DjangoBooks.com

Donna Lee: Tune of the Month, Jan '07

JackJack western Massachusetts✭✭✭✭
edited July 2008 in Repertoire Posts: 1,752
Happy New Year, everyone! I've actually had a few requests for the new Tune of the Month, and in the end decided to go with Donna Lee...partly because I barely know the tune myself, and every time I hear it I tell myself I'm going to learn it. I'm also hoping it'll be interesting for a lot of us to look at a bop era tune, to see how Gypsy Jazz guitarists might approach it differently from a more straightahead player.

The changes are based on Indiana, but the key is changed. Look here to see some changes for Indiana.
donna_lee.gif
A rhythm track of the above chart can be found here.

Some possible changes in the above chart could include:
Bar 11: Using a Cm7 creates a nice descending line, which you could extend further by using a B7 in Bar 12 as a sub for the F7.
Bar 28: Using the same chord with a B bass note leads nicely to...
Bar 29: A half bar each of Cm7 and F9 creates a nice cluster of ii-V motion when you follow it with the usual bar 30.

Sylvain Fantino and Adrien Moignard tear into the tune below, launching into the melody at about the 55 second mark.


The melody is a workout (I've attached a pdf below for download) and I'd be interested to hear about how people decide to finger it...

More to come,
Jack.
«13

Comments

  • Colin PerryColin Perry Montreal, QCNew
    Posts: 115
    Jack--

    I don't have a scanner, so I don't think I can post it, but there is a transcription of the head and solo to this in the book Charlie Parker for guitar, by Mark Voelpel. It's a mel bay book, and has notation and tab.

    --Colin
  • BluesBop HarryBluesBop Harry Mexico city, MexicoVirtuoso
    Posts: 1,379
    Good pick for tune of the month.
    Just one thing, the form is not AABA but rather AB dividing it into two 16 bar sections.
    Some other possible changes in the harmony are:
    A diminished7 instead of F7.
    You can put a Gmin7b5 in front of the C7 leading to Fmin.
    And the Ab diminished7 can be changed for B, D and F diminished7.
    Bar 10 Dbmin7 can be changed or followed by Gb7(11+) sometimes called a backdoor progression.
    Also possible are tritone substitutions for the seventh chords and you can always precede them by the ii7 of the I that they belong to.
    Cheers!
  • pallopennapallopenna Rhode IslandNew
    Posts: 245
    I've got the Charlie Parker for Guitar book as well. I'll start looking at Donna Lee (great choice of a tune Jack). While I generally like this book, some of the transcriptions are inaccurate. In particular, the second chorus of Ko-Ko has several mistakes. If anyone is interested in Bird transcriptions, Jamie Abersold's Charlie Parker Omnibook is the best resource that I know of. It does not have tab, but the transcriptions are meticulously done. I think studying Bird's solo lines is an incredible musical experience, not just for the fluidity and phrasing, but because of his otherworldly ability to construct coherently complex melodies out of the implied harmonic extensions of the underlying progressions he was playing over. There are many other fantastic bop players who I love, but when I hear Bird (and Bud Powell), I still get chills.

    There is a very nice version of Donna Lee on the most recent Angelo Debarre and Ludovic Beier CD (which is generally fantastic).

    -Paul
    Reject the null hypothesis.
  • JackJack western Massachusetts✭✭✭✭
    Posts: 1,752
    Good pick for tune of the month.
    Just one thing, the form is not AABA but rather AB dividing it into two 16 bar sections.

    Agreed...that chart is from the Nuages de Swing website, and I couldn't change it...on the subject of substituions, while things like tritone subs will work rhythmically, it's important too to not step on your soloist's space with a lot of b5s and the like.
    pallopenna wrote:
    There is a very nice version of Donna Lee on the most recent Angelo Debarre and Ludovic Beier CD (which is generally fantastic).

    Agreed again-that's one of the reasons I picked this one to work on!

    Best,
    Jack.
  • nwilkinsnwilkins New
    Posts: 431
    I've actually found quite a few mistakes in the Bird Omnibook.
  • pallopennapallopenna Rhode IslandNew
    Posts: 245
    nwilkins wrote:
    I've actually found quite a few mistakes in the Bird Omnibook.

    Really? I'd be curious to know what they are. I played alto for a number of years and found the Omni book invaluable for studying Bird's lines. I can't claim that it's perfect, but it's pretty good. Anyway, my point was that in the few tunes that I've looked at on guitar, it seems a bit more accurate than the CP on guitar book.
    Reject the null hypothesis.
  • BluesBop HarryBluesBop Harry Mexico city, MexicoVirtuoso
    Posts: 1,379
    I`ve found mistakes there too... mostly missing accidentals but sometimes wrong notes or incomplete lines.
    For example in Donna Lee he omitted the key signature and that makes it easy to get confused, although the notes are accurate.
    I have doubts if the A`s over the Gmin7b5 are flats or not(?) I guess I`ll have to dig in the original version sometime, I`m playing them as flats for the time being, but I`ve seen it written both ways.
    I still think it is a great book and well worth getting if you want to study Parker and the bebop vocabulary.
    Check out Aebersold`s website: www.jazzbooks.com he has a lot of good stuff, some of it is free including the jazz handbook and a method to quit smoking, plus a couple of playalongs!

    I do have one question, Do the gypsies change the key of this tune when they play it?
  • BluesBop HarryBluesBop Harry Mexico city, MexicoVirtuoso
    Posts: 1,379
    I checked the jazzbooks site and it seems he has removed the free playalongs...
  • BluesBop HarryBluesBop Harry Mexico city, MexicoVirtuoso
    Posts: 1,379
    Seems I`m in a posting frenzy...
    Well I`ve checked the recording and sure enough the A`s in bar 5 of the B section (Gmin7b5) are natural.
    I also found that on beat 1 of bar 3 of both sections Parker doesn`t play a triplet but just two Gb`s as eight notes as well as a few other minor differences.
    But the most surprising thing was that the recording sounds a lot closer to Bb than Ab, I`ve heard of minor variations in pitch but this is a whole step off!
    Also the real number of the recording is S3420/savoy 652 instead of 2201 according to the booklet of the complete savoy and dial recordings.
    Anyway great player, great song, great tune of the month and great book too.
  • RichRich New
    Posts: 50
    Great tune! Does anyone have or know where I can get the tab?
Sign In or Register to comment.
Home  |  Forum  |  Blog  |  Contact  |  206-528-9873
The Premier Gypsy Jazz Marketplace
DjangoBooks.com
USD CAD GBP EUR AUD
USD CAD GBP EUR AUD
Banner Adverts
Sell Your Guitar
© 2024 DjangoBooks.com, all rights reserved worldwide.
Software: Kryptronic eCommerce, Copyright 1999-2024 Kryptronic, Inc. Exec Time: 0.014969 Seconds Memory Usage: 0.998657 Megabytes
Kryptronic