Transcription: Philly Joe trading

Here is Philly Joe Jones trading eights and fours with Bill Evans on Minority, from one of my favorite records, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It's a good tune to learn. 

I've written just the drum breaks. Transcription begins at 2:51. The tempo is quarter note = 247. 

No tom toms at all here, just snare drum, bass drum, a cymbal, and hihats. A lot of stick shots. There are a few passages of straight 8th notes— at this tempo the 8ths don't swing a whole lot anyway. Note the rhythm in bars 3 and 5. Bar 5 is the “intended” rhythm, in bar 3 he spreads it out a little bit, so the notes are evenly spaced— I've notated it pretty accurately. 

It's basically non-technical— you could do a rudimental sticking on the triplets— and much of it is linear, between the snare drum and bass drum. The rhythms could have been pulled from the book Syncopation, and give a clue for how to look at the phrases in that book— a subject for another time. 

The melodic idea for each break is pretty clear— listen for that, and how he repeats it and changes it, and listen for what sounds like the ending— the last bar, or two bars. The structure is logical, but the structure didn't come first, it's the natural result of thinking musically when you're improvising, and of doing your job, where you set people up to come back in out of your solo. 

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Practice loop: Night & Day - Bill Evans

Here's a brighter-medium tempo jazz practice loop, sampled from Night & Day, played by Bill Evans on his album Everybody Digs Bill Evans— one of my favorite records, period. The loop is one chorus of Evans's solo— 48 bars, or ABABCB, with each section 8 bars long. Tempo is 169 bpm. 

Very occasional quote of the day: technique

There are a few technique-related posts coming up, and after last week's teaching rant, this quote from Bill Evans is particularly timely. Italics are mine:

“Technique we always think of as being a thing having to do with fastness, too, you know, and technique is, in its highest sense, is the ability to handle musical materials. In that sense, Miles is one of the all-time master technicians, in that he could play something which is an entirely original conception over something that’s very ordinary. So, there are different ways to look at it, too. And actually, he is virtuosic, certainly, and in the best sense of the word. You could get to a point where if you played any more notes it would be funny. So, I mean, how far can you go in that direction?”

— Bill Evans

That's from an almost-lost radio interview from 1979, mostly on the making of Kind of Blue— do read the whole thing.

Very occasional quote of the day: late arrivers

“There’s a certain kind of people that are more or less late arrivers, you can – even though he was certainly on the scene and known and respected – you can hear him building his abilities from the beginning very consciously and very aware of every note he played, theoretically and motivically and everything. And it seems like those kind of people that have to really develop more analytically and consciously and dig into themselves and more or less the late arrivers, they don’t have the kind of facility — I know Miles has spoken about how he didn’t have the facility that a lot of trumpet players had, and fast tempos and all this stuff, and Bird would just tell him “Just get out there and do it,” but that kind of person, when they finally do arrive at their own expressive level, to me, seem to contain so much more.

Now there are always a lot of early arrivers that have great facility. And these guys say 'God, he’s only 15 and listen to that young guy play, man, he’s all over the horn and he seems to have it covered.' But often those people, and I’m saying this because maybe some people will be listening that have those feelings, and I certainly, myself, I’m kind of a late arriver. I knew a lot of people with those kinds of facilities, and they don’t know what to do with it often. They don’t have the ability to discard and add, and what they really do is reflect the scene and it’s a marvelous talent that they have, and I love to hear them play, but as real contributors and so forth they don’t add up that much. So often the person that has to go through a more laborious, long, digging, analytical process finally arrives at something which is much more precious.”

— Bill Evans on Miles Davis

Definitely read the entire interview— it's mainly about the making of Kind of Blue. It was broadcast once on WKCR/NY in 1979, and comes to us via a transcript of a cassette recorded off the radio at that time by Lewis Nash.

(h/t to Kurt Rosenwinkel, who shared this on Twitter)

Daily best music in the world: Peace Piece

Seems like the perfect time of year for this. I had been away from one of my favorite records in the world, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, for long enough that for a moment I forgot about this beautiful piece of work, Peace Piece:



The transcription in the video is a little goofy— the author has metered Evans's expressive phrasing. Maybe he had a good reason in his own studies for doing that.

Transcription: Paul Motian - Israel

UPDATE: Download link working now.

Here are a couple of famous drum breaks by Paul Motian, from Israel, a 12 bar tune on Bill Evans' Explorations; Motian and Evans trade choruses before the head out. Note that even though the tune is played with a swing feel, most of the 8th notes on the solos are played straight- listen closely to the recording to hear where you should swing them.

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YouTube audio after the break:

Bill Evans speaks

Here's a nice, timely (given the last post) find from Ted at Trap'd: pianist Bill Evans talking at length about music:

Transcription: three Bill Evans intros

Here are my new transcriptions of a couple of famous Philly Joe Jones intros from Everybody Digs Bill Evans, plus one not-so-famous by Marty Morell, from But Beautiful, Evans' great live record with Stan Getz. Night and Day is a little sketchy- sorting out the part between the rim clicks, rim shots, regular notes, pitch bends, and muffled notes was quite tricky. I had always assumed the beginning was out of time, but it does fit into 4/4, only breathing slightly on the rests.

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It's hard to believe it has an age.

Via Larry Appelbaum @ Let's Cool One: today is the 50th birthday of one of the greatest albums in jazz, Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth. Like a lot of other people, the first jazz tune I learned was Stolen Moments (at least that I can put a title to- the first thing I ever played was a Sammy Nestico chart).

Unfortunately my favorite track, Hoe Down, isn't available on YouTube, but here's the opening from MySpace Music.


Audio after the break.

1996 Paul Motian interview, part 3: ding ding GA-ding

Third part of my excerpts of  Chuck Braman's 1996 Paul Motian interview.

TIPS AND COMMENTS:
Chuck: Did any of the musicians you worked with ever offer you any advice or make musical comments that struck you as interesting?

Paul: I remember Monk asked me to sing him my ride beat. He said, "Sing me what you're playing on the cymbal." So I sang, "ding DING-a ding, DING-a ding, DING-a ding, DING-a ding." He said, "The next time you play, play 'ding din GA-ding, din GA-ding, din GA-ding'." So that's what I did. And that helped my feel and the way I felt, the way my time is my beat. That helped me grow in how I play time. To try to think of all the notes, man, all the notes that you're playing on the cymbal, and the quality of the notes.

One time Lennie Tristano said something to me about what he heard in my sound. He wasn't suggesting anything to me. He just said, "Paul, when we play fours, your fours sound like a drunk falling down a flight of stairs!" (laughs) So, for me, I took that as a compliment, and the next time I took my fours I tried to think as if I was a drunk falling down the stairs, and tried to improve what I did the time before, you know?
Chuck: A lot of people wouldn't take that as a compliment. Why did that strike you as a compliment?
Paul: Because it was different, it meant that I played different. I played something else, you know? I played something that wasn't usual.

1996 Paul Motian interview, part 2: I Don't Have To Do S**t

Part 2 of my excerpts of Chuck Braman's 1996 Paul Motian interview. Here Motian discusses his approach to the instrument.

NOT THINKING DRUMSET:
Chuck: What would you say is the central concept of how you approach the drums, that would distinguish you from everyone else?

Paul: Playing the drums like it's not really drums, it's just an instrument that's an extension of you. The playing that's coming out of me is coming from the music that I'm hearing, the people that I'm playing with, the music that I'm playing on the drums.

Chuck: I seem to remember you saying at a clinic that you gave at Pittsburgh that I went to, that every time you sit down you try to approach the drums as though you were playing them for the first time. Is my memory correct?

Paul: What you said is exactly right. Because sometimes I'm still playing stuff on the drumset that I've never played before, because I'm not thinking drumset, I'm not thinking of cymbals and drums. Hopefully, what's coming out is an extension of me and what's inside me. Sometimes I'm lucky my hands and arms and feet don't get tangled up within one another! Because I'm not thinking technique, and I'm not thinking right hand, left hand, or right foot, left foot (laughs), or tom-tom or snare or whatever. A lot of times my eyes are closed and I'm just playing. I know in my head where the instrument is, all the different parts of the instrument. And I just go ahead and play, and whatever ideas are in my head, hopefully they'll come out.

1996 Paul Motian interview, part 1: Not-So-Correct

This is another old favorite of mine that's just been floating around the Internet- you kind of have to look for it to find it- a 1996 Paul Motian interview by Chuck Braman. Not a lot of what you call deep reflection- Motian seems to be a pretty direct cat- but that seems to be the lesson itself. I've excerpted my favorite parts, of which there are many. In the first part he talks about his influences and early career, up to the 1960's:

WHY HE LIKED MAX:
Chuck: What was it about Max Roach in particular that attracted you to his playing?

Paul: He was more into the Bebop. I was going to say jazz, but you can't say jazz because you'd have to put Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa in that too, you know? And of course I liked them too, but Max was the one that stood out to me. And also, I was never really a Buddy Rich fan, I must say.

Chuck: Why not?

Paul: Because to me that was more technical. I mean, I admired it and I respected it, he was a great technician and played great. Even today, you listen to some of that stuff he played with Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, some of that shit's great, man. It's really good. But somehow Max stood out more to me. Just from the sound and the rhythmical patterns and what came out from him was somehow more hip than the other shit.

Chuck: Some of your early recordings also remind me of Philly Joe Jones.

Paul: Sure. Philly, and Kenny Clarke, those were my people, but at this point Art Blakey is high up on that list, man. I listened to him too, you know, but my playing, listening to it now, came more from Max.