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 ...

East of Cyprus

Composition of the week:




and a quick recording:
East of Cyprus

Composed in Rosegarden, recorded in Logic.

White Whale Drive

Composition of the week.



and a quick recording:
White Whale Drive

(recorded in Logic, composed in Rosegarden)

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

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