This was you get a different fingering, right?

By now you have probably figured it out; when it's time to play D major you start with one note on the sixth string. Very good Sherlock! :p

Now to keep going you play Eb major starting on the fifth string and you go through the same procedure. When you start on the fifth string you have to adjust the higher notes since you're gonna get more that three notes on the highest string. If this is confusing check my YouTube video how I solved this problem.

Now some of you say -wait a minute, we are only learning six keys?!  My answer: Start the exercise on any other note then C, then!

After you've done all this you start over this time with Dorian, then Phrygian etc etc. For the more advanced student: do the melodic minor scales and modes as well. Actually any seven note scale that you know. For scales with more or less than seven notes you have a modify the exercise a bit. Please let me know if any of you out there do that I would love to get feedback on this.

What happened to me when I started practicing this way was that I had to really think about the notes and the relationship between the notes and the scales. Do the exercise slowly and I recommend singing the notes with there actual note names. Good luck and let me know if this helped. :)

Practicing modes PDF 

Jazz Guitar Lesson #2 The diminshed scale (how to hear it)

This is a lesson on the diminished scale. I think that a lot of jazz guitarists (and other instrumentalists) are struggling with this scale( I know I do) It's hard to "hear" this sound and if you can't hear it then you are less likely to play it. When you are improvising you want to follow your ears rather than having to think about what scale or system you are using. Here is a little tip how you can hear it more easily. I recommend practicing singing the scale. Divide the scale in two: D minor which is D E F G  and Ab minor which is Ab Bb Cb Db. Or if you wanna think of the Cb as an B nautural which is what I tend to do.

So this lesson is not really explaining how to construct the diminished scale, there are a lot of resources online on that. This is simply a way to practice internalizing the sound.

Diminished Scale Lesson PDF click here

The Augmented Scale

Sooooo It's been ages since my last blog. I don't do a lot of transcribing these days unfortunately but hey...I'm starting a "Jazz theory for guitarists" channel om YouTube.

First topic is the augmented scale. This scale is not so often mentioned in Jazz method-books but you can hear a lot of players use it. The best example I can think of is Oliver Nelsons solo on his tune Stolen Moments. The lick was shown to me by Jazz saxophonist Pat Labarbera. You can also hear Freddie Hubbard play this exact lick in his solo on Survival of the Fittest from the Herbie Hancock album Maiden Voyage.

You can also hear this kind of sound in the composition Ambleside by pianist John Taylor.

One has to be careful when using scale so that it doesn't sound contrived. Just like with any symmetrical scale it can easily sound like you are playing patterns. I guess the trick is to be able to hear the sound so that it becomes part of your vocabulary, just like with any new concept you learn.

This scale works over Maj7(#5) chords but like any symmetrical scale you can pretty much use it over any chord if you know how to resolve it.

Don't confuse this scale with the Lydian Augmented Scale, that's the third mode of a Melodic Minor scale.


The Augmented Scale Pdf




The Augmented Scale PDF




Survival of the fittest



Ambleside

TheAugmented.mus by mikkohilden

Coquette Stochelo Rosenberg solo

This is my transcription of the fantastic Gypsy Jazz guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg's solo on Coquette. From  Bireli Lagrene's album Gypsy Project.

Coquette Rosenberg Solo

The Best Things In Life Are Free Jesse Van Ruller Solo

Hi again!

It's been a while. I have transcribed a lot of stuff but been to lazy to write it down. Or sometimes it's just too hard to try and notate what I have lifted.
But here is another transcription of a solo by the wonderful Dutch guitarist Jesse Van Ruller. If you haven't checked him out?....
The solo is from The Best Things In Life Are Free from the 2002 album Here And There.
A not so often played standard form the 1956 movie with the same name, I think.

The Best Things in Life Are Free Jesse Van Ruller solo

Enrico Pieranunzi's solo on Five Plus Five

Here is a trancsription of Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi's solo over Five Plus Five from the album Dream Dance with Joey Baron with Marc Johnson. Great ECM Album! As usual when lifting piano players I have only lifted the 'right hand'. Not the voicings, that's way too hard for me to do. The form is a blues and I just wrote out the chords of a regular 'Jazz-blues' even though Enrico is playing a bunch of crazy stuff. There is a lot of 'half-step up' stuff going on, I'm gonna try to make an analysis of the solo later, right now its summer and lots of gigs, less time for transcriptions.  

Enrico Pieranunzi Solo 

Mike Stern 'Autumn Leaves'

Hi y'all.

Here is my latest transcription. Mike Stern's solo over Autumn Leaves form Bob Berg's album In The Shadows. Autumn Leaves is a classic jazz-standard that every Jazz student has to play and it can be a good idea to check out what the masters play over these changes. In this case the master in Mr Stern. Some interesting stuff here; bebop-scales and surrounds, side-slipping and 'Lenny Breu'-ish guidetones.
I hope you like it.

Mike Stern Solo Autumn Leaves
check it out on Youtube

Keith Jarrett I Hear a Rhapsody

This is a trancription of Keith Jarrett's solo on I Hear a Rhapsody from the album Standards in Norway.
Lots of chromaticism and there is some side-slipping going on. I have only transcribed the "right hand" so you can play this on any instrument. It goes a little out of range if you play a regular guitar like me, I had to change octaves a couple of times to play along with the recording. The tempo is pretty fast so I slowed it down a bit using 'transcribe'. As usual when lifting Keith's solo I leave out his grunts and groans. :)

Keith Jarrett Rhapsody

Enrico Pieranunzi - Canto Nascoto

I have been working on a Keith Jarret solo for a month. Almost ready, but while we are waiting: here is a song I lifted.
Enrico Pieranunzi - Canto Nascoto. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAQdudWY1sM 


Canto Nascoto pdf

so see you soon when the Jarret solo is ready.

My Charts

Good news:
I just released an album on Canadian Jazz label Addo records.
http://www.addorecords.com/
I thought it could be a good idea to put some of my own charts on here. Feel free to use them and play my tunes as much as you want.

willowbrookpdf

Keeper of the Tobiko

Learning from Jesse Van Ruller

Jesse Analysis

Jesse Van Ruller solo on Cedar's Blues

Here are a couple of choruses of Jesse's solo on Cedar's Blues. Jesse Van Ruller is a great Dutch jazz guitarist that everybody should check out. Cedar is obviously the great hard bop pianist Cedar Walton. This solo can be found on Jesse's recording Here and There. This solo showcases a lot of Jesse's skills:

blueslicks, bebop vocabulary etc. I will do an analysis later.

You can find a lead sheet of the tune on Lucas Pickford's website.

http://www.lucaspickford.com/transcedar.htm

Jesse Van Ruller solo

Gypsy Jazz Guitar stuff

I have really learned a lot from practicing Gypsy Jazz. Even if you don’t plan to become the next Django you can still learn so much form studying how these guys play and it will improve your technique.
So what are these techniques I am talking about?
First lets look at what the right hand is doing.

Just as the infamous 'sweep pickers' we will start every picking pattern with a downstroke when switching strings. But we will do it every time! So when playing across the strings from the highest to the lowest it becomes the opposite of sweep picking. And the idea is not to let the pick 'fall' to the next string in order to develop speed. It's simply a natural way to play and by using reststrokes one can get a really loud attack a la Django.

ok what about the left hand?

Most people know that Django could only use 2 fingers (1st and 2nd) in his line playing and this has influenced many gypsy jazz players and others as well. I find that those two fingers are 'stronger' and by using those more one can again develop a better technique. Look how Django lets one finger run chromatically over the frets in this (only?) footage of him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJ7bs4mTUY
The trick is to apply just the right amount of pressure to the strings and develop a good coordination with the picking hand. I see guitarist like George Benson, Pat Martino and Jake Langley do this kind of fingerings in their playing.

Here is one lick from the DeBarre solo where I give you the fingerings and picking patterns. These are my fingerings and I don’t know what DeBarre is doing but its based on the 'rules' I talked about.

Good Luck!

Gypsy Guitar Techniques

Its been a while but I finally have a new transcription. Some more Gypsy Jazz. A solo by the great guitarist Angelo Debarre. The tune is Les Gosses De La Rue
from the album "Romano Baschepen".

Les Gosses de La Rue

John Coltrane "I Hear a Rhapsody"

John Coltrane solo on I Hear a Rhapsody from Lush Life



Transcription John Coltrane

Trancription Django Reinhardt "Improvisation Sur Une Danse Norvégienne"

This is my "lift" of the great Django Reinhardt's solo on "Improvisation Sur Une Danse Norvégienne". This is supposed to be Django's version of a piece by Edvard Grieg but the Danse Norvégienne I found sounded different. I guess there are several dances...more research. It's hard to transcribe slow tempos and some of the fast rhythms might not be exact..listen and see what you think. At teh end of the solo it was very hard to hear what he is playing so I am "guessing" a bit. :D


Django Improve


Tab Django Improvisation Sur Une Danse Norvégienne


Improvisation Sur Une Danse Norvégienne

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