[Dixielandjazz] Transcribing Solos

[Steve Barbone]

Craig I. Johnson at civanj at adelphia.net wrote: (polite snip)

> I love Louis' ability at times to really swing with a paucity of notes. Far
better than other, frequently more "modern" > players who overwhelm their
solos with far too many notes  Practicing his solos has improved my own
ideas of how 
> fewer notes do the trick.

Not only that, but Louis' ability to swing from his earliest recorded works
even when the band doesn't. Note how he varies his own "time" with
instrumental and vocal passages. That is hard to write out, but easy to
"hear". That time variation is an integral part of swinging (IMO) and a
reason a band needs a metronome rhythm section like the one Basie had. They
enable the other players to play around the beat which creates swing if done
in that relaxed manner Artie Shaw spoke about.

> Bix Beiderbecke ( and for that matter, early Red Nichols) included fairly
intellectual things in his (their) solos --
> especially Bix's use of advancedharmony and 12-tone scales. These are useful
for me to expand my  concepts of
> what fits harmonically, though I may never repeat what I play of his actual
solos in tunes he recorded, yet it allows
> me a Bixish interpretation of my own. (Exception: I'll play I'm Coming
Virginia close to what he did - I concicer it a
> beautiful interpretation (besides my trumpet teacher taught it to me as the
very first jazz-style song/solo that i ever
> played. That man "Dick Naylor" used as his theme song Bunny Berigan's "I Can't
Get Started" complete with the
> high ending note at the end. I never ceased to be thrilled hearing that from
either him or Berigan. - It kills me that I
> can reliably play the note right below it, but can never count on my hitting
that one reliably more than once it 15
> tries. That in itself is worth practicing his solo.

Amen. Fun to read the transcriptions in Sudhalter's Book (Lost Chords). You
get a vivid mental picture of what Bix was doing. e.g. from that book:
"Even in his Wolverine Blues solos . . .there is a new sense of emotional
layering. Such complexity was of course an innate feature of European formal
music in composers  as diverse as Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Schumann . .
. and moderns such as Stravinsky, Bartok, and Hindemith."

"And the French Impressions, for whom Beiderbecke evinced a special
fondness, dealt in suggestion, rather than the subject itself. Application
to the music of the idea of suggesting rather than stating found its
champions in . . . Debussy, Ravel  . . .

"It is this kind of heterogeneity that finds its way decisively into jazz
through Bix Beiderbecke."

or when analyzing a Bix rendition of "Royal Garden Blues";

"It is also significant that this chorus, while harmonically a blues, is not
a blues in either melodic or emotional  sense. It uses little of the
standard blues vocabulary; no flatted 3rds or 7rhs, no figures redolent of
such blues based cornetists as Joe Oliver or Paul Mares. It is a song-form
improvisation, one of economy and considerable beauty."

Heavy stuff? Not really, but certainly as important to one's understanding
of what Bix was doing as the fact that he he was doing it by ear in the
beginning since he could not read music well. Did that give him a leg up on
originality and creativity? Perhaps, since he would have been less
constricted by the musical rules codification brings to it.

And regarding "I Can't Get Started"; You might listen to Dizzy Gillespie's
record of it.. Stunning and, according to its composer, his favorite
version. Certainly some interesting comparisons to be made there.

High note confidence. Heck, practice hitting the high note above the one you
seek. After always nailing that, the note you seek will be a snap. I used to
have trouble with double high G. So I practiced double high A till I could
always get it and the note below it became an automatic.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone