Dolphin Dance

[musicman5string]

Does anyone know the changes for the last 4 bars of Herbie Hancock's "Dolphin Dance"? There are 3 chords over an Eb pedal, and I've heard various things about them. Anyone with ideas?

[Marc Piane]

I've heard a all different things from different piano players.

Here are the changes from the leadsheet I have.

DbM7/Eb | Bb13(b9)/Eb | C7(#9)/Eb | G7(#5 #9) |

[musicman5string]

Thanks Marc; I'll try those out tommorrow.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Here's a comparison I did earlier this semester of the two places where the changes vary widely between various sources.

JA = Aebersold
NRB3 = New Real Book Vol. 3
RB = Real Book

Just for the hell of it, I'll also attach Brian Bromberg's transcribed solo on Dolphin Dance from "Wood".

[Chris Fitzgerald]

The rest of the solo:

[Marc Piane]

Most of the guys I play with consider the Real Book changes to be 'wrong'. The E to Eb pedal seems more widely accepted. At least with the guys I know.

There is one sax player I play with though that like the B to Bb pedal. Brain Bromberg does too.

[musicman5string]

Thanks alot Chris; I gotta check all those out!

I know Ron Carter plays the E to Eb pedal on the original; I never heard a B to Bb pedal from anyone before.

[Jason Hollar]

Chris -- did you transcribe this? You da man!

Right -- in most cases, I refer to the "legal" or Aebersold changes when learning a tune. Funny thing is...so many people are used to the "illegal" Real Book changes -- you almost have to know several versions of the same tune!

Kind of nuts huh? Best case -- listen to the original recording -- Herbie -- and refer to a modern chart.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Jason Hollar

Chris -- did you transcribe this? You da man!

Yup, and the piano solo, too. My poor grad students each had to lift a chorus from this cut as one of their 8 required transcriptions for a class I taught this year. The purpose of this particular assignment was to teach humility as regards chops.

Right -- in most cases, I refer to the "legal" or Aebersold changes when learning a tune. Funny thing is...so many people are used to the "illegal" Real Book changes -- you almost have to know several versions of the same tune!

Kind of nuts huh? Best case -- listen to the original recording -- Herbie -- and refer to a modern chart.

Agreed. The funny thing is that if you listen to this recording enough, the pedals he plays on the end make a lot of sonic sense, as they tend to make the tune turn around well - especially during one chorus of the piano solo where Brian plays the Bb pedal resolving to Eb and then down to the the ii-V of Cmi.

[nypiano]

The most fixed thing about Dolphin Dance you can say is that the pedal tones have certain tendencies. For example if you think of the Eb pedal as a sequence of scale pallettes--mixolydian, Bb 1/2 whole, Ab mel. minor and then the minor II V to C- with a Galt dom sound. You simply voice the chords with tones that are pulled into these flavors. The phrygian concept mentioned--
C7#9 over Eb, I haven't heard that one.

Herbie flexes on the written chords but is sensitive to the functional aspect of each. So for example he thinks of the G (with the exc of the opening Gmaj7) and F as sus type pedals that move around to and from that gravity. The Eb pedal has a slightly different characteristic. It feels like a dominant pedal (whereby the eb is the V) but then there is that Bb 1/2 W which is almost like V of V (Bachian if you will) and then the Ab melodic minor which feels a bit like a phrygian concept and makes you switch the implied root to Eb (a I pedal) and then a dovetail to relative minor C-.

The tune in part is based on this duality where the pedal tones shift between feeling like I and V. For example the opening of the tune Ebmaj to Eb7sus or the bridge G maj to G7sus. That helps put the final Eb pedal in perspective. I think you should try to hear this harmonic "feeling" carefully in order to really capture the essence of Herbie's compositional process.