Saturday Transcription

As promised, a transcription from Kenny Dorham's Quiet Kenny album.  This is Kenny's solo on I Had the Craziest Dream by Harry Warren.   Here is the music:

Saturday Transcription

A classic from Prez:  his Lady Be Good solo from the Count Basie small group recordings.  No further discussion necessary.

Mean Tone Scale

The next evolution from the Just Scale was an attempt to solve the problem of uneven perfect fifths, while maintaining the just major thirds.  This was accomplished at the expense of the Pythagorean perfect fifth and is called the Mean Tone Scale.  The idea is to keep all three major thirds: C to E, F to A and G to B at a 5:4 ratio, make all of the major seconds equal and then make the minor seconds so the math works out (i.e. everything fits in one octave.)

Some Harmonic Problems with Just Intonation

We noticed in the last Just Intonation Post that we encounter 2 different perfect fifths: between C to G, E to B and  G to D are all the Pythagorean ratio of 3:2, but the perfect fifth from D to A is 40:27, or one syntonic comma flatter than 3:2.  This leads to some problems with basic harmony.  If we only consider I, IV and V, everything works out fine, but as soon as we add some more interesting chords to the mix, namely ii, iii and vi minor triads, we encounter a phenomenon known as drift.

Saturday Transcription

OK, busy week, so just one chorus of a really good solo, Charlie Rouse on Green Chimneys.  Tons of motivic development and improv based around the melody.  I guess after playing with Monk for like a million years you'd have to develop some of that.  I'll get back to ya with the other choruses.

Saturday Transcription

I am going to try to stick to this schedule and make this a weekly thing.  Just so you don't think I only work on tenor solos (although I do seem to a lot), here is a solo from the great trumpet player Blue Mitchell.  It's the tune Strollin' from the Horace Silver record Horace-Scope.  If you don't have this record, go buy it now, then come back and finish reading this.