Saturday, August 29, 2009

Parker's Mood

Another Bird transcription. Another masterpiece. I'm going through the first 2 choruses of

Parker's Mood

More Charlie Parker to come ...

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

East of Cyprus

Composition of the week:




and a quick recording:
East of Cyprus

Composed in Rosegarden, recorded in Logic.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

White Whale Drive

Composition of the week.



and a quick recording:
White Whale Drive

(recorded in Logic, composed in Rosegarden)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Embraceable You

Another Charlie Parker transcription. This is probably the best solo I've ever heard. I never realized just how much was going on in Charlie Parker's ballads until this.

This is a ballad played at a slow tempo. There are a few solos before this one. Everyone is playing swing eights, taking it easy and melodic. Bird comes in, and everything is taken to a whole new level. Swing 16th are the new rules. Pick up the track from to see what I mean. Parker still keeps a ballad feel throughout, he's just re-inventing how to play them, right there and then. I cannot imagine having to solo after Bird that day.

Despite the slow tempo, I had to slow this down considerably to hear the individual notes. My teacher tells me him and Lennie used to learn Bird's solo on a record player set up at half speed, with everything an octave down. This is basically it.
I dropped the usual sax voice in favor of the good old acoustic.

More Parker to come. For now, this is
Embraceable You

Sunday, August 16, 2009

It's not much really

Composition of the week. I have a couple more ready, just need to create the blog entry.

Here we go:


and a quick recording:
It's not much really