John Groves
Jazz Transcriptions
Song |
Player |
Description |
| Night and Day | Bill Evans | From the Stan Getz & Bill Evans album (1964 - with Getz on tenor, Ron Carter on bass and Elvin Jones on drums). I love the 8 bar tacit solo breaks in this arrangement. This was my first serious transcription attempt, and I should go back and get the second chorus and some of the harmony. |
| My Funny Valentine | Bill Evans | From Undercurrent (1963 - duo album with Jim Hall on guitar) |
| My Funny Valentine (alt take) | Bill Evans | Alt take, also from Undercurrent |
| How My Heart Sings | Bill Evans | from Getting Sentimental (1978 - live at the Vanguard with Philly Joe Jones on drums and Michael Moore on bass). My favorite chromatic 3-6-2-5 run comes from this solo. |
| Unit Seven | Wynton Kelley | From Smokin' at the Half Note (1965 with Wes Montgomery, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb) |
| With a Song In My Heart | Sonny Clark | From the Great sextet album Sonny's Crib, with Coltrane, Don Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. A great snapshot of the patterns Sonny could play at a blistering tempo! |
| Grandfather's Waltz | Bill Evans | from But Beautiful, a live album recorded in 1974 with Stan Getz. This solo is jammed with the classic Bill Evans vocabulary that I love, and it's quite a composition in it's own right. (7/2006) |
| Satin Doll | McCoy Tyner | From the album McCoy Tyner plays Ellington, recorded in December 1964 for Prestige. I was looking for Tyner's approach on super-conventional harmony. It's still heavily rooted in speedy technique and pentatonics. (3/2007) |
| Blues Walk | Ritchie Powell | From the alternate take on the album Clifford Brown and Max Roach, recorded in February 1955. (4/2007) |
| Minority | Bill Evans | From Everybody Digs Bill Evans (5/2007) |
| Jeannine | Barry Harris | From Cannonball Adderley's album Them Dirty Blues. I originally thought it was Bobby Timmons, but a check of the Jazz Discography Project (great resource, btw) confirms that the album was done in two sessions, and Barry Harris played on this one. Great bebop vocabulary. (5/2007) |
| You Stepped Out of a Dream | Sonny Clark | From Dexter Gordon's album A Swingin' Affair. Great bebop vocabulary. (6/2007) |
| Anthropology | Bud Powell | I bought a live performance DVD from Jamey Aebersold, and was really captivated by this performance of Anthropology. It's in Copenhagen, with "NIHOP" on bass. Lots of great "Bud" vocabulary here. It turns out this particular performance is also on YouTube here. (7/2007) |
| I Could Write a Book | Red Garland | This is from Miles Davis' album Relaxin'. Good solid snapshot of Red's bop vocabulary. And here is the intro Red played for the tune. (8/2007) |
| All the Things You Are | Lennie Tristano | This is from Tristano's 1955 quartet album for Atlantic. It seemed like a good choice to learn about Lennie's vocabulary. My favorite single device is the (almost) Hit the Road Jack turnaround at the end of the first B secion (bars 23-24) (11/2007) |
| Ascension | Barry Harris | This is a Barry Harris original from his 1962 solo piano album "Listen to Barry Harris - Solo Piano". I highly recommend this album for study. The tune is similar to Rhythm in F, but with a different bridge. It's also similar to Parisian Thoroughfare. This is great classic Barry Harris vocabulary, and I'm using it as a practice exercise. (2/2008) |
| Parker 51 (Cherokee) | Al Haig | This with Stan Getz, Live at Storyville, in 1952. I've been meaning to work up some mojo for Cherokee, and it's an interesting problem. My mid-tempo vocabulary doesn't work on Cherokee because of the fast tempo, not to mention the difficult key centers on the bridge. I like Al Haig's vocabulary on this solo (one chorus only), but it's also an interesting solo to listen to because he was having difficulty getting the eighth notes out fast enough. At the end of the bridge, you can hear Getz start snapping his fingers because Haig kept getting behind (by which I mean he couldn't seem to play his ii-V patterns quite fast enough, so he'd finish late and need a couple of bars to "regroup"). I had to "rationalize" the timing of some of this, since certain licks dragged so much. I suspect Al had been drinking... (2/2008) |
Dig Dis  |
Wynton Kelley | I don't think of myself is a particularly good blues player, and I was looking for some blues vocabulary from the master. This is classic Wynton Kelley, playing on one of my all time favorite jazz albums (Hank Mobley's Soul Station). (6/2008) |