Double Bass Having fun with Monks Well, You Needn't

[Tom Lane]

funny, I do a similar thing, but start on the 5th of the first chord and going scale-wise downwards end on 1st of the second chord. if you start on a C in thumb position: C Bb A G | Gb F Eb Db | etc., you can easily cover 6 bars of the A part and arrive just in time to do some chordal variance on last two bars... carry on, as you were.

That's a good one! I like it! The composition provides a lot of different strategies to outline the changes in harmonically interesting ways. Another one I've been using is different arpeggios using inversions of chords from the same family:
A-7 or D-7 for F Major and Eb- or BMaj7 for Gb7 in Monk's version, for instance.

 

[DeltaTango]

Thanks to Tom Lane, Chris Fitzgerald and everyone on this thread for the great information. I am just starting to work on playing this tune with my jazz combo class. You all really helped me out.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

Love this real practical helpful thread.

 

[lurk]

These days in NYC sessions, it's not cool to play the Miles changes on the bridge, and the "hip guys" will give you the side eye if you even ask which changes. I like them both. The Miles version sounds pretty good to me too.

 

[coyote1]

Please note that the leadsheet posted above has the melody as interpreted by Miles Davis, not the Melody that Monk plays. The book of Monk tunes transcribed by Steve Cardenas has a much more accurate version (for this tune and pretty much every other Monk tune). Another thing to note is that Monk almost always plays a chromatic line beginning on C for the A sections. Maybe this level of detail is too much to expect from a real book but the fact that the composer plays it suggests the it is a part of the composition. Anyway, great tune! Here is version by someone who really knows this music (Steve Potts is playing the chromatic line):

Old thread I know, but worth revisiting. Yeah, Monk plays that chromatic line instead of chords. And he does the same in live recordings from the era.

Here’s where the intent of the RealBook(s) is made plain. They are not note-perfect transcriptions of the original recordings. They are functional harmonies to accompany well-known versions of well known music. As but one example, at least one older version of the RealBook has Girl From Ipanema as done by Jobim with Sinatra, instead of the original as done with Astrud Gilberto. And it captures the harmony of the arrangement, without capturing any of the nuances of that performance.

So they are a giant step up from the crappy fake books of the time. Real enough that you can play from them and sound good. But you still have to know your stuff to use them well. Which brings us back to Well You Needn’t. My version of the RealBook contains the harmony as a series of dominant 7ths. It works well enough, but when I grab a guitar I tend to play those Monk-ish open 2nds as the harmony. Just because it’s more in the spirit of Monk, while still providing a harmonic framework for a soloist. That said, his original sparse counterpoint line sure leaves things wide open for a good soloist.

 

[matthewbrown]

Thanks Chris. I completely agree that using the Major or Dominant 7th completely depends on the voicing the harmony player uses. For the Miles version I tend to use the Mixo scales throughout and actually think about those sounds every 4 beats. It makes for an interesting scaler bass line doing something like starting on F on the G string and playing F Eb D C | Cb Bb Ab Gb | F Eb D C | Cb Bb Ab Gb | F G A Bb | Cb Db Eb E | F G A Bb | C D Eb E | and mixing in some arps can be interesting too.

Another observation is that I found that I had to discipline myself to keep with the same type of bass line, really, the same bass line on all of the A sections within a chorus because I was tending to come out of the bridge and start a new concept and I don't like that because it obscures the form.

Last, for the real challenge, soloing with more than two-bar phrases is difficult for me on this tune, but I like the solos of the players who play longer ideas so I'm practicing that.

I've really come to appreciate and enjoy the tune and I'm going through a similar experience with Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise now. That tune really has a lot of legs. The simplicity of its A section works well for it, IMO. I really enjoy that feeling of coming to know and appreciate a well composed tune.

I love Emily Remler's arrangement of Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise.