This transcription of the first chorus of John Coltrane’s tenor solo on Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone”, was taken from a live (possibly radio) recording from sometime in mid 1954, when ‘Trane was on the road with Johnny Hodges’ septet. The band included Hodges’ fellow Ellingtonians, Harold “Shorty” Baker – trumpet, and Lawrence Brown on trombone. This version of “Mellotone” was originally released, to my knowledge, in on a “bootleg” vinyl in the 1970’s on the “Enigma” label. A friend of mine had it and I promptly copied it to cassette (remember those?…..OK, maybe not). Then as now, ‘Trane’s … Read More
Bobby Stern
As I’ve been recently treating the Harmonic Major scale like a new found toy, I’ve discovered, for myself at least, some of the unique and interesting qualities of this “hidden in plain sight” seven note harmonic system. The practice of adding a non-diatonic passing tone to the Major, as well as the Melodic & Harmonic Minor Scales and their modes began as the “eighth note” became the basic rhythmic pulse unit of the music called “BeBop”, and became known at some point as the “BeBop Scale” I think it was David Baker who first “bopularized” the term. In order to … Read More
It’s Joe Henderson time again, ladies and gents! Joe, as you should know, was one of the music’s more stylistically unique and influential tenor saxophonists and improvisers, as well as the composer of a healthy number of classic originals. His influence and legacy live on in his many recordings, made both as leader and sideman, during a career which spanned nearly four decades. Henderson’s tenor saxophone solo on one of those original compositions, an uptempo C Minor Blues entitled “Granted” (dedicated to the renowned NYC Jazz Radio personality and promoter, Alan Grant, who recently passed away at 93), is the … Read More
Unidentified Descending Shape (UDS) Landing Near You Origin determined to be from the planet Tritonius Minorus in the Diminished Scale System, according to reports from Deep Space b9 Don’t jump out the window just yet………..! Swap that tricorder for a trichord and check out this supplementary exercise based on my last post, which deals with a hexatonic scale comprised of two minor triads, a tritone apart (C- & F#-). As this scale seemed to have been nameless, and for lack of one better, I dubbed it the “Tritone Minor Scale”. It’s close resemblance to it’s likewise Diminished Scale offshoot cousin, … Read More
Judging from the title, this post is a follow up to last week’s, with some ideas on how one could apply these particular Melodic Minor 4th shapes in a ii-V7-i situation; at least in theory. What I’ve done here was to copy one of the single measure shape patterns from a particular MM scale for the ii7b5, and another one from the MM scale a minor 3rd above it for the V7alt, but not from the same identical scale degree, so that while the shape remains the same, the pattern’s interval makeup is slightly different. A common Melodic Minor device … Read More
I am taking this opportunity to happily announce here that I am now a proud endorser for BRANCHER-FRANCE Saxophones. I had the good fortune of meeting Msr. Pascal Brancher, Mr. BRANCHER-FRANCE himself, maker of fine saxophones and accessories, in March 2014 at the Frankfurter Musikmesse (Frankfurt Music Fair). The Brancher stand was located directly across the isle from the Bari Woodwinds booth (manned by Jim Cavanaugh and Ron van Ostenbridge) whose Bari Hybrid mouthpiece and synthetic reeds I have been playing exclusively and endorsing for a number of years, going back to the days of the company’s founder, the late … Read More
Guitarist / bassist (or bassist / guitarist) Roy Louis has been a close friend and musical colleague for almost 40 years. As I discovered, it’s not easy interviewing your long time friends, as the conversation can can very easily get sidetracked into many different cracks and crevices of shared experience. “Man, do you remember…….?”, became the common theme, only to realize, half an hour later, that we’d gone way off on a tangent. * * * * * * Roy Louis is a native of the island of Curacao (pronounced KEWR-ə-sow) formerly of the Netherlands Antilles, which has a unique … Read More
I recently received a comment on one of my posts from last summer entitled “Sonny Stitt – “How Many Keys on the Saxophone?” from a well informed gentleman by the name of Leo Cluesmann. In my post, I detailed the experience of my encounter in 1980 with the jazz legend, saxophonist Sonny Stitt, believing, correctly as I found out, that many people who are still around had their own Stitt stories. It is obvious, using Mr. Cluesmann’s comment as an example, that even more than thirty years after his death, Stitt still elicits some strong emotions from folks. I’ll include … Read More
I remember the first time I ever heard about Carolyn Breuer (pronounced Broy – er). I was sharing a quiet taxi ride in Munich, Germany with her father, trombonist / pianist Hermann Breuer. As I recall, I was about to doze off in the back seat, when Hermann remarked suddenly, “Saxophone players tend to practice a lot of patterns, don’t they?” I must have answered something like “Yeah, I guess so. Why?” “Well my daughter, who’s 12, started playing alto and she practices a lot of patterns.”, he replied. I mentioned to him that I had a few students at … Read More
On the heels of my last posted exercise, which was inspired by Walter Bishop’s “A Study in 4ths”, and which ended with an ascending figure of a diminished scale in Perfect 4ths, I thought it could be cool to further investigate some of the possibilities of P4th relationships within a diminished scale. I had considerably diminished the use of the diminished scale in my own playing for quite a while now, since I’ve felt that the modes of Melodic Minor (which is 2 notes shy of being a diminished scale), primarily the “altered scale” (seventh mode, diminished / whole tone) … Read More