- Bud Powell - Wail.pdf PDF. Please Read and Print within a Year of Purchase. Spring is here (transcription) by haya music. Bud Powell - Wail (Both hand ver.
- Powell's music doesn't look like any music before. No Bach in it, no Chopin, no Debussy, no Hines, no Tatum, no Parker, no Gillespie. He invented the Powell style completely. And at the same time, it looks to me that it's the way I should follow when playing Jazz piano-solo.
as played by:
Jazz Piano Legends Partitures Collections. A piano jazz compilation put together by Picchiodalpozzo from various books and transcriptions. With the great pianists Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk.
Album:
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I begun to play it 30 years ago, by ear. Then I transcribed it (as you see). I replayed each note a couple times, I wrote the score...
But often, when I play a fragment, I still doubt my score is correct so the rythm I have to play actually sounds like an error.
So ahead before the first time, even ahead of the 4th sometimes !
This leads to a major difficulty in studying, and hopefully playing, Powell and Tyner. It's like squaring the circle ;
the more you lower the tempo, the more you think : it's false !
And it is, indeed. It takes life with the original tempo.
Another issue if you lower the tempo is that Powell and Tyner play at so high values, above 250, that they dont play swing anymore. At these speeds, the ternary (quarter-eighth) becomes binary (eighth-eighth).
The more you lower the speed the more you play swing. You have to study it at the definite tempo. At least, as fast enough to play spontaneously binary.
And to add another dimension, sometimes, not often, the swing play is required in this piece. For a bar maybe. (It's anotated in the score...)
All that are true difficulties and require time...
.But if we talk now about improvising like Powell, it's totally new matter !
If you have porblems to simply put together left and right hand when it's written, what are you going to do with your left hand when you'll improvise !?
Bad things, I confess... It takes years to begin to catch his syncopes, his big 4, years to be able to vaguely sounding worse than Powell was ever sounding after any serie of electro-shocks...
I failed so far, but dont mind it : one day I'll succeed.
I love so much his music. His melodies are really gorgous. He finds so many new ideas, at a time teachers were teaching that tonal Harmony was over since Shönberg.
Powell's music doesn't look like any music before. No Bach in it, no Chopin, no Debussy, no Hines, no Tatum, no Parker, no Gillespie.
It's amazing. He invented the Powell style completely.
And at the same time, it looks to me that it's the way I should follow when playing Jazz piano-solo.
I know people, the audience like very much stride and boogie, but I dont feel like studying or playing this...
Nevertheless in piano solo, you have to give some life, some pulsation, somehow, and one of my main directions today is playing the Powell's left hand...
Also I think my transcription is better than Hal Leonard's one... ;-)
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