Professor's Note Take Off Blues 2

Melody & Improvisation

- Svend Asmussen at a concert announced that with Take Off Blues he fullfilled an old dream of using the full Circle of Fifth's in a Blues.

- In a filmed interview he talked about the disease, many jazzmusicians suffer from: Even under conversation about serious matters there are running chords, improvisations, fingering, music-theory-problems in the back of the head. As Toots Thielemans said: "I'm thinking on it all the time."

- Take Off Blues is a construction, an experiment. But not at all dusty. The Blues differ from other Asmussen-arrangements that all melodic material is played in unison - without chords or parallel thirds.

- The Introduction: Part A and B represent the long "circle". It starts slowly and accellerates before TakeOff. The bass plays the chord-roots and the melody outlines the chord in floral vines. Remark that the four-note figures play either the 7-chords - or a diminished chord representing the upper notes in a 7(b9)-chord.

- Bars 21-22 the 3-quarter-note long phrases (starting with triplets) brings the ornamentations to a sudden stop, and an unison blues-scale opens up for the unison main-theme.

 

Click on picture for bigger view. - or listen to an mp3 with chords

Take Off Intro

Main part of the melody only uses the pentatonic Blues-scale C-Eb-F-G-Bb

Bars 9-10 presents the same notes as bar 17 in the Intro. And the F7 feeling goes on in bar 11.

Take Off Blues - mp3
1. Svends Solo on "Fiddling Around"
PDF
Mp3
 Both PDF's and Mp3's open in new windows so you can hear while reading.
2. Svends Solo on the Live CD "Fit as a Fiddle"
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Mp3
Svend starts both solos quoting an old tune: "Please don't talk about me when I'm gone"
mp3-mix
In solo 1 Svend often outline the underlying chords, and again the 7(b9) is often used.

The live-solo 2 is interesting structured.

 

Chorus 1-2 present the E7-variation of the Blues, chorus 3-4 present a more traditional version.

Ch.1 ends on the note G, waiting for a continuation,

Ch.2 have long cascades of notes and lead directly to

Ch.3: here Svend suddenly return to the classic way of playing the blues: a 2½ bar statement in the first 4 bars. It is repeated (varied) in the next 4 bars ending with a longer "answer" (AAB-form).

Ch.4 shows more blues-style and an ending cascade.

In bars 1-4 a broken triad is sequenced downwards.

In bars 7-8 (chorus 1, 2 & 4) a 3-tone motive follows the falling 7-th's in the chords.

If J.S.Bach had composed these bars the chords would have been "correct" both vertical and horisontal. But jazz is improvised and a linear style where a little "displacement" is normal. (See bars 43-44).

Note: Bill Evans told in an radio-interview Marian McPartland that he considered "displacement" [in a broader scale ( my note)] and not harmonic inventions as his greatest contribution to jazz.

The triplets in bar 21 are played with the same fingering on the 4 strings and ends on an open string. The triplets are repeated half a note lower but still end on open string.

Bar 21 outline a D13-chord with use of the 9 and 13.

         
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