Friday 1 January 2010

Solo on Joe Henderson's Black Narcissus


(Click image to enlarge)

This is a solo I wrote today, trying to makes sense of these changes. The two minor chord undulations in the first sixteen bars could get a bit soupy and sentimental (Syreeta's "With You I'm Born Again" comes to mind), which I've tried to avoid. The last eight bars are just tricky to create a coherent line through.

This is also an opportunity to work out how to get sound files and music into Blogger (you can click to enlarge the image). I tried creating it as a video but Blogger wouldn't upload the video so I've used divShare - free hosting on the web with an embedded Flash Player.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

what type of chords are you using..Am trying some Drop 2's but their hard to to get on time.

John Harris said...

Pretty straightforward, I think. The notes of the first chord are: Ab Gb B Eb, then: Ab Ab Db F - the root stays the same, the others go up a tone. Hope that helps . . .

Anonymous said...

Yes actually. thanks.. One more question ..Is your solo being based of any particular scales or modes?

John Harris said...

The first 7 bars are based around the notes in the Ab dorian scale but I have really been guided by trying to make interesting tunes. Sometime I have used chromatic movement (bar 8) and sometimes arpeggios (bar 12). It's very helpful to write down solos like this as yo0u can explore new and interesting ideas that you wouldn't necessarily use first time around when improvising.

Anonymous said...

yes you are right. Great solo btw

thanks from Florida

Anonymous said...

Hi nice work, love it all but particularly the last 2 or 3 bars.