10 Bird Heads on Guitar

Dutchbopper · 11-05-2021, 12:05 PM

New vid with 2 more extra heads. I deleted the earlier vid. If you play the heads over the original Bird recordings, some are really hard (Bloomdido, Confirmation and Donna Lee especially). For instance, Bloomdido clocks 240 bpm! People tend to think they can play them but try it alongside Bird! Some very unguitaristic stuff in those heads ...

I noticed many errors in the RB and also in some Youtube tutorials. For instance, I found several guys (Youtube teachers) playing "Cool Blues" with tabs running underneath playing the head wrong. Can you believe that? One of the simpler Bird heads and even getting that all wrong?

People use your ears!

DB

**Banksia** · 11-05-2021, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by Dutchbopper

I noticed many errors in the RB and also in some Youtube tutorials. For instance, I found several guys (Youtube teachers) playing "Cool Blues" with tabs running underneath playing the head wrong. Can you believe that? One of the simpler Bird heads and even getting that all wrong?

I just checked a couple of those. I think Grant Green might have got it wrong and those guitarists are learning it from GG. I checked the Complete Blue Note Album with Sonny Clark and GG is playing it wrong/differently.

Dutchbopper · 11-06-2021, 09:55 AM

Originally Posted by Banksia

I just checked a couple of those. I think Grant Green might have got it wrong and those guitarists are learning it from GG. I checked the Complete Blue Note Album with Sonny Clark and GG is playing it wrong/differently.

You are right. I checked Grant's recording of "Cool Blues" on the "Born to be Blue" album and it seems all the tutorials and tabs are about his take. Could be artistic liberty on the part of Grant. I have noticed that Joe Pass' classic take of "Relaxin' at Camarillo is different from the original Bird recording too. There are probably many examples of altered bop heads.

Anyway, I wanted to play the heads like Bird did unisono over the original takes, so I had to use my ears a lot.

DB

**PMB** · 11-06-2021, 07:36 PM

I first heard Sonny Rollins' blues, Solid via guitarist Dave Stryker's recording. I'm pretty sure Dave picked it up from Grant Green as Sonny's original recording is quite different. Sonny can be quite cavalier with chord tones and he often doesn't bother with flattening the 3rd degree when moving to a IV chord in a blues (i.e. the 'D' of Bb7 doesn't always move to the expected b7 'Db' of Eb7).