beginners jazz solos???

[malireid]

what a good jazz solo i can transcribe? i have a midterm coming up and i cant find a jazz bass solo i can imitate at my current skill level. and im supposed to find a song and imitate the articulation/tone/emotion/feel etc of the song to a tee so it sounds just likethe reccording. any help would be great.


btw jazz/blues/soul/gospel are all fair game

[Ed Fuqua]

Does it have to be a bass solo? There's a nice Prez solo on BROADWAY ( off of the KANSAS CITY 6 recordings) that lays pretty nice on bass.

[DocBop]

Check out Blue Bossa by The Big Three Ray Brown, Joe Pass, and Milt Jackson.

[onlyclave]

Transcribe Miles' solo from "Freddy Freeloader" on Kind of Blue.

[HaVIC5]

Bass solos are often to worse solos to transcribe, in my opinion. Miles Davis really is the ideal starting point for the beginning transcriber - his solos are eminently lyrical, wonderfully phrased and articulated, and give a lot of good insight on how to play a good jazz line. Freddy Freeloader is a nice one to start off with, like onlyclave said, and so is anything off Kind of Blue

[Arthur Strand]

The most convenient thing to do is to start out with a 12 bar blues and introduce it with a common and garden riff like many that are around then practise it daily until it is flowing smoothly. You can then develop this as time passes. It will not be for a long time before you get to playing virtuoso solos so learn to crawl first, then learn to walk after which you can run. Learn some ordinary melodies too. This helps phrasing because they are ingrained in the subconscious and you can even develop sight reading skills too.

[Ed Fuqua]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Bass solos are often to worse solos to transcribe, in my opinion. Miles Davis really is the ideal starting point for the beginning transcriber - his solos are eminently lyrical, wonderfully phrased and articulated, and give a lot of good insight on how to play a good jazz line. Freddy Freeloader is a nice one to start off with, like onlyclave said, and so is anything off Kind of Blue

I disagree, there's a lot of Miles that lays funny on the instrument and (especially if you listen to a lot of solos at half speed) there's a lot of places that he just smears the time in the general vicinity of the beat. Louis has a pretty simple (harmonic) vocabulary, but again the range and his rhythmic approach can be a little much for a beginning transcriber.

Which is why I like to recommend Pres; the range lays nice on bass, it's pretty open rhythmically (but at half speed you can really hear how he's nailing the time) and the rhythmic unit rarely gets above a medium tempo eighth note.

But to each...

[Passinwind]

Originally Posted by malireid

btw jazz/blues/soul/gospel are all fair game

OK, then here's something completely different. Feel free to shun and mock me if it's out of bounds.

Check out Jack Casady's classic solo on Candyman from the 1970 album Hot Tuna. Is this one within your skill set?

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

I disagree, there's a lot of Miles that lays funny on the instrument and (especially if you listen to a lot of solos at half speed) there's a lot of places that he just smears the time in the general vicinity of the beat. Louis has a pretty simple (harmonic) vocabulary, but again the range and his rhythmic approach can be a little much for a beginning transcriber.

Wait, it lays funny on the instrument? What difference does that make? All the better reason to transcribe it. It doesn't need to sit in that 4-fret box.

I quit transcribing bass solos for that very reason. I studied with a sax player for a while too.

[Ed Fuqua]

Since I don't have any frets, I don't tend to play boxes. The cats' a beginner and the last thing I would have any of my students working on is passages that jump in 4ths over 3 octaves. Sure, you want to stretch your physical approach. But that's another exercise.

Plus I would posit that the thing that keeps somebody in a "4 fret box" isn't what solo they transcribe.

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

Since I don't have any frets, I don't tend to play boxes. The cats' a beginner and the last thing I would have any of my students working on is passages that jump in 4ths over 3 octaves. Sure, you want to stretch your physical approach. But that's another exercise.

Plus I would posit that the thing that keeps somebody in a "4 fret box" isn't what solo they transcribe.

Even if he transcribed Miles' first chorus from that solo to play on one string it wouldn't be too difficult. Large intervallic jumps on trumpet are just as inconvenient as doing them on a G string. I just think transcribing monophonic non-bass solos gives you more insight into melodic shape and structure.

[Ed Fuqua]

Sigh. Hence the Lester Young recommendations.