Tag: jazz

Here’s one that I’ve had on my to-do list forever. It’s a slow ballad, which always makes for the toughest transcription jobs. The fast passages get in to really minute subdivisions to fit everything in, which makes it difficult to notate, and to play. As a bonus, it’s in 6/8!

I love Maceo’s delivery on this one though, his tone is so beautiful. The melody is sparse and haunting, but the track builds and builds. When Maceo finally lets loose in a flurry of notes, it’s well-deserved. 

Rather than trying to read all of the subdivisions, I suggest just listening to it a bunch and trying to internalize the timings. I limited myself to one take on the melody and one take on the solo, but I wish I had a few more to listen and play through. 

A few notes on the transcription – during playback I realized I left out one bar where he’s holding the low C. Just keep holding! Also I forgot to add the chords, although it just alternates between the one and four, so it’s not super complex. 

• Artist: Maceo Parker
• Album: Life on Planet Groove
• Track: Children’s World
• Instrument: Alto Sax

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

I have a hard time coming up with my list of ‘favorites’ for anything – movies, music, you name it. But if I were stranded on a desert island and could only take one album with me, it would be Maceo’s ‘Life on Planet Groove’. I can listen to it anytime, anywhere, and never get tired of it!

This is a short solo from ‘Got to Get U’. It’s just eight bars over one chord. It’s simple, and relatively easy to play. The tempo is slow, and you can really hear the sixteenth note subdivision coming through in every part. It’s so strong that it’s sometimes hard to tell if Maceo is actually playing every subdivision, or if I’m just feeling it. 

The first three bars are almost entirely played with the one, flat 3 and the flat seven (he plays the fifth once). That makes it all the more powerful when he leans on the ninth on the downbeat of the fourth bar. Back to the 1, b3, and b7 for the next two bars until he leans on the 4 (or 11, whichever you prefer). The next figure re-introduces the 9th, and also throws in the 6th (13th) for good measure. 

So for a one-chord funk groove, even though Maceo sticks primarily to the minor pentatonic, he uses all of the notes in the scale for added color. Ironically, the one note that he doesn’t play that you might expect him to is the flat five. He doesn’t need it!

There are a couple more great solos on this album that I want to try and work on before the end of 2018, but they are much more involved. Wish me luck!

• Artist: Maceo Parker
• Album: Life on Planet Groove
• Track: Got to Get U
• Instrument: Alto Sax

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

Back to M-A-C-E-O! This is a transcription that I’ve had on the shelf for a long time. Every time I pulled it out to record, I always struggled to sight read it. It’s not technically difficult, but the rhythms are crazy hard to right read. Finally I broke down and just practiced it for an hour! I broke down each phrase, and took it slowly until I could feel it. 

 The track is a classic James Brown tune. The recording is from a 1994 video, right around the time that Maceo was starting to come in to his own as a solo artist. It features the classic JB horns lineup of Fred Wesley on Trombone and Pee Wee Ellis on Tenor. The band is killing! 

The more Maceo solos I transcribe and learn, the more I realize what an amazing ‘escape artist’ he is. I often run in to short phrases that seem to fall on the wrong foot, or don’t quite turn out how you intended. We all get these. When I run in to these phrases in my own playing, they knock me out of the zone too easily. It can take awhile for me to recover and get back in to the groove. But Maceo has this akido-like ability to turn these phrases around and roll right through them in to the next phrase. 

• Artist: Maceo Parker
• Album: My First Name is Maceo
• Track: Cold Sweat
• Instrument: Alto Sax

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

It’s been a long time since I posted any Maceo Parker solos. Obviously I don’t have much of a plan with this blog, I post whatever strikes my fancy any given week. I realized that I had a backlog of Maceo solos that I transcribed a long time ago but never posted. Honestly, the ones that I haven’t posted are too intimidating to record, like this one!

The title of this track is deceptive – Basic Funk! I guess it’s true, it’s all basic stuff, but it’s a LONG solo to play – almost nine minutes and nine pages with little more than a bar or two to rest here and there.

The tempo is slow, right in the pocket. There isn’t any one part of the solo that is particularly tough, but it’s full of very intricate syncopation that makes it hard to sight read, and it’s too long for me to memorize all of those nuances, even after listening to it a bunch.

There isn’t much of a melody or form to speak of. Maceo comes in with what feels like the melody, but quickly transitions to filling in around the background figures. You can’t really tell where the ‘solo’ starts. When the band is playing, Maceo fills in. When they give him space, he runs with it. There are a few breakdowns and key changes, but really it’s just a long blow for Maceo! Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

I apologize for the video quality on this one. For some reason I had terrible problems getting the audio and video to sync up. I think the framerate on the video was off just enough that the drift over the course of the nine-minute track caused things to get out of whack. I chopped up the audio to sync it back up, but the video is a lost cause.

Maceo Parker - Basic Funk 101

• Artist: Maceo Parker
• Album: School’s In
• Track: Basic Funk – 101
• Instrument: Alto Sax

Enjoy!

@SDartSax