Great transcription--as always. Makes you wonder though... there's such a focus on harmony whenever you look in the "jazz instruction" corner of youtube (and in books, video courses, and university classes). So much of Sonny Stitt's genius here and in his other solos is rhythmic--look at all the ink on the pages of your transcription. Then you look at the master of it all, Charlie Parker, and the rhythm is even more complex--we're not even in the realm of hardbop yet, and Bird is doing rhythmic gymnastics unheard of even today. So how does studying harmony account for all that? Study scales and feel rhythm? The masters of bebop had such a deep conception of time--those 32nd note triplets weren't a random event, and those accents weren't a happy accident. Different gears, different feels, different layers of rhythm, different meters (hearing them all happen at the same time and being able to zoom in on different rhythmic details is the trick--easier said than done). There's something hidden in these transcriptions and it ain't scales or substitutions--it's how the masters used rhythm to organize their ideas. I think that your transcriptions prove that we ought to study rhythm with the same depth as harmony and forgo the credo of "just feel it" or "find a cool rhythm and practice it." I think Mike Longo was onto something. I think Jon Raney (Jimmy Raney's son) is onto something. The secret is in the rhythm. The secret is in jazz time. The organization of space and utterance in three dimensions.
shivers!
Great transcription--as always. Makes you wonder though... there's such a focus on harmony whenever you look in the "jazz instruction" corner of youtube (and in books, video courses, and university classes). So much of Sonny Stitt's genius here and in his other solos is rhythmic--look at all the ink on the pages of your transcription.
Then you look at the master of it all, Charlie Parker, and the rhythm is even more complex--we're not even in the realm of hardbop yet, and Bird is doing rhythmic gymnastics unheard of even today. So how does studying harmony account for all that? Study scales and feel rhythm?
The masters of bebop had such a deep conception of time--those 32nd note triplets weren't a random event, and those accents weren't a happy accident. Different gears, different feels, different layers of rhythm, different meters (hearing them all happen at the same time and being able to zoom in on different rhythmic details is the trick--easier said than done). There's something hidden in these transcriptions and it ain't scales or substitutions--it's how the masters used rhythm to organize their ideas.
I think that your transcriptions prove that we ought to study rhythm with the same depth as harmony and forgo the credo of "just feel it" or "find a cool rhythm and practice it." I think Mike Longo was onto something. I think Jon Raney (Jimmy Raney's son) is onto something.
The secret is in the rhythm. The secret is in jazz time. The organization of space and utterance in three dimensions.
MoOSE the mooche!
nuts