Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Boo Ann's Grand

Jack Dejohnette open drum solo from Boo Ann's Grand, on the Jackie McLean 1967 album Demon's Dance. Tempo is about 241— about as fast you can do this kind of stuff. This is burning for jazz stuff using triplets. 

The solo begins at 5:23, and is 48 bars long, less two beats— the band comes in two beats off the 1 of the transcription. 

 

Naturally at this speed you can put a big slur marking over much of the dense activity. A lot of things written as unisons are not lined up precisely. Much of it is Elvin-like activity; he doesn't come off the cymbal much, except on the paradiddle-diddle thing in the fourth line, and at the beginning of the sixth line. He does some interactive snare and hihat stuff at the beginning and end. 

Playing this note for note would be insane. Analyze it for general principles, ways of playing, things played within one phrase. Some things are certainly happening from physical momentum that would be hard to duplicate if you played it literally. Something can be structured to the person playing it, but if they ghost some notes, it can look really fragmented on the page. 

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Groove o' the day: Jack Dejohnette - Soft Blue

Another item from Jack Dejohnette, playing on Jackie McLean's album Jackknife— Dejohnette's first major recording, made when he was 24 years old. We've seen a couple of other things from this album, a groove o' the day and a longer transcription. His playing on it is very interesting— like the previous GOTD, he's playing an Elvin-like groove, very repetitively. At this point when everyone is letting it all hang out, he virtually never deviates from the exact pattern below. A curious decision on a jazz record— I guess they wanted to make an instrumental single out of it, a la Lee Morgan:

He does add another tom hit on the & of 3 of the first measure, occasionally. And there are some very small variations in the cymbal occasionally. He plays the little ensemble figure on the head exactly, on the snare and cymbal, with no embellishment. If there are any fills at all I missed them. He handles dynamics very sensitively. 

Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Climax - drum solo

Another drum solo from a Jackie McLean record. Jack Dejohnette early in his career, soloing on a fast tune from McLean's album Jackknife. The tune is Climax, tempo is about half note = 160. We looked at another tune from this record awhile back.

If you ever worried about not being able to solo at fast tempos, check this out. It's fast but very simple, using a few basic “non-independent” patterns, with hands in unison opposite the bass drum. He's not panicking about not throwing in enough stuff, or changing ideas fast enough. 

The solo begins at 6:55 in the track. 

Listening closely, Dejohnette's execution is quite loose— the unisons between hands are pretty wide flams. 

That measure of 9/8 near the end is nothing, ignore it. Just an extra 8th note seemed to work its way in there. 

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Transcription: Roy Haynes - It's Time - drum solo

Here's Roy Haynes's drum solo from the title track of a Jackie McLean record we visited a few months ago, It's Time. The solo begins at 5:31.

Pull up my Cliché Control page and start comparing this with things found in this and some other solos. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of the same stuff. This also contains a lot of patterns in 3, so there's some conceptual overlap with my Roy Haynes waltz lesson.

The tempo on the tune overall moves around a little bit, all within natural tolerances. The last three solos are Herbie Hancock, Cecil McBee, Roy. Herbie's solo starts at ~266, Cecil's solo ends at around 248, Roy's solo ends at around 280 or above. After the horns come in with the head out the tempo settles a little bit.   

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Groove o' the day: Jack Dejohnette - On the Nile

Here's Jack Dejohnette early in his career, soon after his move from Chicago to New York. He's playing in a very Elvin Jones-like mode with Jackie McLean, who is himself writing in a Coltrane Quartet-like mode. The tune is On The Nile, from the record Jack Knife.

This is the groove from the head of the tune. Swing the 8th notes. 

He plays this on the solo vamp:

He plays these grooves pretty repetitively throughout, which is interesting. For some reason it reminds me of Robert Rauschenberg's Factum I and Factum II, where the famously freewheeling painter made two identical pictures. On the solo vamp Dejohnette sometimes plays 16th notes a la Elvin in the second measure—just double the middle note of the triplet and spread it all out to make legato 16th notes.