I wanted to start a thread where I share my most favourite pianists and their recordings, with some fun and useful related information!
First, I’d like to point out how important listening to records is. I feel that with practicing harmony, jazz language, tunes and rhythm is of course crucial, we can’t learn the essence of a particular musical style without hearing at least as many hours of music as we practice. I have many times compared it to a child’s ability to learn to speak; just by listening, going from no understanding to being absolutely fluent, no need for grammar (theory/analysis).
I hope you enjoy this thread, feel free to add comments, questions, album suggestions etc.!
Haha, I was surprised because I didn’t read your entire post before I went to Spotify to listen to the album. I only saw that the album was from 2001, so I was expecting a bit more modern playing. Instead, what came out of my headphones was something much older.
I listened to the song “Celia” first. Thoughts: The intro has an interesting, even slightly oriental rhythm. The melody of the song is interesting, almost as if it were a solo played to a different song. Lots of embellishments and accents. Thanks for the transcription of the solo, it was nice to follow along with while listening.
The solo starts nicely with a break and a piano run. There is so much to learn from in here. Bud accents the offbeats strongly, while I naturally place the accents on the downbeats. The accentuation is really strong in places and the rhythm swings, almost sounding like it’s going to fall apart. The solo phrases are not usually started on the root note of the chord, but he starts on other intervals like 3rd, 7th, 9th. The start of the phrase has been moved to the offbeat. Similarly, he cleverly places the turns of longer phrases on the offbeats, so they don’t sound like 1-2-3-4 arpeggio exercises like mine. In places where the chords change in sequence, Bud uses chromatic patterns that he cleverly modifies as he moves them up or down. He comps very sparingly and surprisingly softly with his left hand. And almost all of them also hit the offbeats. Interesting!
In places where the chords change in sequence, Bud uses chromatic patterns that he cleverly modifies as he moves them up or down. He comps very sparingly and surprisingly softly with his left hand. And almost all of them also hit the offbeats. Interesting!