Adam Roberts Music

Michael Brecker and I have a long, rich history…not the person himself (God rest his soul) unfortunately, but his recordings for sure. Michael’s records brought me into Jazz, and I had the pleasure of meeting him a few times, which were wonderful moments for me, and I’m sure quite uneventful for him, me being just another in his legion of fans.

You see, when I was just cutting my teeth on Jazz in the early 90s, I found a cassette tape of Brecker’s recording Now You See It, Now You Don’t. Saxophone monster (and fellow Bulldog) Josh Cook gave it to me in while I was in High School, which I had listened to and then dropped into a box of tapes. I didn’t get it at the time. I was still freaking out over Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and raiding my parents’ closet for Flannel shirts.

A year later, I found my way back to the tape. I had my wisdom teeth out…all 4 cracked in my gums while being pulled. To compensate, the dentist hit me with a blast of anesthesia that had me delirious for almost a week. So in that “enlightened” mental state, I lay in my bed, zoning out. To break the silence, I grabbed a random tape from a box next to me, tossed it in the deck, and was blown away by what I heard. Incredible virtuosity, exotic harmonies, and that incredible sound! I was hooked. Jazz, and Brecker were in my life for better or worse.

So Michael Brecker became my guide into the world of jazz…a hell of a way to start if you ask me. Ridiculous chops, tremendous harmonic vocabulary, and a body of work larger than most players could dream of…now mine for browsing and exploring. Now, even though I’ve moved on to other players and studied much more of the music’s history, Brecker has remained a touchstone for me.

Ok, ok…get to the point already, right?

Michael Brecker’s solo on Midnight Voyage

So this week’s transcription (in honor of his passing, 4 years ago yesterday) is one I did back then…circa 1998 while in Dave Schmidt’s Improvisation class at Glendale Community College. It was only the 2nd solo I ever learned, and man did I push myself with this one. I’ve since gone back and revised this a few times, finding some wrong notes and rhythms here and there, and I took the time to redo the chords I originally wrote…I had the bass notes, but the chord qualities were all wonky.

I gave an earlier version to Eric Dannewitz to publish over at his site Jazz-sax.com, and I’ve seen this floating around online on several sites that collect piles of transcriptions. Well, forget about those versions. This is the final revision. Version 2.0 if you will. Far more accurate and as clean as I can notate it.

A little analysis

This is a hell of a solo. Blues-inspired lines, pentatonics, melodic minor modes, and hard-edged R&B phrasing, all in the context of a minor blues-influenced form written by Joey Calderazzo. While there’s really a lot that could be said of this one, I tend to focus on just a couple things throughout.

1. Notice the variety brought to the Bb7, A7b9 progression that ends every 8 bar phrase? Brecker brings a lot of ideas and shapes to this, but almost all of the lines can be seen as implying F-7 over the Bb7, and using A Super-Locrian (Bb Melodic Minor) over the A7b9. Doing a little beat-by-beat analysis shows that Brecker places the more dissonant tones (b9, #9, #5) on the beat or at emphasized points in the line, giving them more attention and “grind”.
2. I’ve been paying attention to “Forward Motion” (from Hal Galper’s book of the same title) lately. There are several concepts to be had in that text, but a significant one is that well-crafted “singing melodies” lead into target tones (guide tones), rather than lead from them. Brecker’s lines show this all over the place. Notice how he often anticipates a chord by a few beats? This gives his solo a sense of freedom, of not being restricted by perceived bar-lines. It also lends a driving quality to his lines…pushing forward relentlessly.

A Few Brecker-Inspired Practice Tips

1. Get your Melodic Minor modes working. This solo is a treasure-trove of licks from that vocabulary. Just find an A7b9 in the transcription below and go to town.
2. Practice Forward Motion. Look ahead to the next chord. Hear a target tone on that chord…whatever comes to mind. Now drive towards it deliberately. You will really get the effect if you lead in with notes in the target chord, rather than the one you’re playing against. This is often called anticipation, and it will help break down the boxy feel of a solo by blurring the lines between chords.
3. Better yet…read Forward Motion and get to work.

About a week ago, I posted a transcription of Ornette Coleman playing a blues of his called “Turnaround” from 1959′s Tomorrow is the Question. For the sake of comparison, I picked a solo of Joshua Redman playing the tune in his more Sonny Rollins, post-bop way. You can find this is on his 1993 record Wish. The way Redman plays it, it’s really just a conventional blues in C.

Joshua Redman’s solo to Turnaround

A little analysis

This solo is a brilliant use of motivic improvisation, or extended improvising off a simple, memorable theme. In the whole solo, Redman really only plays 2 basic ideas, and then some filler Bebop for contrast. Check out the line below:

The 1st solo Chorus C is basically all this idea being developed…a lot like the famous Sonny Rollins solo on “St. Thomas” from Saxophone Colossus. If you really look/listen, you’ll hear that minor 3rd idea show up everywhere. He even goes so far as to end the solo on it, coming right back to the very first idea he played. Basically, he sequences it through the changes with some rhythmic twists. For this motif, he almost always sticks to diatonic sequences (meaning, within the chord/scale…except notably in bar 55 & 56 where he sounds strikingly like Ornette Coleman).

After a bit of Bebop to end Chorus C, he introduces the only other major motif of his solo…a developed version of the closing 4 bars of the head.

For this idea, he usually wanders outside chromatically, just like the original melody. Check out Chorus G…he really lets it go!

Also, dig on the rhythmic playfulness in the solo. My last jazz teacher, Jerry Bergonzi, calls lines like the one in the 1st two bars of E “shifting gears”, where you literally play in a different meter, polyrhythmically over the time. Redman is implying a bar of 3/4 inside of every half note for the 1st few measures here. He gives it the feel of 8ths being played in a faster 3/4, instead of triplets in 4/4 (ergo my weird notation choice…). He takes it much further in Chorus G where he goes crazy developing the 2nd motif while shifting gears. NOTE: The notation will be tough to play with the right feel unless you check out the record, so go get the track to fully appreciate what he does here.

Redman-style Motivic Improvisation

1. Taking the Ornette chaining method a lot further, try to stick with a single idea for multiple choruses
2. Do this by introducing a simple, memorable idea
3. Now repeat it using sequencing, both diatonically (like motif 1) and chromatically (like motif 2)
4. Set goals like, 1 idea for each phrase of a 32-bar tune, or a full chorus of blues.
5. Once you get the hang of that, strive to build whole solos off a single idea, or 2 contrasting themes

Transcription, in my view, is the best thing an improvisor can do to improve their abilities as a player. In doing so, you study phrasing, time and groove, tunes, licks and cliches…pretty much every component of the Jazz vernacular (or whatever style you might be studying). It also greatly improves your ear, your concept of sound production, and provides inspiration, influence and a sense of history in your solos. What better way to reach for the greats than by studying them without a middle man filtering it for you?

I’ve done lots of these through the years and have had them all typed up, ready to go in folders on my computer. I recently decided to share, in part to get comments on editing, but mostly just to get these out into the world for anyone who might want them. Feel free to download and study to your heart’s content. All I ask is that any copy you give out or share gives me credit for the work done and maintains the link back to here at the bottom.

For the kick-off, I’m going to begin a little left-field from where my tastes normally lie. Here’s Ornette Coleman from his 1959 recording Tomorrow is the Question improvising on his tune, “Turnaround”. I wrote an analysis right on the music as part of a class I was taking while at the New England Conservatory (thanks Allan Chase!). We we’re studying the idea that Ornette seems to improvise with an approach Allan referred to as “chaining”. Basically, he plays an idea, develops it for a bit, then takes some of the new material from the development and treats it as a new idea, which he develops for a bit…so on and so forth…

So, how about an Ornette-inspired practice tip?

Experimenting with Melodic Chaining:

1. Play a simple, memorable idea
2. Develop that idea a few times (Ornette tended to do it 2 or 3 times)
3. Take an interesting twist from your improvisation (added notes, a fun rhythm or what have you) and play it in isolation
4. Go back to step 2 and repeat indefinitely

Feel free to leave comments on the analysis or whatever strikes you.

The solo in Eb: Coleman – Turnaround (in Eb)
The solo in C: Coleman – Turnaround (in C)