Tune of the Moment: Out of This World

The tune Out of this World by Harold Arlen has been on my mind a lot recently-- I've been listening to John Coltrane's recording of it on the album Coltrane, then it came up in the Elvin afro feel frenzy, then I learned an old friend who I associated with that recording died, and then it came up on the Bill Evans/Jimmy Giuffre record, which took me a minute to place it because it's so different from Coltrane's version. You can view a chart for it on the probably-illegal jazzpla.net-- it's a two pager, so hit 'next' at the end of the page.

It's a pretty monumental tune: a 74 bar AA1BA (16-20-18-20) with a whole lot of space, which Coltrane extends further by playing two measures of 3/4 for each measure of the tune, and adding 8 measures between the second A and the bridge. He does not double up the last four written bars of the bridge-- they just become four bars of 3/4. The line he plays before the start of the tune (from 0:18-0:43) is not on the other versions I have-- either it's something he wrote, or maybe it's the verse of the tune-- a very short verse. If anyone knows, please tell me about it in the comments. It occurs again between the tenor and piano solos, and before the second tenor solo, but not at the beginning of the head out. On the head out there appear to be four measures added to the end of the first A section. The solos are over a modal vamp.

On YouTube the track is split in two:



The rest of the track, and some other recordings of the tune after the break:

Tune of the moment: Feet First

I didn't intend for the "tune of the moment" to be an all Steve Swallow feature, but what the hell, I'm just playing his stuff a lot these days. Like a lot of his tunes, it's very friendly, but sits a little... funny. They're good for blowing in that they make you think a little bit, and don't make it easy for you to just play to the big emotional payoff. I play this with an ECMish half time funk feel- at least yesterday I did.

Get the lead sheet free from Steve Swallow's site.

YouTube audio with Adam Nussbaum after the break:

Tune of the moment: Misterioso

Thelonious Monk's Misterioso is a strangely beguiling little tune:




It's a slow blues, with a melody of running even 8th notes. That doesn't sound hard. Except somewhere in the playing of it, it always goes a little fishy. When I say slow blues, you of course immediately put a strong triplet feel into your time:

Which feels wrong because the rest of the band is playing off of the straight 8ths, with a double time feel. So you match that interpretation:

Still not right; the hihat on 2 and 4 feels a little silly. There's more momentum than that suggests, and you feel you're missing the boat. So you put the hihat on the &s, finally getting to the common groove for the tune- sort of a double time two feel, but not quite. Going into the fast two sounds too busy- you need to keep the slow four on the cymbal:

After eight measures or so this starts to reveal the deficiencies in your 'in two' playing. Over the course of the tune, you're not able to deliver your idea of modern levels of business, or build to a satisfying climax, and this is unsettling to you. The uncertainty of it all is compounded by the other musicians, who- despite what I said earlier- will be confused about where to put it; at least there will be a variety of interpretations present. You feel that at least one person is looking askance at you for not playing it his way. Most of them will play some version of double time; maybe the bassist will obstinately play the triplets; during the solo the saxophonist will play double time on the double time. It always feels like it wants to be someplace else. Even if you are able to hang with the original feel, in all likelihood one or more of the soloists aren't going to be able carry it, and it will- curiously- invert the process of rigor mortis by stiffening and then dying.


First, embrace the uncertainty, and release some of your need to make a big drumming performance out of it. Instead, just play with the thing. Changing feels slightly (or not-so-slightly) between soloists, or between choruses of the same soloist, is one thing you can do. During the course of the tune, there's room to play any and all of the interpretations above, plus a straight double time feel, plus, well, whatever you can get away with- suggestions of double time Afro-Cuban, slow funk, fast "drum & bass"... whatever is not going to get you fired.

You can work on your comping within the "standard" feel of the tune by running the common Reed/Syncopation interpretations with this cymbal/hh pattern, swinging the 8th notes (I'll make a stand-alone post out of this sometime soon):

You can take Art Blakey's polyrhythmic approach from the Sonny Rollins recording above. During the head he fills out the sixtuplets:

He then adds the 8th note triplets on the hihat:

Or 8th note triplets with the left hand (you'll hear him move these around the drums at a phrase ending):

Some more examples: Here Roy Haynes plays it fairly straight, as the modified two:

The original recording of the tune, with Shadow Wilson on drums:

And Paul Motian playing it:

Tune of the moment: Eiderdown

Eiderdown is a great tune  by Steve Swallow that deserves to be played a lot more, and has been coming up a bunch  lately in sessions and in my listening. The lead sheet is available free, along with a lot of other great stuff, from Swallow's publishing site, shared with with Carla Bley, wattxtrawatt.com. So there's no excuse for not having it in your book!

John Stowell likes to play this one a lot, but he hasn't recorded it yet, that I know of. The version I've been listening to is from Jack Dejohnette's 1975 record Cosmic Chicken. It's been out of print for years, and was never reissued on CD, so good luck finding it. It is available through some of the LP ripping blogs, if you google around for it.



One version that is legally available is from Pete LaRoca's Basra:



Get Basra | get Eiderdown