A trumplet player who recently passed away (just last month). His range is incredible, and the buildup with the drums at 4:49 was predictable but enjoyable! I enjoyed his use of the plunger looking device, which I feared would turned gimmicky but fortunately did not. He makes great use of space, and he takes plenty […]

Bill Evans again! The solo I was thinking of transcribing starts around 2:00. His inner voicing abilities are so great. There’s a lot of development of simple ideas in this solo, which make it easier to see what he was thinking when playing.

Another master. I like his use of big chords and octaves in the right hand. It really creates a strong melodic voice. His left hand is solid (but the voicings are different from those most commonly heard today) and almost percussive. I also like that he is smiling.

20 more! Constellation – Charlie Parker Dexterity – Charlie Parker Miles Davis – Denial Dizzie Atmosphere – Dizzy Gillespie The Flintstones Theme Cottontail – Miles Davis Passport – Charlie Parker and Dizzy Anthropology – Charlie Parker Lester Leaps In – Lester Young Oleo – Sonny Rollins Third Rail – Michael Brecker The Eternal Triangle – […]

I never listened to a lot of Coltrane, but he’s actually pretty good. What I liked about his solo is that he uses pretty simple ideas. His playing is not as cerebral as Miles, but he still shows some restraint in his technical displays. Listening to the solo, I got a strange feeling that the […]

This is Bill Evans’ take on I Should Care. For the melody, he doubles up his left and right hand, and he places chord tones between the octaves. The left hand doesn’t always follow the exact melody, and there’s a little bit of walking and counterpoint which add a nice feel. Around 3:55, he uses […]

I like Herbie’s chromatic movements around 4:10. He starts off his solo with simple ideas. He moves pentatonic arpeggiations around chromatically, which is something I’m trying to get more fluent at. His comping was pretty quiet during most of the solos, which is different from Oscar Peterson. Roy Hargrove has a great ear for melody […]

Not a hugely creative cover, but around 1:00, he starts improving over the second verse basically just using any and every scale. A lot of the scales are pentatonic and moved around chromatically like we did in class. As I said, nothing really that original, but I like to listen to this just to keep […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EaqD4N9S9s This is just an audio recording, but I thought it would be useful to listen to the ideas from the masters. Oscar Peterson brings in a lot of blues licks. I heard some variation of 1-2-3 at least four times (I probably missed a lot of them) through both solos. Also, Peterson has some […]

Not jazz (more like jazzish-R&B), but as I was listening to this song, I heard some harmonic scales in his ad lib. At 4:06, you hear a minor arpeggio. At 4:12, you can hear the harmonic minor scale as he comes down in thirds. When I hear about the harmonic minor, my mind immediately jumps […]