07787 194140
Art Pepper's alto solo on Cole Porter's 'You'd Be So
Nice To Come Home To'
It can be really beneficial to look at material that was originally played on an instrument other than your own, which is why I've transcribed this great solo by the saxophonist Art Pepper. With the exception of the double time passage between bars 21 - 23 (ouch!), everything looks fairly simple on the surface, but this being a sax solo, not all of it 'falls under the fingers' on guitar.
You'll have to think carefully about fingering/articulation to get this to sound like the record. Some of the slurs that Art plays (e.g. 37-38) are difficult to play in position - so it might be worth thinking about playing along the strings sometimes, rather than across them. It's good to do this, because it gets you away from the usual guitar clichés.
Art's playing combines bluesy/swing type phrases with bursts of bebop, but he's always very descriptive of the harmony. Keep in mind that musicians of Art's generation (this was played in 1957) tended not to think in terms of modes etc. but based their solos around the key centres of the tune and the chord tones, spicing it up with chromatic passing notes.
In this case, the keys are G minor, Eb Major, and Bb Major. Art makes much use of the G harmonic minor scale and the G blues scale during the G minor sections, and during the major sections he tends to target chord tones on strong beats, approaching them with chromatic passing tones and enclosures. The phrase between bars 5-8 is a good example - the Cb and A nat on the last beat of bar 6 are, respectively, a semitone above and below the Bb on the first beat of bar 7, which is the 'target note' and the 5th of the Eb major chord.
Notice too, how Art always acknowledges the Bb diminished chord when it appears (e.g. bars 25 and 57) by arpeggiating it. This sound goes right back to early jazz - you hear it all the time in the playing of Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. Contemporary jazz players often treat the diminished chord in rather more abstract ways, but this more simplistic approach is a big characteristic of the earlier jazz styles.
> Download the sheet music
< Back
It can be really beneficial to look at material that was originally played on an instrument other than your own, which is why I've transcribed this great solo by the saxophonist Art Pepper. With the exception of the double time passage between bars 21 - 23 (ouch!), everything looks fairly simple on the surface, but this being a sax solo, not all of it 'falls under the fingers' on guitar.
You'll have to think carefully about fingering/articulation to get this to sound like the record. Some of the slurs that Art plays (e.g. 37-38) are difficult to play in position - so it might be worth thinking about playing along the strings sometimes, rather than across them. It's good to do this, because it gets you away from the usual guitar clichés.
Art's playing combines bluesy/swing type phrases with bursts of bebop, but he's always very descriptive of the harmony. Keep in mind that musicians of Art's generation (this was played in 1957) tended not to think in terms of modes etc. but based their solos around the key centres of the tune and the chord tones, spicing it up with chromatic passing notes.
In this case, the keys are G minor, Eb Major, and Bb Major. Art makes much use of the G harmonic minor scale and the G blues scale during the G minor sections, and during the major sections he tends to target chord tones on strong beats, approaching them with chromatic passing tones and enclosures. The phrase between bars 5-8 is a good example - the Cb and A nat on the last beat of bar 6 are, respectively, a semitone above and below the Bb on the first beat of bar 7, which is the 'target note' and the 5th of the Eb major chord.
Notice too, how Art always acknowledges the Bb diminished chord when it appears (e.g. bars 25 and 57) by arpeggiating it. This sound goes right back to early jazz - you hear it all the time in the playing of Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. Contemporary jazz players often treat the diminished chord in rather more abstract ways, but this more simplistic approach is a big characteristic of the earlier jazz styles.
> Download the sheet music
< Back