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I recently got an excellent album featuring Mike Stern in blazing form (Harvie S. Trio - Going For It) - I think there was a thread about this recording a while back. I decided to transcribe Mike's solo on Moment's Notice, he plays really great flowing bebop-type lines, it makes a great bebop etude. I transcribed the head (because it's a great chordal arrangement) and the first 3 choruses of the solo.
I didn't go any further than that, as Mike starts playing some repeating ascending/descending patterns etc. which get pretty wild and are less useful to me, although they sound great in the context of the performance. Also some crazy tremelo-type stuff across the strings which I doubt I can transcribe, let alone play!
Anyway here it is, Mike plays this at about 290 bpm!
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02-25-2024 08:42 AM
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Here's the track in question:
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Streuth, Graham. That was a labour of love.
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It wasn’t too bad actually, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff in Musescore recently and I’ve got the hang of doing it quite quickly. The trick is to use the keyboard commands rather than the mouse, it’s a lot faster. Also this solo was almost entirely strings of eighth notes, which is about the quickest thing to input. I only had to enter the chord symbols for one chorus, they could then be copied and populated for the rest of the score.
Originally Posted by ragman1
I had a slowed-down copy of the audio in Audacity on the right of the screen, Musescore on the left, and just input the stuff gradually. I think it took about 3 days, but I was only doing a couple of hours each day. (I added the chord grids afterwards, that took quite a while as I hadn’t used that feature before.)
Also helps that I know the tune well, so a lot of the lines (and the chord voicings at the beginning) were fairly clear to me. I had to slow the audio down a lot though!
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Best way to do it, in stages, not too much pressure. Gets it done. What speed in Audacity did you use, minus what? I find clips distort after a while so I've done it bar by bar, or even half a bar before now!
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Can’t remember exactly, I just opened the track in Audacity, played around until I was happy with the slowdown level, then saved it as a project so I could just open it and start from the right place each time. I think I probably slowed it down by 60% or more, I don’t normally do it that much, but he was playing very fast!
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Hey Graham, nice job! If you'd be interested in doing another, I have more tracks for your study or transcription. I'm the one that recorded this gig. Those are my tracks on the CD.
Let me know
For those of you who don't know this recording, it's Mike Stern playing standards at a level I've never heard him play since. Magic of chemistry and a once in a lifetime rhythm section.
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Thanks Jimmy, yes I remember reading in the original thread that you had recorded the gig.
To be honest, I tend to just do the occasional transcription when I really feel like it, so I’m not sure there’s anything else I want to do at the moment. But thanks anyway.
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I hear you, and thank YOU! Originally Posted by grahambop
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No offense, but that is one of the least musical solos I've ever heard, just running scales.
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No way, running scales is easy, what Mike is playing certainly isn't, but that's not the reason why it's worth studying. It's killer bop language, slow it down and you'll hear it. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Going for It, what an appropriate title!
As for just running scales, it's like not that, at all. Lots of motifs being used to build tension!
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The above are the reasons I went to the trouble of transcribing it, it’s full of great bebop vocabulary, and a brilliant study in playing long lines through some quite tricky changes.
If someone can’t hear it, so be it. I guess it helps to be familiar with the tune, given the ferocious tempo and the fact there is no piano/keyboard supplying the changes.
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He's got stamina, you've got to give him that
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I've never heard Stern play better. I used to think his predilection for distortion in the past was hiding potentially sloppy articulation, but here the sound is clean and mean (a bit of compression and "doubling" chorus maybe), he strikes and slurs every note cleanly. What's his set up? Guitar, strings, action etc...?
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I don’t know that much about Stern, I just really like this album. As far as I know he usually plays strats or teles.
Best to ask Jimmy Blue Note, he was at the gig!
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o.k., that was my first impression, I'll listen again, but I still found it unmusical. To me, good improvisation means telling a story, this one is (to borrow a phrase) "all sound and and fury, signifying nothing." Originally Posted by princeplanet
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It'll always be the case that the validity of a solo is only as deep or appealing as the lens through which the listener hears it. If your bar is set by Lee Konitz, it might be said that Wayne Shorter was just "Scrambled eggs" which is what one critic described Shorter's solos as.
Mike, like Coltrane, was a constant explorer and he was constantly synthesizing a new language, weekly, around that time. I saw him a lot, with Steve Slagle, with Mick Goodrick, with Blood Sweat and tears, with Tiger's Baku (a trumpet led fusion group that groomed Mike for a smooth and seamless fusion fit with Miles) and one thing that can be said for Mike, he was an extremely knowledgable jazz historian and he studied with the most rigourous teachers, eating up their most challenging ideas with a voracious appetite. His playing, especially on this recording, was a brainchild of his rock, jazz guitar (via Jim Hall via Mick Goodrick via Charlie Banacas) and everything he did was creating a voice in uncharted territory. He was playing that stuff when NOBODY else was doing it and it's safe to say that much of jazz fusion comes from crossing his wake and/or water skiing in it.
If you're looking for clearly delineated phrases punctuated by the use of space for clarity and definition, that's not Mike's thing...by choice. It certainly wasn't at this time. What you will hear is the once in a lifetime energy of youth and the thrill of finding the perfect in the pocket fit provided by an architect of bebop drumming and I still remember the joy on AD's face playing with Mike. By Alan's admission, this was up there with his tightest sessions with Sonny Stitt, and that's no small claim.
Mike Sterns playing somehow managed to not only skate on the depths of the bebop tradition, but he was inventing a way to find a new language rich in bebop harmony, ornamentation, energy and lineality and still manage to capture an entire packed room of jazz and rock enthusiasts/fanatics.
Nobody left that room without believing they had witnessed the real deal and history being made. I don't have any of the local Boston Globe reviews that followed that night, but to the most seasoned critics, there was not even a whiff of 'too many scales'.
Like what you like, but be aware that Mike's playing that night was 100% jazz from a long haired guy and a Fender.
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For this gig, he had two little floor stomp boxes, as everyone of that era did. An orange Boss distortion and I think it was a green chorus of some sort, mayb a tube screamer? That was even before the RAT was out there. No fancy rack mounts. Volume via the pinky on his tele if my memory serves me, but that was a long time ago. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I'm just grateful I had the tape rolling, with my failing memory these days, heh heh.
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It’s not a chorus. I can’t remember exactly what it is but it’s like some weird delay thing iirc. There was an interview where he talked about it. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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I just remember it was a simple set up but full of magic. Everyone thought "If I buy those two little boxes, I'll sound like him, I'll be inspired and I'll REALLY be able to play!" They must've sold out of whatever he was using the next day at Wurlitzers, or Daddy's Junky Music the next day. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Reminds me a little of a delay pedal I had over 30 years ago (blue) that would make a sound like Steve Howe's guitar sound on the Topographic Oceans album. Trying to recall, it was an extreme setting, I'm thinking maybe it was with the "mix" between wet and dry signals turned to all wet with the delay effect level and duration turned all the way down.
It produced a tone that sounded compressed , minimized attack, flat sustain, a dense "liquid" sound with a little bit of that note change "edgy slur" you get from putting a reverb/delay in front of a distorted gain stage (but without the delay or distortion sound). Most fun was to play as fast a possible yielding super legato.
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Googling this question suggests it is a Yamaha SPX90 in some kind of ‘detune’ mode. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Sounds about right Originally Posted by grahambop
Btw - thanks for echoing my feelings on Mike’s playing. There’s so much bop in his playing - something I love about that second generation of New York fusion players (the Breckers etc)
Me and the missus caught him at the 55 and with bass player Teymour Phell it was just bop all the way through. Just happened to be on electric instruments. Great night. His sound was fantastic and he was singing with the guitar too. My wife loves his playing.
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I first heard Mike on one of those Miles Davis ‘comeback’ albums (We Want Miles) and I could hear a lot of the bop lines there, in between the ‘rocking out’ bits.
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