Double Bass Falling Grace

[lurk]

Never been a favorite of mine, but guys I like to play with love it. I've always just sort of plugged along but have decided to take the bull by the horns and spend January really working on it. Anybody got any helpful suggestions for analyzing this beyond the obvious transcribing and copying stuff from recordings? I keep feeling locked in to certain things, repeating the same stuff.

 

[Kevin Hailey]

Never been a favorite of mine, but guys I like to play with love it. I've always just sort of plugged along but have decided to take the bull by the horns and spend January really working on it. Anybody got any helpful suggestions for analyzing this beyond the obvious transcribing and copying stuff from recordings? I keep feeling locked in to certain things, repeating the same stuff.

Don’t know if you know the Bill Evans/ Eddie Gomez version, it’s good!

 

[damonsmith]

Moses said it is based on across the barline phrases Roy Haynes often played.

 

[Don Kasper]

This version is worth a listen...
What planet is Marc Johnson from?
Asking for those of us on Planet Earth.
IMFO.
Thanks.

 

[Don Kasper]

Here is the original from 1966.

 

[alexbrownebass]

Here’s a cool more recent version with a great solo by Dario Deidda. I transcribed it a few years ago, I’ll include that as well.

 

[Jeremy Allen]

I recommend learning the melody really, really well. I once made a backing track in Logic and I would just practice the melody continuously, getting the feel for the shape of the form and understanding why the changes flow as they do (in support of the melody). I also recommend playing the harmony in its most basic form, rather than with the chord inversions, to get a different feel for the structure. (Sometimes Steve Swallow does that too.) So roots in the bass, not inversion bass notes.

 

[edwinhurwitz]

I recommend learning the melody really, really well. I once made a backing track in Logic and I would just practice the melody continuously, getting the feel for the shape of the form and understanding why the changes flow as they do (in support of the melody). I also recommend playing the harmony in its most basic form, rather than with the chord inversions, to get a different feel for the structure. (Sometimes Steve Swallow does that too.) So roots in the bass, not inversion bass notes.

I think this is excellent advice for learning any tune. But this is a really fun melody to learn. I've been playing this one since the early 80s and it's always been a favorite.

 

[Carl Hillman]

Never been a favorite of mine, but guys I like to play with love it. I've always just sort of plugged along but have decided to take the bull by the horns and spend January really working on it. Anybody got any helpful suggestions for analyzing this beyond the obvious transcribing and copying stuff from recordings? I keep feeling locked in to certain things, repeating the same stuff.

Metheny talked about this song as being key in his developing his own compositional and improvisational language.



It has II-V-Is in it, but it's more of a modal tune, I think. Jeremy Allen's suggestions are great as far as getting the melody ingrained and ignoring the inversions/bass notes when soloing. You can break it down and loop smaller sections until they don't present themselves as 'speed bumps'. Since the whole tune is like a big circle, you can decide which cadences to emphasize, and where your melodic phrases resolve.

 

[matthewbrown]

It's funny how some tunes just elude memorization! I never had any issue with Falling Grace; for some reason I memorized it easily. It seemed like it should have been hard, but it wasn't. But Our Love is Here to Stay and When I Fall in Love? I constantly have to return to them to memorize the changes!

 

[edwinhurwitz]

Metheny talked about this song as being key in his developing his own compositional and improvisational language.

It has II-V-Is in it, but it's more of a modal tune, I think. Jeremy Allen's suggestions are great as far as getting the melody ingrained and ignoring the inversions/bass notes when soloing. You can break it down and loop smaller sections until they don't present themselves as 'speed bumps'. Since the whole tune is like a big circle, you can decide which cadences to emphasize, and where your melodic phrases resolve.

I experienced initially as musical Escher.

 

[lurk]

Metheny talked about this song as being key in his developing his own compositional and improvisational language.



It has II-V-Is in it, but it's more of a modal tune, I think. Jeremy Allen's suggestions are great as far as getting the melody ingrained and ignoring the inversions/bass notes when soloing. You can break it down and loop smaller sections until they don't present themselves as 'speed bumps'. Since the whole tune is like a big circle, you can decide which cadences to emphasize, and where your melodic phrases resolve.

This is a great interview. Thanks.

 

[edwinhurwitz]

This is a great interview. Thanks.

It really is! I used to see Pat with his brother Mike and Steve Swallow at small clubs in the early 80s in Cambridge MA. It was wonderful to be up so close (except for Jun Saito's China type cymbal pointed straight at the audience that he would wail on. That thing completely swamped the room.). I wish I had made recordings. Bill Frisell, Mike Stern, and others also played those same clubs. It was a great time for music in Boston.

 

[Ed Fuqua]

I heard Mike downstairs at Ryles a lot, that was a nice joint. Got to do a bunch of sessions with Jun (Junebug) in NYC before he moved back to Japan, he was playing with a lot more taste than it sounds like he was in the 80s. Still brought a lot of fire tho'

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Definitely no Marc Johnson, more like Steponmy Johnson....

 

[matthewbrown]

It really is! I used to see Pat with his brother Mike and Steve Swallow at small clubs in the early 80s in Cambridge MA. It was wonderful to be up so close (except for Jun Saito's China type cymbal pointed straight at the audience that he would wail on. That thing completely swamped the room.). I wish I had made recordings. Bill Frisell, Mike Stern, and others also played those same clubs. It was a great time for music in Boston.

It was -- I saw Frisell, Metheny, Sco, Jeff Berlin, Stern -- so many great little clubs. It was a lively scene.

 

[edwinhurwitz]

I heard Mike downstairs at Ryles a lot, that was a nice joint. Got to do a bunch of sessions with Jun (Junebug) in NYC before he moved back to Japan, he was playing with a lot more taste than it sounds like he was in the 80s. Still brought a lot of fire tho'

Yeah, he mellowed out. A fantastic player. I think the China type was just really popular in the 80s.

 

[edwinhurwitz]

Definitely no Marc Johnson, more like Steponmy Johnson....

Very nice!

We played this at the recital I did with some friends that made Berklee decide they needed rules about recitals on 2/29/1984. This tune was not the problem.

 

[Bob_Ross]

It was wonderful to be up so close (except for Jun Saito's China type cymbal pointed straight at the audience that he would wail on. That thing completely swamped the room.).

Got to do a bunch of sessions with Jun (Junebug) in NYC before he moved back to Japan

Oh man, there's a name I haven't heard in decades! Always wondered what happened to Jun...he was one of my favorite drummers in Boston back in the late 70s (along with Tommy Campbell, Bob Harsen, Roberto Petaccia, and, a little later, Jim Daniel and Joel Taylor).

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Oh man, there's a name I haven't heard in decades! Always wondered what happened to Jun...he was one of my favorite drummers in Boston back in the late 70s (along with Tommy Campbell, Bob Harsen, Roberto Petaccia, and, a little later, Jim Daniel and Joel Taylor).

He’s on Facebook if you want to catch up, working a lot …