Possibly my first proper jazz piano CD was Oscar Peterson’s Night Train. I remember thinking that whoever could play with such soul and throw-away creativity must surely be some kind of god.
Most of the tracks on that album swing to such an extent that you can almost reach out and touch it. ‘Hymn to Freedom’ however is a slow gospel-shuffle affair. It a great piece for beginning to play and study because structurally and harmonically it’s fairly conventional. It’s all about the feel baby. Enjoy (YouTube of Oscar playing a very similar arrangement as to what’s written below).
Posted on 10 March '11 by admin, under piano. No Comments.
Hello again all. Monty and Alexander, Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. What a top trio. They made a few very good albums in the 80′s, three of which were Triple Treat volumes 1 – 3. All these recordings had great swing and telepathic levels of interplay.
This transcription is sort of a bonus because as well as Monty’s transcription you also get John Frigo’s violin interpretation of the head (Frigo sat in on quite a few of the numbers) and Monty’s comping underneath it. Scuse the rapidshare link – it’s just because the file size was over the 8 meg WordPress allows by default. Enjoy!
Posted on 26 February '11 by admin, under piano. 2 Comments.
I’ve updated (and re-dated) this post with more and more blogs shutting down, or rather, getting shut down. Blogger.com are clamping down big-time and some work-of-art blogs are now no longer available.
However, all the sites not struck-through below were live at the time of writing.
OK, so it’s not a transcription, but I wanted to share with you my favourite music blogs that offer a treasure trove of rare and top quality jazz and jazz-funk grooves for your listening pleasure.
- The CTI never sleeps contains TONS of albums produced by Creed Taylor and his CTI-related labels.
- Jazz Disposition is fantastic. Lovely design too…
- Into the Rhythm – masses of jazz on here.
- Never enough rhodes is a site aimed at the rhodes enthusiast (hence why I love it!) but any fan of funk-groove-soul music will love this.
- FunkyFullofWatt has over 2000 funk tracks and links to some other great blogs.
- Ile Oxuare has some rare jazz cuts, god knows what the title means, but who cares – go visit!
- MyJazzWorld a great variety of stuff on here and a huge amount of content that is clearly a completely labour of love.
- Funk My Soul blog has some of the best OoP vinyl rips of funk/soul/groove
- Where did all this steam come from is another jazz related blog with a massive variety of content.
- http://jazzheads.blogspot.com/ and http://jazz-the-two-of-us.blogspot.com/
- And http://musicadesdelasantipodas.blogspot.com/
- MPS goodness here…
- Live jazz goodies here… stuff you can’t, nor will ever be able, to buy
- The incredible zona de jazz, a mammoth amount of stuff on here
- http://jazzallthat.blogspot.com
- http://musicacion.blogspot.com
- Fusion Jazz and Something Else for those that swing both ways
- And the great MyFavouriteSound
- Projeto Esporte Fino has some terrific funk/soul/fusion
- I’ve recently found Bentleyfunk, and its a corker
- So is All Soul and Funk
- etnikcafe.blogspot.com has a vast amount of all kinds of stuff, for those time when you fancy something different.
- Inconstant Sol is huge and has some great rare and live cuts available
- Anything Goes has a really eclectic selection of stuff on, but alot of jazz.
- ‘Taringa’ appears be some sort of Spanish knowledge sharing platform, but this post has incredible rapidshare links, plus links (at the bottom) to similar posts by other users.
- 7Oregons and 2Tomoatoes is another great/huge jazz blog.
- Oufar Khan’s blog has some of the grooviest cuts of funk jazz gems.
- Buns O’Plenty is top drawer too and has a great blog roll to other blog sites.
- The Universal Mind Of contains only Bill Evan’s material
- 17 Green Buicks, another great jazz blog
- And Culture & Pleasure has perfect stuff for those quiet nights, and freealbumsgalore has some fine ambient too.
- Chezmateo specialises in stuff that completely OoP so you needn’t feel so guilty for checking out this one
- While the QueenBee blog is absurdly huge….
- And so is Musica Y Musicos
- And so is this one
- Kelly’s Sound Lounge has a lovely choice of stuff on.
- A Lion’s Love is truly that
- And a chap called Budd had posted some top compilations of lesser well known tracks on his blog.
- Then there’s the great nodata.tv
- LongPlay has some great fusion/funk/smooth jazz on, if that’s your bag
- YorUbaJazz has amazing has a fantastic collection of albums and artists
- La Musica De Pere has a mountain of nuJazz on
- DestinationFunk3 doesn’t need any explaining
- Holyf**kingShit4000 is a huge one covering various jazzy genres.
- Jazz Is My Life is a recent find, very good!
- Digital Meltdown is a directory of music blogs on Blogspot – sweet!
- Route 66 is huge, surprised to see this still alive and well on a WordPress hosted blog.
- Musica que cuelga is impossibly huge and contains some fantastic posts.
- Las Cintas Recuperadas is another big jazz collection – great stuff!
- NuGroove has some top mixes and compilations.
- Music on Top is mostly jazz/fusion/funk/soul that type of stuff
- JazzFusionBlogger is bloody great
- JJ’s jazz and such is also a top blog.
- Ray Porter’s ‘Jazz A Love Affair’ podcast is ideal if you want to listen to compilations of a variety of great jazz artists. Ideal for putting on the MP3 player.
- Arkadin’s Ark has some rare vinyl rips of jazz/funk/soul etc.
- Hook’s Gem’s has some great out-of-print stuff on
- YoRubaJazz has a mammoth collection of jazz and Cuban goodies.
- The Jazz Alley blog is particularly good if you’re after something ‘ECM ish’.
- Bogard’s Jazz Tapes offers bootlegs of gigs and other stuff.
- Dr Fusion covers just that.
- Good to see Soulfunkjazz still alive and well on WordPress.
- Music On Top is another good one.
- http://rfccbh.blogspot.com is brilliant.
- Jazzsi has lots of good stuff on.
- Cuchyfritos has probably the biggest collection of funky soul breakbeats.
- Jazz Music Blogwatch is a collection of feeds from the various blogspot sites so you can see easily latest editions.
- The new Venus Jazz concentrates on just one thing - recordings on the Japanese Venus label.
- Jazz blogwatch is another erm, blogwatch (even bigger than the Jazz Music Blogwatch. Confused yet?)
- Beatfunky has exactly that type of music on
- Our Back Door has tons of great jazz on
- Soulsole is one of the best, and so is between the sky and the land – lots of good modern stuff on here.
Enjoy – lemme know of other blogs that you might know of …. And remember to buy the albums if you download anything you love that is still in print.
Posted on 17 February '11 by admin, under Uncategorized. 6 Comments.
What’s happened to Joshua Redman anyway? He was one of jazz’s brightest stars about 15 years ago, but for some reason he’s not quite reached – or been seen to reach – the artistic heights of alot of his contemporaries.
No matter, I love his playing. And I especially love his playing on his 2000 album ‘Freedom in the Groove’. It’s probably his most ‘straight-ahead’ album, which is saying something since all the tunes are originals. This selection features 4 tracks from the album and I’ve included some low quality reference MP3′s too.
Have fun, and if you haven’t heard these tracks yet I almost guarentee you’ll want to play these charts after hearing him play them.
Posted on 27 January '11 by admin, under Uncategorized, sax. 1 Comment.
I’ve been listening to a fair bit of Kenny Werner lately – he has few equals in terms of his understanding of jazz harmony and delicate touch, but he’s not as recognised as he should be I don’t think.
This is a transcription of him playing Blue In Green from the album ‘Live at Visiones’ which is on the Concord label. Quite hard to find album, so I’ve included a reference MP3 too. Enjoy!
Posted on 22 January '11 by admin, under piano. No Comments.
Bill Charlap is one of my favourite contemporary pianists – while he is thoroughly within the ‘tradition’ his bravery to use space, the full range of the instrument and quicksilver imagination lifts all his playing above the ‘straight-ahead’ . Most of his recordings would fall under this category but don’t overlook him because of that.
This one’s taken from his ‘Stardust’ album – not one of my absolute top recordings but this solo performance of Skylark displays perfectly Charlap’s advanced harmonic approach over a well-worn standard. Definitely worth a little bit of study time, enjoy.
Posted on 18 December '10 by admin, under piano. 3 Comments.
This one comes from Tommy’s album ‘Something Borrowed Something Blue’ which is notable not just for this track, but also that he plays Rhodes on ‘Good Bait’ and the title track. Fantastic!
Anyway, this is a sweet ballad with a very typical Tommy Flanagan introduction – in fact all round its a great summation of what Tommy has been doing so well for over four decades now. Do check out the album – it’s available on iTunes. Enjoy!
Posted on 3 November '10 by admin, under piano. 1 Comment.
I’ve just come across the transcriptions page on the Freejazzinstitute’s site. Lots of really useful stuff here – don’t think I’ve been on this site before, not sure why it’s illuded me for so long….
Wanting to post a Bill Charlap transcription up soon, been listening to alot of him.
Posted on 16 October '10 by admin, under guitar, learning, piano, sax, trumpet. No Comments.
[Sorry for not posting for a bit - been truly busy at work!]
One of my favourite Miles albums has always been ‘My Funny Valentine: The Complete 1964 Concert‘. This was during the short period that the brilliant George Coleman was in the band (prior to Wayne Shorter) but the foundations of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams were already established and working brilliantly together.
The band are on fire during this recording, the playing is inspired. Apparently Miles forget to tell them that he had waived their fee (it was a charity gig) until just before they went on so the band were absolutely pissed at him. In any case, they produce some incredible solo’s and this one I think is one of the best of the night. An almost perfect combination of in-the-pocket yet pushing-the-envelope I think. Includes reference MP3 file too. Enjoy!
Posted on 1 October '10 by admin, under piano. 6 Comments.
I thought it was about time that I posted again and I know I’ve been a bit lax of late (just REALLY busy at work). Kenny B – he’s a true dude and god of the piano. All of his playing is so swinging and I really like his phrasing. As a sideman I imagine he’s simply perfection as he is ‘straight-ahead’ and conventional yet flexible enough to really go with it.
So here’s a PDF transcriptions AND reference audio file for Kenny playing his own composition ‘Dolores Street S.F’. It’s from one of his very early albums that were often a bit variable in quality, but this track is typical of the man – great harmonies and swinging touch combined with a slight darkness too. Enjoy!
Posted on 17 July '10 by admin, under piano. 1 Comment.
