Ornette Coleman's "Peace"

[ericevans]

Does anyone have any suggestions for approaching the bass part to Ornette Coleman's "Peace"? Thanks.

[damonsmith]

When I end up playing one of those earlier Ornette tunes I generally try to re-imagine it being played by David Izenzon instead of Haden.
Here is "Lonely Woman" with that idea:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZNp0l6ZhlRM

[crookedfingers]

I just transcribed that recently. I think the hardest part to nail is the rhythm. Just listen to "The Shape of Jazz". I don't know how advanced you are but if you don't know, those double stops are open strings a and d with the 10th played on the adjacent strings on the V1/2 position. It's easy and fun. When in doubt, transcribe. I hope I was helpful.
-John

[chris dammann]

okay--i've been waiting for someone to ask me that question my whole life... it seems like Haden is reharmonizing the melody. i can send you a pdf of what my take of the chords during Ornettes solo is. they correspond interestingly to the harmony of the melody. however, i don't think my analysis will help you play the tune. after a day of thinking about it, i came to the conclusion that Haden and Ornette have a special type of ESP that you should try and replicate with whoever your playing with.
chris

[David Kaczorowski]

Originally Posted by ericevans

Does anyone have any suggestions for approaching the bass part to Ornette Coleman's "Peace"? Thanks.

Don't play "the bass part." Learn the melody and work with that. I'm not familiar with "Peace" but that's what I do with "Lonely Woman." The bassline is just what Haden or whoever played.

When a guitarist I know wanted me to learn Lonely Woman he gave a recording of Blood Ulmer playing it, with Fred Hopkins on bass. I said, "do you want me to do something along those lines?" And he said no, we can play it however we want, he just wanted me to hear the melody and that happened to be the recording he had. Before taking up the guitar, this guitarist played bass with Bern Nix for 11 years, I think his opinion is valuable.

[Bruce Lindfield]

I'm not sure what the issue is here - but this was the birth of Free Jazz ,where it was not a case of : just play the changes round and round and then back to the head - but rather commenting on the tune and listening to each other...?

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious - but that's the basic starting point for this kind of music - actually it would be ironically funny if soembody transcribed and played an Ornette performance "note for note" on all the intruments!!

[chris dammann]

i wasn't suggesting that one should play the recording, just there seems to be a harmonic reference point in a lot of Ornette's music having usually to do with the melody. like all music, freely improvised music still has changes.