Cherokee - Charlie Parker (the whole solo)

[AndreJazzBenson]

Oh I'm good thanks! I hear you about gigs.

I'll stick that in the diary. Feel free to spam me about gigs, I'm meaning to get out to more stuff this year.

Hopefully catch up soon. Are you going to the Adrien Moignard Jazz Cafe thing on 19th Jan? My mate Marcus is playing bass with him, don't know if you know him?

im not sure I know him. But I’ll still be in Italy then, I’m touring next week. Can’t wait.

Hopefully catch you the week after?

[Christian Miller]

im not sure I know him. But I’ll still be in Italy then, I’m touring next week. Can’t wait.

Hopefully catch you the week after?

Yeah! Let me know when you are back


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[princeplanet]

I remember learning the solo to Koko and slowing it down a little to 280 BPM so I could pay along with it (in a lower key!). It felt good at the time, kinda empowering even, but then I realised that apart from developing a technical response to the challenge, it did little to advance my own ability to come up with such a solo on my own. I mean, to even compose a solo of my own as good as the original seemed beyond me (and still is). As for being able to actually improvise something of that quality every new time I played it, well lets just say that will always be a work in progress !

As has been suggested, I might have adapted elements of it into my own vocabulary, but at some point I felt it was working against the grain too much to shoe horn sax friendly motifs onto the guitar neck. Sure, a couple of little things stuck, but for me I felt it was a better use of time to try to develop my own way of getting from chord tone to chord tone (or not). I just mention this in case there are people out there thinking that copying solos is something we must do, because as most with experience in this will tell you, it's far more useful to grab little phrases or even just "words" from several solos you like, and try to find a way to make them playable on the guitar in a way that they can be sprinkled in along with all the other stuff you work on. I'm sure AJB will agree...

[AndreJazzBenson]

I remember learning the solo to Koko and slowing it down a little to 280 BPM so I could pay along with it (in a lower key!). It felt good at the time, kinda empowering even, but then I realised that apart from developing a technical response to the challenge, it did little to advance my own ability to come up with such a solo on my own. I mean, to even compose a solo of my own as good as the original seemed beyond me (and still is). As for being able to actually improvise something of that quality every new time I played it, well lets just say that will always be a work in progress !

As has been suggested, I might have adapted elements of it into my own vocabulary, but at some point I felt it was working against the grain too much to shoe horn sax friendly motifs onto the guitar neck. Sure, a couple of little things stuck, but for me I felt it was a better use of time to try to develop my own way of getting from chord tone to chord tone (or not). I just mention this in case there are people out there thinking that copying solos is something we must do, because as most with experience in this will tell you, it's far more useful to grab little phrases or even just "words" from several solos you like, and try to find a way to make them playable on the guitar in a way that they can be sprinkled in along with all the other stuff you work on. I'm sure AJB will agree...

I’ve done the taking a few words from solos before and it really helps to develop language. Here I’m trying to achieve something different though.

by doing a whole solo activates a different process in the brain. First thing memory comes into place, you train your brain to store a huge quantity of information by learning one solo, because it becomes a huge chunk of set pieces.
secondly you learn and understand the philosophy of the artist when building a solo, you understand the process and building blocks of learning a solo, very important!
And one last more point that I think you misunderstood is the fact that, I’m going to treat this solo as an immense resource of ideas.

as I kept saying to myself now the hard part begins, I’ve learned the solo now and I’m practicing it everyday to keep it fresh, at the same time though I’m dedicating a week to each 16 bars to really use and apply all the language I can to my vocabulary!

also another thing that you can do by learning a whole solo is to transpose it on the spot, now I’ll be playing it in Eb instead, that teaches you a lot!

[princeplanet]

Yes, I'd gathered you're not the kind to be interested only in memorising (great) solos. You obviously know how much work it takes to assimilate/integrate etc. It would be interesting to hear how these early Parkerisms make their way into your playing style!