SPAIN - Impro Ideas

[kris]

Do you have any interesting ideas for solo in "Spain "/Ch.Corea/?



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[mr. beaumont]

Sounds great Kris. You really take your time and let things develop.

Here I am noodling on it from some time back...one of my kids distracts me near the end...My goal here I think was to find some balance between faster, "notey-er" segments and more melodic parts with rhythmic variety.

[kris]

Thanks.
Nice playing Jeff.
I plan to experiment a bit with different scales. This song is very inspiring.

[Mick-7]

Take the easy way out, copy the licks of the self taught legend.

[kris]

My short solo after a week of practicing and listening to different versions of the tune "Spain":



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[ragman1]

This guy's got it, definitely (includes some nice Phrygian chords).

[ragman1]

I'll probably never play Spain but I'd do these chords like this. The speed is about the same as the vibes man but he sounds quicker because of the double-beat backing. I'm using more or less the same subs as he does but I simplify everything as usual.

There are two versions, one simpler than the other.

1)

GM7#11 - Bm pentatonic.
F#7 - B harmonic minor (to get that nice Spanish-y sound that Jeff used).
Em7/A7 - DM7/GM7 - F# minor pentatonic.
C#7/F#7 - D melodic minor (C#alt) and G melodic minor (F#alt).
Bm/B7 - B minor and C diminished arpeggio.

2)

GM7#11 - Bm pentatonic + a bit of F#m pentatonic for the lydian feel.
F#7 - G melodic minor (F#alt).
Em7/A7 - E minor and G melodic minor. The G minor produces the A7sus13b9 Phrygian effect.
DM7/GM7 - DM7. I just use the one chord. The C# in it produces the #11 note for the GM7.
C#7/F#7 - D melodic minor (C#alt) and G melodic minor (F#alt).
Bm/B7 - B minor and C melodic minor (Balt).

It all sounds complicated but it's just shapes and lines from shapes. It's not that difficult.

[kris]

[kris]

[kris]

[2bornot2bop]

I’ve been here a long time. So long Mr B has gone gray!

[ragman1]

There is this, of course, if one is intent on copying the 'master'. Good luck :-)

[kris]

Here there was already a guitar transcription of Corea solo at a slower tempo.

post nr 10.

[ragman1]

Thanks. I've watched it now. I don't know exactly what Chick was doing, it seemed to be very chromatic and/or slip-slidy to me.

But the rest of it, and what Greg Fine was using, was what I was saying too. Except I don't use the H/W diminished scale, I find the altered (melodic minor) scales much easier.

The difference, of course, is that these versions are very fast and I can't do that.

Have you got any of the good ideas you wanted from all this?

[kris]

The whole problem with Spain is to master all possible scales in order to just have fun with it during improvisation.
Because it is a fast song ala samba, there is also creativity, i.e. playing with rhythm and phrases.
Playing over dominant chords opens up a wide range of possibilities - phrygian dominat, wholeetone, min.mel., dim...etc scales.
You need to master it so that it can be fun.
This is an optimistic tune.
Ps.
I recorded Spain on a CD in 1982 not being aware of how much knowledge you need to have to feel comfortable in this tune.

[ragman1]

The whole problem with Spain is to master all possible scales in order to just have fun with it during improvisation.
Because it is a fast song ala samba, there is also creativity, i.e. playing with rhythm and phrases.

Absolutely.
.

I recorded Spain on a CD in 1982 not being aware of how much knowledge you need to have to feel comfortable in this tune.

They did Spain as one of the Virtual Jam tunes in 2021. I still have what I did then. Very embarrassing. It was awful.

[kris]

[ragman1]

Yes, little by little, which is fairly obvious really.

You know, the chords for the Spain's solo bit (which every Tom, Dick and Harry likes to enlighten us about on YouTube) are actually very easy. Mind you, unless you can see it right away it's still wise to look at it and see what it's doing.

• It's in D so GM7's the IV chord (so play lydian)
• Then it goes into Bm so F#7's the V (so play B harm or F#7alt)
• Then a simple ii-V-I in D (you can alt the A7 too if you want)
• Then the C#7 is the V of F#7 (so play C#7alt)
• Then F#7 - Bm again (I'd only use the Spanish effect of B harm once so I'd use F#7alt the second time)
• Then the B7 (which is probably B7alt too)

This is where some jazz theory knowledge is more than useful. Likewise the knowledge of the various scale options.

All that is easy to work out if you understand it BUT it's performed in Spain at a pretty fast speed and that is not so easy.

When I first started I only had a very basic knowledge and just tried outlining the chords (and not very well) and it was rubbish. But being here on this forum has taught me a great deal so needless to say I've improved. And now I can do it.

But I have to say that I don't really like this solo section. I find the second GM7 redundant and god only knows what the B7's about. Yes, I know it implies resolving to Em but that's theoretical. Truth is, it just sort of hangs there without much meaning. And the whole thing loops which doesn't help.

So I played with it using all kinds of options: pentatonics, diminished runs for 7b9 chords, and so on, but in the end I just played it ordinarily and altered all the dominants. I find melodic minors easy.

Basically, this is what I do with all these kinds of jazz tunes. In fact, it's what everybody should do with these jazz chord progressions because it's the only way to get round them. All this 'play it by ear' (i.e. guesswork) is nonsense; you can't do it unless you know what you're doing.

Chick Corea himself doesn't use the scales as obviously as that, he puts in a lot of chromatic stuff and blasts through the progression. Pat Metheny does the same and a lot of hard-core jazz sax players do it too. I can only say I don't have the confidence to do that yet, maybe it'll come eventually.

Anyway, that's my rant on the Spain thing. About improvisation generally, of course start simply and work up. But one thing I do know is this: the only way to start improvising is to start improvising as soon as possible. To use CC's analogy, a child learning to walk starts walking. He may fall over a million times but he gets there in the end. Same with this stuff and probably any other skilful endeavour.

So here are the Spain chords but done as a looped samba exercise (it's not Spain). I did this the other day, not specially for this post. It's diatonic except the doms are altered. If you listen to it, all the notes are good using available tensions in the right way.

There's a thread at the moment about minor chord subs ascending in m3rds, i.e. over G7, the Dm, Fm (for the b9 sound) and Abm (for the altered sound). I've used that on the doms here (i.e. A7 - G mel (7b9) and C#7 - D mel, F#7 - G mel (alt)).

[Cunamara]

As kids are learning to walk, in many cases they don't even particularly mind falling over, they just pick themselves up and walk again. It's a good model for learning to solo over challenging songs; we're going to fall over, just get up and keep going. Eventually we get better at it.

But if you're like me, tripping and falling over on a solo often brings me to an abrupt stop and what I was playing often collapses. That's the result of a number of bad mental habits that are just not actually helpful. A bad note is just a bad note, pick it up on the next beat or the next bar and carry on. Easier said than done, for me at least, but it's what I aspire to because I will play a bad note in probably every solo I ever play.

[kris]

As kids are learning to walk, in many cases they don't even particularly mind falling over, they just pick themselves up and walk again. It's a good model for learning to solo over challenging songs; we're going to fall over, just get up and keep going. Eventually we get better at it.

But if you're like me, tripping and falling over on a solo often brings me to an abrupt stop and what I was playing often collapses. That's the result of a number of bad mental habits that are just not actually helpful. A bad note is just a bad note, pick it up on the next beat or the next bar and carry on. Easier said than done, for me at least, but it's what I aspire to because I will play a bad note in probably every solo I ever play.

You can simply make a mistake and you have to be able to get out of it.
Sometimes ways out of mistakes can be very creative.

[ragman1]

I will play a bad note in probably every solo I ever play.

That's what Joe Pass said. There's a video somewhere of him saying 'It's my trademark!'

they don't even particularly mind falling over

There's a lesson there somewhere :-)