I'm looking for a nice Blue Bossa version

[Litterick]

Funny to read that, I always thought "Parisienne Walkways" to be an "Autumn Leaves" contrafact. (*)

But I see, the first four bars have some resemblance with the "Blue Bossa" melody....


(*) Or "Europe" Santana, or "Still Got The Blues" by himself... this running the "Circle Of Fifth" counterclockwise is ubiquitous.

It may well be, but I refuse to believe it, lest Autumn Leaves is ruined for me.

[ragman1]

For a tune like this I kind of think it’s incorrect to play it with an authentic Bossa feel

Absolutely right. It's not a 'proper' bossa, it's Kenny D's jazz tune. And very nice it is too :-)

[Christian Miller]

Kenny D > Kenny G

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

For a tune like this I kind of think it’s incorrect to play it with an authentic Bossa feel

So would you say the two versions I posted from Nelson Faria (the ones with Heraldo del Monte on guitar and Marcos Suzano on tambourine) are somehow “not working”? Of course it is a different feel but what speaks against it?

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

In my opinion that is a really interesting lesson

Glad you got something from it. I just can hardly stand that type of synth string smooth jazz arrangement.

Someone had written that everything is already on YouTube so I thought I’d do a search on vimeo and found this one.

I just found out that “fica a dica premium” is a music school that has a YouTube channel as well. And it turns out that Nelson Faria (who lives in Sweden now teaching at a university) works for them, too.

Here he plays Blue Bossa simply as a part of the reportoire

here he is shown working out an arrangement on guitar,

explaining how to work on outlining the changes with arpeggios

and talking about improvising on that tune

Unfortunately the auto-translate from auto-generated Portuguese subtitles does not work very well, but a lot can be learned from context I think. Or try the “show transcript” function (click on the three buttons on the right below the video on YT) and copy into DeepL which is sometimes better.

I think that’s an interesting channel and will dig deeper into it.

EDIT: Especially the second one where he is filmed live (including breaking a string) working out an arrangement for his next CD is a goldmine.

[ragman1]

Kenny D > Kenny G

So that's what nice means!

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Absolutely right. It's not a 'proper' bossa, it's Kenny D's jazz tune. […]

See my question above @ Christian regarding his statement you are referring to.

[…] And very nice it is too :-)

I agree.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Another lesson from Brazil that has some nice ideas in it

[belfagor]

Thanks! I’ve just remembered another guitar version, by Louis Stewart:

Thanks for the nice Video .... Really miss me the great louis stewart

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

This is first of all a drum clinic but there is some nice guitar on this one as well

[ragman1]

Oh, let's have some fun :-)

[belfagor]

This is , one of my favourite version ..I'd expect that modern jazz guitar to treasure Tyner's lesson but I don't see anything on the Horizon even amoung young player . Even because that I ask some suggestions . Peter Sprague is a great jazz guitar player and try to evolve the jazz guitar language . It's a pity he reorded so few disc .

[Christian Miller]

So would you say the two versions I posted from Nelson Faria (the ones with Heraldo del Monte on guitar and Marcos Suzano on tambourine) are somehow “not working”? Of course it is a different feel but what speaks against it?

Yes they are obviously terrible ;-) Actually I haven’t listened to them. I’m sure they’re awesome. I did say ‘kind of’. You could play blue Bossa in a Balkan 7 and make it sound good if you are a musican at those guys level.

It’s more to do with the original feel. The original Is pretty aggressive! Quite pushed. Some Brazilian music aficionados seem to think it’s wrong if you play an Americanised Bossa or ‘Latin jazz’ feel, but I’d argue it’s a whole different thing.

There are definitely some tunes - like the whole Jobim songbook for starters - where I think you need to try and get as close to a Brazilian feel as you can (if not adapting the material); the Bossa police can legitimately come after you if you play, for example, the bass note on beat 2 higher in pitch that the one on beat 1, or whatever. Blue Bossa is not one of these tunes.