Thoughts on Another Walter Jr... ...Walter Davis Jr.

Who's your daddy?

Just wanted to let you know about another Walter Jr., the great Walter Davis Jr. For those of you who don't know him, you need to give this guy a listen. He looks like he could be Luis Guzman's daddy.

Luis from Boogie Nights

Anyway, I think that he has one Blue Note record Davis Cup it is decent but he has some horn players on it and doesn't get to stretch out as much as I'd like. He played a lot with Jackie McLean. And I think he dropped out of the music scene to be a tailor in the mid-sixties. Maybe it was drug related. He resurfaced in the 70's and recorded some good trio albums.

What is crazy about Davis is that he sounds like the second coming of Bud Powell. It is almost ridiculous how much he sounds like Bud. Check out the Live Au Dreher album from sometime around 1980, it is an awesome live set from Davis. Also he has a Monk tribute LP that he did in the 80's and guess what? This guy can also sound like a dead ringer for Thelonious. Now I remember reading that he was younger the Bud and Monk but he grew up in the same neighborhood and he played with and learned from them but man I've never heard someone pull off a more convincing Powell or Monk and the best part is that he really is playing, that is his style. He doesn't sound like a jerk who is just throwing in some Monk licks when doing Bright Mississippi or whatever. He is playing with Monk's vocabulary. Now it seems like his main style is like Bud Powell since he plays that way on most records but again he is freely using the vocabulary and has the same comping. I love this guy.

As far as transcribing his stuff, I thought about it, but he is so close to Bud that I'd rather just go to the source. But he is exciting to listen to. People say that Barry Harris was the next Bud but Walter Davis Jr. is in my book. While Barry Harris learned to play from Bud's solos, he has a unique voice and his ballad work is downright beautiful. With Walter Davis Jr., you'll need to do a double take to make sure who is in the CD player.

Peace Out,
Anchovy D

Down Beat Interview with Walter Bishop Jr.

Hey everyone, as promised, here is my surprise post. Merry Christmas! The pdf presented below is an interview from the March 1977 issue of Down Beat magazine. The interview was conducted by none other than Mr. Brett Primack. Primack is the guy who produced the Walter Bishop Jr. VHS Masterclass video back in 1987 (here is his website, he also goes by JazzVideoGuy on YouTube). I actually tracked down Primack when I was looking to get a copy of the Masterclass video but couldn't find one anywhere, but that is another story. Let me just say that I was surprised when I saw Primack's name on the byline. Obviously he must've been friends with the great Bish, I just wish that I could've shook Bish's hand and thank him for all that he has done in my life.

And without further ado, enjoy... (just click here or on the image below for the pdf)

Peace Out,

Big D

The School of Bish is Still Alive

 

Okay everybody, I just wanted to chime in to let you know that there have been some delays on the path to the next transcription. I may have to burn the midnight oil to get the two and 3/4 choruses of Alone Together goodness out to you by the end of June. I just about have the first chorus down but haven't booted up Sibelius in since Blues in the Closet so nothing is written down as of yet, but I do have what I've figured out up to 100% speed so far and I've been trying to get Blues in The Closet up to speed I've only got it at 70% right now. Spending too much time getting everything up to speed seems to be the problem. Not enough time for notating. The heat has been cramping my style and with all the freaking Arizona smoke, I can't even run my swamp cooler or open a window.

Anyway, some of the articles that I intend to post aren't just transcription related but some other good Walter Bishop Jr. stuff. I will be back this weekend to post a treat for you. Shhhhushh, it's a surprise, kinda like Dom DeLuise's sexuality. 

Peace Out,

D.

SuperScope PSD410 Transcribing / Recording Hardware

Shortly after my post on transcribing software, I was able to get a good deal on a SuperScope PSD410 (the device on the left without the CD player in the photo below) so I jumped on it. I've been wanting a SuperScope since the mid 90's or so but they've always been so expensive and I never felt okay with parting with so much dough on something that I couldn't see in person. I know that computer software can slow down tempos, change keys and that you can get a USB mic or USB box with mic inputs and use Garageband which is free on the Mac to record, but still the desire was still burning inside of me.
SuperScope has moved from cassette to CD and now onto RAM based devices over the years. The SuperScope PSD410 is the low end of the new line of recorders. The other two models, the 430 and 450 add a CD burner and a 40GB hard drive respectively to the mix but are otherwise, functionally identical. The 410 only uses SD cards for memory or can use a USB attached hard drive or flash drive. I got the 410 because one, I am cheap, and because two, SD cards are big enough even at 8 GB to hold like 12 uncompressed albums. I am only transcribing the one Bish album right now and it rings in at 440 MB. It will probably take me a year to work my way through the album. The 2GB supplied card is more than enough.

Anyway it takes a little while to get used to. There are so many things that you can do with it. Right now I am just trying to use it for practicing along with Blues in the Closet to get my transcription of Bish's solo up to speed and under my fingers. Sound quality of the slow down is definitely not up to the level of the Elevation software that I discussed earlier. I'd say that it is at the bottom of the food chain so far. Just a hair below the quality of Amazing Slow Downer for the iPod Touch. Definitely workable but 25% is a bit hairy and even 50% isn't all that clean. Slow down wise it seems the functional equivalent of Amazing Slow Downer but is much more convenient to use with the footpedal and knobs and buttons to control and adjust the loop points and playback speed. I suspect that I will be using it more to practice and work my playing of the transcriptions up to speed rather than doing detailed transcription with it. I will probably still use Transcribe for the detailed stuff as it sounds pretty good at 25% if I need to go there and having the measures and beats laid out makes the solo easy to navigate. But this SuperScope is great for practice, bringing your playing up to speed, recording, and normal transcription duty. I love this thing, it really has made my 'shedding more productive.

These things are still really expensive new, like $800 to $1200 depending on what version you get. Even getting a good deal on a used one took a chunk out of my wallet. Having this thing is a luxury for me as I already had software that could do much the same stuff, but it is nice. In the next few weeks, I plan on using it to record a promotional CD so that I have something to hand out to restaurant and club managers when I hit the pavement looking for gigs. Back when I had my trio we used a Zoom H2 and it worked great. For this solo piano CD, I plan on just plugging in my digital piano. If that sucks, I'll setup a mic and record my real piano. So in the next few weeks, I'll get a chance to learn the recording side of this machine. And looking through the manual, 90% of it is about the recording features.

After using this thing for the past few weeks, I gotta say that I love it. I use it all the time. It is great for figuring out heads when you're too lazy to find your Real Book and for just practicing along with recordings. Again a luxury but now I am kicking myself for not getting one earlier. Great for transcribing and regular practicing. It is nice not having to boot up the laptop and mess around with the track pad. The Superscope has a good file structure, you can have directories, move files around, rename them, etc. but what is great is that you can create Playlists like on iTunes. So it is easy to put together a practice set and have all the tunes in one place and the Suprscope remembers any fine tuning adjustments, loops, and speed adjustments for each song so you don't have to readjust those every day. And it will play through all the tunes in a playlist. For practicing and playing over tunes this thing rocks. You can just play through the set with it slowing don each track right where you want it and you just sit there and focus on playing, not on loading a new song into Amazing Slow Downer after each track. A real slick operation.

Finally just wanted to let you know that I've started transcribing Alone Together and have some more WBJ material to post so stay tuned. Oh yeah, also I noticed some typos in the transcription for Green Dolphin and have some minor corrections to make on the Blues in The Closet transcription. I will update the PDF's shortly and let you know when I have them on my server.

Peace Out,
Anchovy D

Blues in the Closet ala Walter Bishop, Jr.

Okay, first a note. I realized that not all of you might have WBJ in your record collection so I went back and updated the post on my first transcription in the series, Green Dolphin Street, with a link to an mp3 of Bish's actual solo on the tune. I cropped out everything but the solo, so that you can follow along with the transcription. Also, I think there were like two typos in the pdf where bars with whole note rests had a note marked down. This is due to my fights with the note placement tool, the pointer tool and the pan tool in Sibelius. If you forget which is activated you may accidentally write down some note when you are trying to pan. So I checked and updated that pdf.

Now on to the matters at hand. I present to you the Walter Bishop Jr. fans, Bish's awesome Blues in the Closet solo from the Speak Low album. Here is the mp3. I actually finished this about a week or two ago but was in the process of moving into a new and had to unpack my computer and wait about two weeks for Qwest to hook up my internet connection.

A few things about the transcription, this is a blues. It is in F. And Bish is crushing notes all over the place but I haven't notated them. Most are the typical flat 3rd to 3rd when he is playing a third (3rd and 5th). There were some crushes later in the solo where he is playing fourths and some odd intervals but I couldn't figure out how to make grace notes in Sibelius. It took me about 40 minutes to figure out how to note a trill. Maybe next time.

Click Here to listen to an mp3 of the Blues in the Closet Solo.

About the changes. I looked at them them briefly and will spend more time on them when I analyze the solo. But here is the basic deal:

F7    /  | F7    /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Bb7  /  | Bb7 /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Gm7 /  | C7   /   | Fmaj7  /     | Gm7 C7

This is what I have written over the solo. Listening closely, in some choruses Bish slides up to F#7 for measure 2. Sometimes he puts a ii V in bar 4 (Cm7 to F7 leading to the Bb7 of bar 5). Sometimes he plays a leading chord on beat 3 of bar 6 leading to the F7 and finally sometimes he plays a ii V in bar 8 leading to the Gm7 (Am7b5 D7).

So that is pretty much what he is doing. Throwing in some ii-V's occasionally sometimes sliding, etc. he just doesn't go to Bb7 in bar two.

About next time. It may be a while before I post a new transcription, maybe late June. I have a lot of material here in these two first solos to analyze and work on. I've been going full tilt on the transcribing so far. Time to dial it back and spend more time looking deeper into these two solos prospecting for gold.

Peace out,
Big D

A Note on Slow Down Software for Transcribing

Okay, after posting the WBJ Green Dolphin Street transcription, I received a couple of emails asking what software I used to transcribe the solo. In this post I'll give a quick rundown of what I use.

First off, my computer is an iMac and the notation software I use is Sibelius. It is the only notation software that I use. Before buying it I played with trial versions of both Finale and Sibelius. Finale was just too unintuitive and frustrating to use. Sibelius was easier overall to get in to and while some parts of it are counter intuitive, for the most part it is intuitive and you don't need to look at the manual. Finale required constant manual reference. I'm sure that once you get familiar with it, Finale is fine and easy to work with but out of the box Sibelius is easier to start writing decent manuscripts.

Slow down software is a different story. Remember that I am on the Mac so you Windows cats might have some additional software available to you that I haven't fooled with. I use two programs on the Mac to slow down the solos, Amazing Slow Downer by Roni Music and Transcribe! by Seventh String. Both programs are useful for me.

Amazing Slow Downer is straight forward, simple, and quick to use. The audio quality is better than Transcribe at really slow speeds like 35% or 25%. At 50% and faster both programs sound great and are pretty close. I mostly use Amazing Slow Downer to figure out random phrases or initially when I am trying to learn a solo and play along with it.

Transcribe is a little more cumbersome to use but is absolutely great when I actually get down to putting the solo down on paper. It has a graphic of the amplitude of the music so it is more visual than Amazing Slow Downer and whats more awesome is that you can mark measures, beats, and sections by tapping along to the music as it plays. After tapping in the info you can see your choruses, measures, and beat markers above the soundwave graphic for easy reference to what part of the song you are on. Of course you can zoom in or out to any scale. It makes it easy to figure out where difficult notes fall relative to the beat. Overall it makes it much easier to know where you are in the solo and also in getting the solo written down. Transcribe also tries to help you figure out what note is being played. If you highlight a small portion of the wave, it shows you what notes it thinks it hears. This sort of works okay but overtones show up as well to confuse matters. Try to transcribe organ and you see the notes of all of the stops pulled in the registration, so it thinks each note is like 4 or 5 notes. One other awesome feature of Transcribe is that it will also do video. If you have an avi of mp4 file you can open it up and slow it down just like an audio file. This is great for studying concert videos and stuff you download off youtube. If you have a DVD you do need to rip it and convert it to a video file for it to open up in Transcribe but it is a great feature to have even though I don't use it much. Amazing Slow Downer doesn't do video but Roni Music makes a program called Ultimate DVD Player which will slow down video. Now it only does DVDs, it won't open avi or mp4 files. The quality of the video slow down of Ultimate DVD Player is a bit better than what Transcribe will do, but Transcribe's handling of video files makes it much more convenient.

Of course both programs allow you to finely adjust the pitch and change the key of the tune and have equalizers and vocal removers. So the rest of the features are close. I use both about equally. On other thing about Amazing Slow Downer is that it is also available as an iPad/iPhone app. The app version doesn't have the sound quality of the full Mac OSX version due to the lack of horsepower in the iPhone and for the same reasons it doesn't go as slow, but overall it is pretty much the same program with the same features in a portable less expensive package. Now I actually use my iPad and the ASD app more than my MacBook with the ASD program since the iPad is always on, smaller and the battery lasts forever.

Finally, today I saw that there is a new program that I may get. Superscope, the guys that have been putting out adjustable speed cassette and CD players and recorders, now have put out a software program that works on Mac and Windows. It is called Elevation and there are two versions, the full version and the limited edition (LE) version. I found out about it after getting an email from Jamey Aebersold about his Superscope CD/digital hardware sale. I was curious about the hardware and wondered why people would spend $800 to $1000 for a hardware slow down device when you can get a $15 app or a $30 program for your laptop. After going to the Superscope site to see the features of the hardware, I discovered that they also have this Elevation program out. The LE version is $80, the full version is $150. The LE only does the slowdown type stuff whereas the full version is also an audio recorder and editor.

I downloaded the trial for the LE version and was blown away by the sound quality of the slow down. At 25% speed, it sounded so clean and pure, I was amazed. I thought that it might just be the CD so I tried it in Amazing Slow Downer and Transcribe and at 25% they both had that underwater/weird reverberation artifact that makes it difficult to really hear what is going on in the difficult passages that you have to go down to 25% to try to figure out. I really wasn't expecting Elevation to be that good. I may just have to get it for the difficult stuff. As far as features go, it is almost like a cross between the two programs mentioned above. It is quick and easy to use like ASD and it does show the amplitude waveform like Transcribe, however it doesn't let you mark beats and label the waveform like Transcribe. If I get it it would most likely replace Amazing Slow Downer as Transcribe is still great for helping you write the solo down after ou have it figured out. One negative thing about Elevation though is that it only does MP3s or CDs (it will rip CDs to MP3 if you want) it won't do Apple Lossless files, so you would have to burn them to CD or convert them first. Unfortunately almost all of my Jazz collection is ripped into iTunes using Apple Lossless so that I could maintain the high fidelity of the recordings. Also it only does audio, no video. But the sound quality is truly amazing and clear.

Anyway for those who asked, that is my take on the world of transcribing and notation software. If any of you have a hardware Superscope, I'd be curious to know how the sound quality compares to the Elevation software.

Peace,
Big D

Bish's Green Dolphin Street solo from the Speak Low LP (1961)

Alright here is the first transcription. It is from Bishop's Speak Low recording made in 1961. Note that this album was re-released on the Black Lion label under the title "Milestones."  The Milestones album has a few alternate takes but none of Green Dolphin Street. Also, I think the pitch on the Speak Low LP is off by about 70 cents sharp or so. The pitch has been corrected on the Milestones album.

Now about the transcription. I just transcribed the right hand line and none of the left hand comping, which I may work on later after I get the rest of the album down. Right now I am just trying to see how he builds his lines and reverse engineer his soloing, the comping and exact voicings are not important to me since I pretty much know what he is doing there and can play something pretty darn close without the hard work of transcribing.


The magic of the solos is what I am after, like when Barry Harris said he first got out in Detroit to play with kids from the other side of town. Barry went on to say that while he could play chords better than kids from the other side who didn't know how to play them, they could solo like mothers and Barry couldn't. He asked his sister how to learn to solo and she gave him a Fats Navarro recording of Webb City with Bud Powell on piano. He had an adjustable record player and could knock it down half-speed to learn what Bud was doing and figure out how to solo. That is what I am aiming at here except I am learning from Walter Bishop, Jr. instead of Bud. Just click on the score below to see or download the whole pdf of the transcription.

Click here to hear an mp3 of Bish's Green Dolphin Street solo.

In a later post I will give a quick run down of my analysis and breakdown of the solo, but in this post I am just presenting it. Oh also the chords written over the lead line are just the standard changes to the tune, just used to help in analyzing the lead line. Like I said I didn't transcribing his chording but it sounds like he is sticking close to the standard changes throughout. If a line doesn't look like it fits, check the record to see what Bish actually played in terms of chords but just my first big picture glance tells me that he was playing and thinking standard changes.

As for future posts, we have the breakdown of this solo and right now I am about halfway through Bish's Blues in the Closet solo. In a few weeks I should have new solo down and posted as well. Oh by the way, I am only going to be transcribing the main versions of the tunes which were originally put out on the Speak Low LP, not the alternate takes that are included on the Milestones CD. Also would like to transcribe a Rhythm changes tune from Bish but I haven't found one yet. Any suggestions?

Peace Out,
D

Welcome to Bish's Place where Walter Bishop Jr.'s Transcriptions Live

Okay here is the deal. Walter Bishop Jr. is my favorite jazz pianist and is highly underrated. So I decided to make a place on the web for his transcriptions to live. Where people can download and analyze, take licks and study.

My top three piano men are Bish, Bud Powell, and Bobby Timmons. Bud Powell is the only guy who has loads of books of transcriptions and analysis and transcriptions posted on the web. Sure he is "The Source" but both Timmons and Bish developed some interesting styles from their Bud Powell roots. Styles worth looking into and studying. Bish has a more rhythmically explosive style than Bud. Bud more flowing and technically challenging. Timmons has a more soulful and down home take on the Bud Powell way.

Anyway I have recently started transcribing Bish. Right now I am working transcribing all of his solos from the Speak Low (aka Milestones) album. I will be posting them as I complete them. Hopefully, every couple of months I'll be posting a new solo for all to see.

In the meantime if any of you have any transcriptions from Walter Bishop Jr. that you'd like to share, I could post it here or put up a link to your blog.

This man's genius needs to be celebrated. Down the road after I complete the Speak Low LP, I will begin transcribing Bish from the DVD We Remember Bird. Recorded in 1964, it features Sonny Stitt, J. J. Johnson, Howard McGhee, Tommy Potter and Kenny Clarke.

Peace Until the Next Post,
AnchovyD