Chet Baker, Tangerine

0:33  
My good friend, Josh Walsh is in the house. Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Walsh in the house. Hey, Bob,

0:41  
how are you, man?

0:44  
How you doing my friend?

0:46  
I'm doing really good. How about you?

0:47  
I'm doing great, man. So good to see on this. We're recording this on a Friday. So it's good to see you on this this Friday.

0:54  
It's always fun to see you. Yeah, man.

0:57  
So we have a lot to talk about today. It's great to have you back. You know, several months ago, we talked about getting together on a regular basis to, you know, look at transcriptions, and to, you know, uncover little gems that are found and all these great solos that are available for jazz lovers to explore and to utilize that help us with our, our own development. And here we are, we found we're finally back on track. And today, man, are we looking at a good solo today? Are we looking at a good solo today?

1:33  
I didn't know this one. I mean, I've heard the recording before, but I've never spent any real time studying it. And I really, really you pick this one? I think I picked the last one. So I'm really interested to hear what your thoughts are on it.

1:44  
So it only makes sense, right? jazz piano skills. We're looking at a trumpet solo today. Right? Why not? Right? From one of my all time favorite jazz musicians, Mr. Chet Baker. They don't get much better, do they?

2:02  
So tell me what is it about Chet that you liked so much? You've sent me several checks, solos?

2:06  
You know, I tell you, I don't know. Because I guess if I were to be a trumpet player, I'd want to be Chet Baker. I mean, his plane his lines, his how melodic he is his tone sound. As a piano player, in fact, I would go even further if I could somehow emulate imitate that his melodic development on the piano, I would be happy, thrilled. I just, I don't know what it is. I just love his melodic plane.

2:43  
You know, I like the fancy solos sometimes, and the funky notes and the funky rhythms. And Chet just makes this all sound so easy. It's so smooth. So I walk away thinking it's so simple. And then you sit down with the transcription and play along and you're like, actually, it's pretty sophisticated, but it just sounds easy.

3:03  
Well, and you know, what else is amazing about Chet Baker to how diatonic he is. And in, you wouldn't think it sounds so hip, you're gonna like there's no way it can be that diatonic. And it is, but we're gonna get, we're gonna get to all of that here. Shortly, we're going to listen to the solo, and we're going to break it down. I know, You've, you've sent me a lot of takeaways that you've come up with. And so we're going to share those with the listeners as well. But you know what, before we get into all that, man, you have got so much going on in the jazz world right now in the jazz education world. Talk to the jazz piano skills listeners a little bit about what you got going on at, at your place.

3:47  
Okay, well. Okay, so I mean, I think you know, this, I was an entrepreneur for a long time, 20 years. And I left it because I had this calling mission that I wanted to help inspire people to find the inner musician inside of them. I am a jazz player. That's where my love is, my mission is not necessarily scoped only to jazz, but it's about people. Like there are a lot of people who are like me, who are like white collar dudes who have stressful jobs and come home at the end of the day and want to pick up a guitar and be able to noodle around and do something. And that's how they find the relaxation inspiration. And so I wanted to create some stuff to help people do that. And so that's the that's been the main focus of the things I've been doing. My main full time job now is actually being a YouTuber making funny music videos. I put one out a week, I have a blast. I think since the last I think that channel has more than doubled since the last time we did an interview together a few months ago. I'm really blessed to have a great audience. We have a great community and stuff that's going there. So I'm really excited about that kind of stuff. Whether that's sharing some specific educational things, I think I have a voice of some very Harris stuff, which was a huge influence on my own personal playing that I've been able to share with some people. There's a lot of that stuff on the channel. And there's a lot of just fun. Just want to just fun music stuff on and we broke down the new Indiana Jones soundtrack a couple weeks ago, for example, just a lot of fun music stuff in there. Outside of that, you know, I gotta make money somehow the YouTube stuff, you know, I do make some money from advertisers and sponsors, which is nice but I have an online course called Jazz fundamentals that I think you know about Bob that you know, walk people to 75 lessons at this point that walk people through different fundamental Jas concepts is kind of a unique approach. So that's that's me. That's my that's the gist of it.

5:29  
Yeah, it looks great, man. I was poking around in there a little bit today and everything looks your presentation and the topics, the presentation, everything's great, man, it's really, really nicely done.

5:43  
That means a lot coming from you your high bar to please. Well,

5:49  
not really, but bad. No, I was thrilled. In fact, I can't wait. I think I sent you off a little note, I can't wait to spend more time in there and poke around and learn and learn everything I can. So I think it's awesome.

6:06  
I appreciate that man very much. I just today, I just today launched a seven day jazz soloing challenge. So again, coming back to the mission, right? Like some people, I'm aware that some people will be able to buy my membership and some people won't. I wanted to take something and put it out there for anybody who wants to do it. So I made this seven day challenge that teaches you how to make ticket jazz solo from there's no you don't even learn a single scale and the whole thing right it's seven days of improv of learning how to improvise over a jazz standard we used after you've gone in the in the course but it applies to anything. Without needing to know any scales or crazy theory or anything we know the chord tones, you're good to go.

6:44  
Fantastic. So how's How's all this work, then how's this seven day challenge work? What's all involved with this?

6:51  
You put your email in a box. And when you do every day, you get an email from me that has the day's lesson everything builds on the day before. So like for example, on day one, we talk about soloing using only chord tones and making sure the chord tones land on the important beats of the measure. Then in day two, we go into half note approaches from below the chord tones and making lines using just those two things. And it progresses from there. We're day three, we talk about approaching from above. And then we get into bebop stuff like enclosures and chromatic enclosures and arpeggio motion and stuff like that.

7:23  
Very good. So I'm curious, will you share what day seven is? Or do we need to sign up for that?

7:30  
So there's, there's six techniques in the seven days. The day seven is how to take the techniques that we just learned over after you've gone which means we've done it over six or seven chords and how to learn it across all what 96 chords is that right? So 96, major, minor, diminished, half diminished, fully diminished, major, minor dominant, half diminished, fully diminished 12 Each is that 9666 9666

8:00  
I have 12 minutes, 10 minutes, five to six, there's a lot of throat, we can throw in and out of 36 If you want that's all right.

8:08  
In version, I don't know. There's a lot of them.

8:12  
So what's really fascinating about this, so no, no, no theory, talk through this whole seven days, no scale talk, no mode, talk, none of that academic jargon. It's all just built to tell you

8:29  
why. It's not that it's not that that stuff is invalid, because of course like, and I say this right out of the gate on day one that like the way I learned initially was chord scale relationships, you see this chord, you play the scale. And I think that's totally valid and useful. But what I found with some of the students that I work with, who have spent the time to learn their seventh chords and their sixth chords, is that there's a big gap between going from there to playing your first note in a solo, because all of a sudden, if you've got, let's say eight, eight different chords in the tune, you got to know eight different scales, you got to have them fluid to the point where you can interweave them and move between them. And it's pretty overwhelming. I think it's totally worth going and pursuing that I'm not by any means telling you not to go that direction. But I wanted to start with something that got you sounding authentic, but without him without there being so much effort to get to like pushing the button on the first note of your solo.

9:18  
Right, right. Well, that's it's fascinating, right? And, you know, I think today's solo kind of validates your approach big time, you know, when we get to breaking this down a little bit, talking about the use of chord tones, and you're talking about the use of half step approach mints and enclosures. I mean, it's all

9:40  
over the solar what I will say that's right, what I'll say the difference here is in the seven days that I do, we don't get into extensions beyond sevens at all. Okay, I think that's a natural plant next place to go but we just don't get there. And so like there's a really hip part of this tangerine solo where he ends the line on the sharp 11 It's my favorite part of the whole So you wouldn't get there. Although you would recognize the arpeggios and the leading tones and the approaches from above the chord tone of the sharp 11 It's not something we covered at all in that seven days. But otherwise, you're right. It's very similar.

10:13  
Yeah, it's pretty, pretty neat stuff, man. Well, I'm thrilled. I'm so excited for you, and all the all the work you've been doing and six, and the success that you've been having with it so far, I think it's fantastic for all jazz students and, and for jazz in general. It's, it's awesome. Tremendous. Well done, Josh, well done.

10:33  
You're an inspiration to me, you were one of the first people I reached out to when I did this, I don't remember I sent you a little voice note and introduced myself to see if you'd come on my YouTube channel. And we did. And you've been a huge inspiration for what I've been doing. So I just appreciate you so much.

10:46  
Well, thanks. Thanks, my friend. Now, let's let's dive into this little tangerine can, I'm gonna play it, I want to play the solo for everyone. And of course, I'm going to post the transcription out there in the show notes. So that while you're listening to this, you can you can print this out and have it in front of you have it in your hands. And of course you can practice it and and dissect it like we're going to do today and take some of these nuggets and start practicing them to help help you discover all of us discover our, our language through Chet Baker, you know, we've talked about this a little bit before, the way I study transcriptions, I've always, I always look at a transcription that from the perspective that Chet Baker's my teacher, Chet Baker, is going to teach me he's going to give me a window into his his approach to plan his approach to improvisation. And when I look beneath the surface, that really understand the relationship of the notes, and what's really going on, I should be able to walk away with a pretty solid understanding how Chet approaches, constructing solo and then begin to practice those elements actually begin to practice those elements in such a way that it helps me discover my language that I can then begin incorporating in my plane. So talk before we listen to how do you approach it I know you're I know you're big Josh and on transcriptions, share a little bit about how you like approach and approach studying the transcription.

12:18  
Exactly the same thing, right. So I look at rhythm first, because I my my proclivities my nerdy proclivities tend to drive me into the harmony in the in the chords. And the melody note is what part of the chord, and oftentimes I find that that deceives me, because so much of what is in this solo are almost rhythmic placeholders, right? It's like rhythm. The rhythm is interesting, more than that, how important the notes are. Just start with rhythm. And then I compare it to the form, right? So like, I haven't done this song very much. I'm familiar with it. But I know it's not in my regular setlist. So I didn't know the form that well. So even before I sat down with the transcription itself, you know, I pulled it up in the real book realized we're in a different key here, we're in E flat instead of F.

13:01  
Yes. Right.

13:02  
So is that right? Did I say that? Right? Yeah,

13:06  
you did? Yeah.

13:08  
I think the real book one has an F, run through the changes, make sure I know that make sure I'm comfortable, understand the chord relationships, and then listen to the recording about seven times so that I can hear what it is. And only then do I really pull up the solo that notes and follow along. And see what Sorry, I keep a highlighter, you've seen my highlighted version, I keep a highlighter in my hand. And as I go, if I hear something that's interesting, which is either like, Oh, that's a really cool use of this thing that I know, or here's this thing that I don't recognize that I want to know, I highlight those and then I come back one at a time and look at him. Yeah.

13:42  
Tremendous. So well, let's, let's, we'll break it down. But before we do let's you okay with us taking a listen to it. I hope I got this cued up. Tell me if you can hear this. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit play and we'll listen to Chet Baker playing tangerine. Which by the way, he has some he has some hacks playing along with him. You know, on piano. He's got this guy named Bob James and, and on bass, this other dude named Ron Carter and on sax, Paul Desmond is more. Yeah, Steve Gadd. You know, he's got got some hacks plan behind him. But you know what, let's listen to the solo and see what we think. Can you hear this? Nothing.

14:26  
I don't hear anything. No. You can't hear anything.

14:29  
No, man. I can hear it. It's fantastic. So how do I get how do I get this? How do I get this plane? Do you have a way to play it man on your rig? Because I'm hitting? It's not coming?

14:42  
Let me see. I hope you're editing this.

14:45  
Yeah, I can edit this man. Get this queued up here.

14:49  
But let's see if you can hear it. I don't know. I really don't know if it's gonna work or not.

14:53  
What about this? Can you hear this? Here we go.

17:18  
Okay, I better stop it right there because I can I can listen all day long to that I don't know about you.

17:23  
This Trumps. Oh, man. Some of those fills are incredible.

17:28  
Some classic Steve Jobs. Steve Gadd field. I

17:31  
know, I know that's not what we're talking about. But man, those, there's a couple of fields in there that are killer.

17:36  
Yeah. Well, I tell you what if you're not tapping your flip to that.

17:42  
Feel you? Yeah, the swing fields and so on. Yeah.

17:47  
So, okay, well, a couple things that we, you know that the dive into this solo. You mentioned rhythm right away. That's one of the things you'd like to look at rhythm. And if you just do the eye test here real quick, if you just kind of look at it glance at it just casually glanced at it, you cannot help. But to see just a strong presence of eighth note movement through this whole entire solo. I mean, just real quick, I test right. So it would validate the importance right away. If you're wanting to emulate Chet Baker, you get better get good at playing some eighth notes, man and swinging the eighth note. Because it's all over the soul.

18:35  
I mean, yeah, you're right. It's straight eighth notes, a couple of little turns and triplet things, but otherwise, straights. But the things that I noticed, is, oh, there's so much space in it. I don't know if you see it, like if you look at the version of the lead sheet I gave you, but like the end of line, one in the middle of line three in the middle of line four in the middle of line six. I mean, he takes two measures off, or a measure and a half off. He's not afraid the players have this weakness, they have to breathe that we don't have to.

19:03  
Which, which, by the way, is another reason why piano players, right. This is another reason why piano players should be studying horn players because they do have to breathe. So they have this natural freezing mechanism built in. And and as piano players, we can have a lot of run on sentences, there's no question about it. So it's nice to see you're right. You look at it again. And you can tell that he's not afraid of space, he's not afraid of the rest.

19:31  
Well, it is what he does after the rest. That's like the second thing I noticed. So where on the beat? Does he start the phrase or where in the measure does he start his phrases because like the after the first rest, or the first one, it comes in on the end of one and then after the rest on the third line. He comes in again on the end of one but then the next one on line four comes in on the end of four, and then on what two lines beneath that on the F minor chord. He comes in on the end and up to. And then. So he's off beat all this stuff, right? So he's swinging all of his entrances until he gets down here to the second to bottom line, where he comes in on right on beat three. And then on the line after that right on beat four, and then after that on the same line, right on beat two. And it's like he's clearly playing with the contrast of sweet starting on the beat and starting off the beat and being adding some variety and spontaneity into the where the lines start,

20:27  
right? Yeah, that's, that's a great observation. You know, another observation right away that struck me and looking at this solo, you know, again, how diatonic it is how incredibly diatonic it is. But the other thing, you know, one of the things I'm always preaching and talking about in, in my, my teaching in the podcast, my podcast is, you know, scale movement, arpeggio movement, ascending and descending, right? This is the way melodies move that you can take any melody, and you can dissect any melody, you can go through and circle scale, arpeggio scale arpeggio, up, down, up, down. And if you look at this solo, the scale movement, and the arpeggio movement, it validates exactly what I'm preaching all the time, in that, practicing your ascending and descending scale movement in the eighth notes, ascending and descending arpeggios using eighth notes. Wow, if you wanted a solo, to validate why you should be practicing that, and how it sounds when applied to a solo, this would be a good one to take a look at.

21:40  
I have this in my notes to the same thing, which is that how often in the solo? Does he jumped by more than a major third? Right? There's really the exception to that is really at the end of a line when he's punctuating the end of a phrase. Right, you know, he'll do it. So doh are kind of moving at the end. But otherwise, everything is either a scale or it's an arpeggio.

22:00  
Right? That's right. No, that's right. The other thing too, I like to notice. And you and you, you mentioned this in your notes as well. But I tend to like to go through a solo. And look at what note you know, the harmony versus what know he's starting with. So like, if you take, you know, for instance, start on the second line, the F minor seven, he's got an E flat, so he's got a seventh against it, right? If you get to the E flat major seven in that line, he's got the seventh he's on the seventh of that E flat major. If you look at the C seven, flat nine, he's on the seventh of the C seven flat nine, you go to the F minor.

22:44  
E flat major seven is interesting because I I hear this as E flat six. And there's an enclosure around the six. Yeah, that's interesting, right? Yeah, maybe it's like, it's clear to me that the six is the sound of that era. Yeah, right.

22:59  
And then, but But you see what I'm getting at, right? That if you go through and you go, Okay, the next line, F minor, A flat, right? And then you mentioned how on the B flat sevens, he likes the 13th. You know, that G sound on that? You know, but hey, check out that E flat six falling right after that, right? He's got, he's starting to descending line, but he's starting on the seventh even though it's the chord change says E flat six. And he's starting on the seventh of the sound, right? So it's interesting. If you go through and you take a look at every single chord, and you look at the melodic line being played against that chord. It's amazing how the primary chord tones are so dominant. The third, the fifth, the sevens, right? So,

23:49  
a counter to that. If you go through and like with your highlighter, highlight every place where you see a B flat on a B flat court, you will make very few marks on the paper. Right? It's all do you call this the jazz arpeggios, the 33579 arpeggios.

24:07  
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's classic. That's classic vocabulary. Yeah. Right. Classic vocabulary. So So yeah, so you know the diatonic. In fact, if I went through and I tried to find an, a note that is not diatonic to the chord change, for instance, like, even if you take a look at the C in the second line, the C seven flat nine, right? He's not doing anything. There's the D flat and there there's the flat nine, but everything else is everything else is diatonic to the to the C seven, right? 100%.

24:50  
I mean, there's a D natural in there, which is diatonic, and then the D flat, which is the alteration, they're both there

24:55  
that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So very straightforward. So interesting too on the D flat dominant seven, you had some nice observations on that as well. Right? The sharp 11 sound.

25:12  
Oh, I'd love that's at the end of the. Yeah. We're talking about different ones. Which one are you looking at? You're looking at? Well, I'm looking at Sherpa live and I'm talking about is in the f7 chord at the third to last line all the way at the end.

25:29  
The F seven chord. Oh, right, right. Now that's awesome.

25:35  
I love that line. If we have to talk about that line, maybe we'll come back to that.

25:39  
Yeah. But that D flat seven in front of that at the beginning of that line, the D flat seven with that G natural. That's the melody note. Which is also functions and serves as the the sharp 11 of that sound. I got you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So. So anyway, how would you then I got a question for you, you know, you know, we've broken we've broken apart this solid, real, very diatonic lot of scale movement, a lot of arpeggio movement, ascending descending motion. So now, you sit down, to practice this or to start to play? How would you start to extract what you're going to take from this solo? To start in? Pecha? There's

26:25  
one other thing I would look at first, which would be the motifs. Okay. Of which this one this song is not, or this solo is not terribly motivic. But definitely the second line is

26:41  
yes, right at right at the beginning of the solo.

26:48  
Otherwise, a lot of it is not. It's not like a motif solo. But that line, definitely. I'm sorry, I didn't understand your question. So you're saying is that we're going to start practicing? How would I practice it?

26:59  
Yeah. What what, how, now that you've now that you've taken the transcription like this, you've looked at it rhythmically. You've looked at it in terms of, you know, chord scale relationships, you know, how diatonic versus non diatonic it is. You've broken down, you know, various phrases in the melody, or in the in the solo, that what do you do? What's the next step for you in terms of Okay, now it's time for me to start actually growing musically from this solo with my plane? How? How would you go about it?

27:39  
So, you skipped, you said once I've got the phrases in place, but I would just to be clear, like I would go through and more denote where the phrases are, where the start and the end of the phrases are, specifically where they start and where in the measure, they end, we talked about how they could start. And they oftentimes start in different places of the measure to create some variety. But if you look, this is something my, my Pert, my private teacher has taught me, that was never end on the beat lines almost never end on the beat. Otherwise, you lose the swing feel like the end of the tune, only everything else is off the beat. So I'm looking for, like, where do they start? Where do they end? And then kind of what's the device that he's using in that particular phrase, I sometimes will highlight like, these are the guide tones that I think he's aiming for. And the lines like we talked about that E flat major seven, on the second one, I would highlight the C as the guide, tone, and see, okay, what's he going to do? How's he going to explore getting to that C. And then from there, like, I would play it literally the way that he has it until I can get it in his feel. And then I would start taking it around the keys into different keys and start putting it into other tunes that I know. So where else do I have a phrase that ends on a major seven chord where I could circle the six with an enclosure? And just try it out? And some other tunes?

28:45  
Yeah, yeah, fascinating. You know, one of the things I like to do is I like to take maybe a specific sound, specific progression, maybe like 251, or, or a specific sound like an F like F minor, and go through this entire piece and, and literally extract from the entire solo, everything he plays over F minor. And then and then from that, the ideas that appeal to me, based on that F minor sound, and understand what it is that he's doing with that F minor. So maybe I'm taking like in the third line there, he's got, he's got a starting on the third of the F minor seven sound. It's got the A flat B flat C, and then check it out. He's got a C, E flat, G B flat, so he's arpeggiating. In essence, he's arpeggiating from the fifth to the 11th of the F minor sound, but he starts it with scale motion from the third so he's using scale motion from the third up to the fifth of the F minor sound and then our pitch eights the rest of the way to the 11 And so I would extract that little, that little nugget. And I'd go, man, that's it. That is a hip little, little musical idea. And so if I were

30:10  
saying the same thing, I think you're saying the same thing that I would extract, like a measure or a phrase like that, and then literally pick up that exact phrase and put it in other places. But I don't, I'm careful not to put it like in my bag of tricks as a lick, right? That I've memorized that I'll pull out later. It's a way to get the sound into my hands, sound into my hands. That's a weird phrase. But it's a way to get the feeling of that thing in my hands so that it comes out naturally, later,

30:36  
no doubt, no doubt. So I would, then yeah, so then what I would do before I would try it in any tune, right, I'd move it to G minor, and a flat minor and C sharp minor and F sharp minor, because now I understand, for lack of a better word, mathematically, I understand mathematically what he's doing here. And, and then it would also validate something like that would also validate, for me why I spend so much time practicing sound based on regions of the sound from like, like here from the fifth, from the fifth to the 11th, or from the third to the ninth, or from the root to the seventh, or from the seventh to the 13th. And you can go through here and find all those kinds of little nuggets. These regions of sound that he's focusing on, like if you take, for instance, take that take the F minor in, let's see 1234.

31:34  
Can I comment on that? While you're while you're while you're? Yeah. Yeah, because this was this was a big moment for for young Josh. Earlier, my flag was like, when I used to pull these transcriptions up, I would look at that measure that F minor seventh measure, you're looking at where it's the scale motion, from the third to the fifth, and then the arpeggio up, I would have seen that as six different notes, right, originally, and now grown up, Josh would look at that and see that as a pattern. It's like, a scale from three to five and then continue to line up with the arpeggio. Well, I can do that anywhere on any chord, correct? I could do that. From the third to the fifth on our page. Yup, I could do it from the fifth to the seventh and arpeggio up. I could do it from the second to the fourth and our pageview up and what does that sound like? But to me, the the profound thing that happened to me was to think of this as like, one idea, not six tenths corrupts.

32:25  
Absolutely, absolutely. I could not agree more, right? Because now you're really getting the essence of what's happening, what's what's going on, and why it sounds so good. So you know, and then you can even validate it further. So like what I was saying, if you go down 12345 Or go to the fifth, fifth line down, go to the F minor. The first F minor measure three that gets you started on a flat and then same thing, look at it on the very next F minor, he starts on the A flat drops down to the C E flat, G you see, same thing I pivoted it. Exactly same, same type of thing, right. So you're gonna like, Ah, okay, I see

33:11  
even even the F seven at the end of the well, that's more bluesy. But the end of the next one, right? It's just, it's not a minor system, but it's the same idea. Same idea, exact same, put the scale on the end instead of at the front.

33:25  
That's That's exactly right. Right. So then, you know, if you take, then in the end, there's some things that are very opposite, like so if you take the on the page two of the solo, if you go on the second line, go to that G minor. He starts at G minor again, on the fifth. But look, he's got arpeggiate motion from the fifth down to the root and then scale motion. G, F, E, right. So that's a nice little nugget. So I would go through and I would take all my what's what's he doing on G minor? And I would go through and look at that, or what's he doing on on the C seven altered sounds these sharp nines and flat nines? What what kind of ideas are you that he's playing? So I kind of like to so kind of like dissect sound.

34:12  
So if we go back to that F minor, we started on the third line. Okay, I don't know what it's like to think like Chet Baker, but if I could pretend for a second that I'm thinking like Jeff Baker, I think what he's doing is like thinking, Okay, I'm gonna do this scale arpeggio idea on the F minor, how do I get into it? So if you look at the C seven flat night above it, is like, oh, I can do this move where I go from the third down to the seventh and that'll lead that seventh right into the third of the next chord, right? Correct. That E natural D flat, C B flat goes right to the A flat, and if you go back down where you just were in the solo on the second page, where he does the G minor to the C sharp nine to the F minor, look at the move, it's that C sharp C seven sharp nine is the exact same line that he did above E natural D flat C B flat into the Flat. Right? Yeah. So he you can tell that like he's practiced that as a horse as a movement. Right?

35:07  
Right. And he's certainly not free. He's certainly not afraid, which I think a lot of young improvisers are. He's certainly not afraid of repetition. Right, taking a taking a concept or an idea and coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it.

35:24  
And even in this case, if you were, again, like, look, young Josh, who has to take the chord changes, literally, you would have never played C, D flat on a C seven sharp nine. Right?

35:36  
That's a flattened, right. Correct. Right.

35:40  
I would have played I would have played I would have switched the nine when I played that line, but his mental muscle memory or whatever took him there.

35:47  
Right. Right. Yeah, there's there's another there are other instances of that, too, that that are very fascinating. Like, for instance, if you take the C seven sharp nine, in measure, going back to page 1/3, line up from the bottom, look at that C seven sharp nine. Where's that? Where is there a sharp nine in that line?

36:09  
Well, the E flat

36:12  
with an E flat Yeah, and then okay, I say but then follow the E flat followed by what? A natural nine. Yeah.

36:23  
to your to your point, I don't think he's thinking C seven sharp nine at all. I think he's thinking E flat. Line to me just says E flat major.

36:34  
Yeah. Oh, he's definitely thinking key centers, right. No, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. He thinks key centers. And there's other there's another example here. I don't know where I, you know, off the top of my head here. I don't know where it is. But you know, he'll have he'll have a dominant chord he starred in the line on on the major seventh. Yeah, how does young Josh, how does young Josh rectify

37:03  
the next line underneath it? It's, it's a 1234567. Line. Okay, maybe should go from the bottom of the first page. The third line up from the bottom of the first page? B flat seven that starts on an a natural.

37:17  
Yeah, there you go. Yeah. And how does young Josh rectify? How does young

37:24  
young Josh was an idiot. Older just just sees this as a line cliche from the B flat to the a natural to the A flat?

37:32  
Yeah, well, an old Josh old Josh now sees that. He should be he's just creating tension, is he not? It's a little bit of tension. he resolves, he resolves that he comes off of that.

37:43  
This is where the notation fails, this line does not notate Well, right. Because like the A flat to the a natural and the measure before those are like, almost like ghost grace notes. They're not literally that, because I hear the B flat in the F major F minor seven, then to the a natural than to the A flat then to the G flat then to the G I hear it as like a line cliche.

38:04  
Yeah. Yeah. Man, it's just such classic that, you know, there's such classic jazz vocabulary lays throughout this whole lays throughout this whole soul that, you know, that's what I was getting to the point of like, how are you going to break it down and practice it? Right? How? How are you going to squeeze every drop of value out of this soul? And I and I certainly think whether it's this soul or any soul, what I love, I love seeing what he does over one particular sound throughout the solo. Or, or I would expand, expand that and say, what's he doing over these two fives? What's he doing over that one? Was he doing over that one four dominant three, six combination that appears throughout this tune? There's a there's another little progression that I would like to look at and go okay, what's, how's he approaching that movement, harmonic motion, and then practice that and then extract that and move it around a different 1436 progressions in different keys.

39:08  
Well, speaking of that progression, this is my favorite line of the whole solo is starting on the second line of the second page. Okay. And what caught me is that this is something young stupid Josh would never have done is he's playing a chord ahead, that entire line, right, so on the E flat six, the chords are changing every two beats, right E flat six to A flat seven. But on on the A flat six, he's already soloing over a flat seven. And then when it gets to a flat seven, he's already moved on to the G minor seven. He's two beats ahead of the chord changes this entire line all the way until he finally lands it on the F minor seven on the third measure,

39:46  
or Yeah, right. Or,

39:48  
like I used to be so square I still am honestly, yeah. I'm so square around, hey, the chord changed here. I have to play the notes for that chord then the chord changes and I got to play the changes for that chord as opposed to just allow Seeing my melody to let me be more fluid than that.

40:02  
Yeah. Or maybe Josh, maybe this right? If you back up to measures you got he has an F minor to B flat seven, E flat six to eight, flat seven, G minor, C seven, maybe, maybe perhaps he's just thinking B flat seven, go into a flat seven, go into C seven.

40:21  
Yeah, he may not even be considering those first chords at all. That's what I'm saying. Right? The second chord of the measure is all he's thinking about.

40:29  
Yeah, he's, which is, again, validates the importance of that dominant sound, the dominant chord, the granddaddy of them, all right. And as I tell students, you know, the dominant chord, maybe it's important, maybe that's why they call it the dominant chord. Right? So I think I tend to think that he's thinking and but and you can even back it up further. Josh, how about the G seven in front of the C seven. So you got you got to G seven, go into C seven, go into B flat seven, going to a flat seven, going to C seven. Maybe he's thinking dominance all the way through that?

41:08  
He plays so diatonically he made just a lot of this. He might just be thinking E flat, and I'm aiming for which which chord tones?

41:15  
Yeah. So yeah, he's a

41:21  
minister. That meant that F seven with with the B natural and the with the sharp 11 and the melody there at the end, yeah, I think I wrote mega cool. My drink. I need to practice that this is one of these things that I gotta pull this out and extract it because I never end the line on a dominant chord. Hardly ever. Like I'm not brave enough to like, leave it intention. And then take a huge breath like that. I would wait and resolve my line on the whatever follows the dominant chord.

41:46  
Well, you're not alone. You're not alone. I think most people would not they would shy away from that. Right? So

41:53  
it's such a cool moment of tension to put it there and then just leave it hanging for for four beats. And then on top of that, not just ending on the dominant cord but ending on the freakin coolest note of the dominant chord, which is that Sharm 11. Right? If you look back at that line and really study it, you can tell all the way back at that D flat seven chord. He knew he was going to end it there. He drove it all the way there from four or five measures ahead.

42:19  
Yeah, and then I love how he resolves it coming out of that though. Look how cool right going into that F minor seven. He doesn't he doesn't have to go very far. Does he know slides it up, slides it up to that, to that see? And off? He goes. Such a great line. Yeah, yeah. So you know, you asked me at the beginning, you know, as we as we connected here today, you know, what is it about Chet Baker that I love? Man, dude, I'm telling you, I don't know if I've heard a bad Chet Baker. So I don't think they're all They're all like this. Right? And think about, we have two pieces of paper, right in front of us two pieces of paper. That's it. So this is not like a solo that requires a dozen sheets of paper. This is like two sheets of paper. Two courses, was it two courses of tangerine, and packed full of golden nuggets. Right. So I for my for what it's worth, for all your listeners out there, get a collection of Chet Baker transcriptions and start studying them and start playing through them, you will do yourself a huge favor to do so your your jazz vocabulary in your jazz language will skyrocket.

43:42  
By every Omni book you can get your hands on. I look behind me I have a shelf. They're all down. You can't see it. They're all there. Every Omni book that's ever been published is down there for a reason. Because it took somebody a day to transcribe this thing and note it down. It took Chet Baker Well, however long the Solo was to invent it. Right, like a minute to invent that was crazy.

44:08  
Yeah,

44:08  
there's so much to learn in here.

44:10  
So much. So, you know, one thing that I would say to I think you would concur with this, once you pull some of these ideas out of out of the Chet Baker SOTL after your teacher, Chet Baker has shown you some great ideas to be utilizing you know, to use some kind of you know, software like a band in the box or I real pro I think are great practice tools. I know you're big with metronome as well. But you know, the drop these into a musical context extracted out of tangerine, then drop it into a musical context using something like band in the box or a real pro, so that you can actually start applying these ideas with the right articulate addition in the right trying to emulate an essence trying to emulate Chet, Chet Baker to as close as possible, and then being able to move that around the various keys. Again, I think, right,

45:13  
I can curse so much. Because like the point of buying all these Omni books or getting these transcriptions is not so that I can go on a gig and play Chet Baker's solo. Right. Right. It's not about that. It's not about rote, you know, playback. It's not a classical approach. It's like it's a study mechanism.

45:32  
Right? Yeah. Because you mentioned it, you mentioned it earlier, which is right, you use the word lick, right, this is not about trying to come up with a collection of licks. Because I actually, I think that I think that approach fails miserably. Right? That you know, the try to think that you're going to take measure 13 out of this solo, and then drop, kick it into some other tune, and make it sound as natural like it like it's your idea. It's a very difficult approach to take. Instead, what we've been talking about how we're breaking it down and extracting from the solo, the little nuggets and understanding what he's doing over a progression or a specific sound, then meaning able to extract that idea, and then practice it to discover you discover your your vocabulary, that is the value of transcriptions.

46:26  
I really liked the way our mutual friend Jeremy Susskind puts this, which is that playing learn to extracting these phrases is like learning a language. Like when you first learn to speak Spanish, you learn how to say where's the bathroom, or, you know, order your favorite hamburger or something and you learn those by rote memorization. But when you actually get out there, right, you start to like learn the sound and how the phrasing works. And it becomes improvisational, even though it's based on these rote phrases that you additionally learned. So it's not like memorizing is so much as it is training your you said it perfectly.

47:03  
Right? You know, and what will happen to write you take, you take a little line, like go back to that F minor that we talked about in line three, that little scale movement from the third to the fifth followed by arpeggio motion to this to the 11th. You take that little nugget right there, and you start playing that with a good feel on articulation. As you move it around to different minor chords, I guarantee it you will be you will find it challenging not to say to yourself, dang, I sound pretty good. And you sound pretty good because you're playing classic vocabulary. Yeah. Well said. Yeah, so Well, good. I am so man. I am so glad that you you agreed to dissect the Chet Baker solo with me, man.

47:53  
And you did the transcription this time. So yeah,

47:57  
I'm so glad that you decided to see who's some of your favorite horn players. Who are some of the guys that you listen to that you go Desmond? Oh, yeah. Who is? Who takes who takes the next solo, by the way that we did, that we didn't listen to. But

48:15  
there's so many. There's so many horn players that I get influenced from. And, you know,

48:26  
I can't think of you know, a sax player that I love to listen to that. I don't think he gets his just do he should but he doesn't. Is Scott Hamilton. Love his plan. He's kind of like a Chet Baker of saxophone tenor sax.

48:43  
I mean, I'm just trying to come up. I mean, there are the obvious miles of course, Dizzy, of course.

48:49  
Right. Right. Right. The big names right.

48:53  
Yeah. Some vocalists?

48:57  
Clark. Terry is another one of my trumpet players that I love to listen to. Vocalist. Oh my gosh. Nancy Wilson. Sonny Clarkson. Yeah, great. So, yeah, I think I just think as pianist, I just I always encourage the piano students that I work with, just don't limit yourself to listening to piano players. I mean, I get it. I mean, we're piano so we're naturally drawn to listening to folks that are playing the piano. But honestly, I honestly I gotta say that my studying of horn players and Horn lines has done. Maybe more for me improvisationally than any other any other instrumentalists including piano?

49:54  
I think I've thought about this too, so I bought it. When I went full time I bought them a lot. I used to be a trombone player, but it's that's too much for me now. But I was like, I want to be able to have something where I can't get like, I can't cheat by just copying my way out of a lack of inspiration, right? I wouldn't be able to take it pick up a solo instrument in the Solo was what I'm, when I'm playing. When I'm at the piano and my inspiration runs out, I can always go to, you know, my bag of tricks and my piano solo, right? Exactly stuff like I can. I can fall into comping rhythms and cool chord voicings and all this stuff. But if I've just got like a trumpet in front of me, like, the reason they create the best lines is because that's all they do is create lines.

50:33  
Right? Well, and that's why I think it's important as piano players, and I tell my students this all the time to sit, please sit on your left hand, and solo through these changes. No, I don't want to I don't want to hear any chords. I don't want to hear any. The only chords I want to hear is through your melodic line. That's the those are the only chords I want to hear that outlined in the changes, right. And that is very challenging for piano players.

51:04  
So I'll leave you with this because this is a funny story. But my my friend, Brian has challenged me to do my own seven day soloing challenge, using only my left hand. So sit on my right hand, but solo using only my left hand and like oh, yeah, that's tough. That's tough.

51:23  
Very tough.

51:25  
Yeah, I want to get to play those those crazy Oscar Peterson, two octave melody line, things that he does. My left hand sucks, it's gotta get better.

51:33  
Well, well, and I have found this though, too. If you play. It's one thing to play adult Unison line in both hands. I have found that my right hand, somehow my left hand is very much comforted by the presence of my right hand. So playing a Unison line works well. But if I take my right hand away, and now ask my left hand to play those same ideas without my right hand leading the way, the left hands like, wait a minute, where's my where's my leader? And that's, that's, that's a challenge. That's a that's a huge challenge. And that's your friend has really thrown down the gauntlet there, man. That's

52:25  
it. I've played solo way more than I've played in trios, quartets. And so my left hand is my rhythm section. And when you take it away and just play the right hand, by itself, it's a little uncomfortable. But when I take the left hand away and use the left hand should solo instead. Yeah, it's just wild. It's just really uncomfortable for me.

52:46  
Yeah. Yeah. And there's guys that do it. You know that. There's guys that do it. But they're, they're the big boys, man. They're the big boys.

52:58  
So I did what we're talking about, like the millet, the horn lines that you create part of what makes Chet Baker so good and all of these instrumentalists is they they do so much to imply the harmony without the harmony necessarily even need to be there, right, you can hear the chord changes in the learning directly. That's I did a video two weeks ago about Michelle Patricia Yanni, who was known to just take his left hand up, put it on top of the piano and just do these long like five minute long solos using nothing but single lines in his right hand. And that was the point of the whole video was showing off his solo on caravan, which is all the crazy harmonic minor modes exploration thing. But you can hear the harmony underneath it. It's so it's Yeah, I don't think I don't think I'm there. I think I really need my left hand to provide the harmonic structure too much.

53:48  
Right. And we can as piano I think all piano players we do that right. You know, I remember I've told this story before. This is how it this is why it's so important to try to emulate horn players when we play especially horn players like Chet Baker, because you never ever want this to happen. I was playing I was sitting in with a jazz group in a club. And I got done playing. And as I was exiting the stage and the other house jazz pianists was taken his place back up on the piano as we passed. He whispered in my ear, sooner or later, you have to say something. You do not want to hear that. And he was so right. Because what he was saying is all the notes I was I was playing a lot of notes. And all those notes might be impressive to a non musician. But to a musician, sitting there listening, he realized I was playing a bunch of where was the melodic ideas. Where were the melodic lines. What was I say? What What? Right? Where was the Chet Baker kind of statements? They weren't there. And so he he said to me, sooner or later, you have to say something. And it was a great lesson. And I've never forgotten that to this day. And I'm grateful that he had the courage to just say that to me, you know, as hurtful as it was at the moment, it was great to hear because then I got started getting serious listening to horn players and melodic lines and then trying to emulate imitate those lines on the piano. And that's why that's why I stress to all piano players start listening to horn players. They play beautiful lines, especially guys like Chet Baker, beautiful lines. So Josh, yeah, this has been great. I think everybody would agree would you all agree that Josh was on key today

56:03  
I think that says it all our house our says,

56:06  
You're so silly.

56:09  
I got these. Josh. I got these little effects over here, man. I wanted I wanted to try to find some places to put a man you know, like, how about this one right here

56:30  
okay, yeah, I'm getting good with the technology. Josh.

56:35  
You're getting up there, man. Next time I'm down, we're gonna upgrade you.

56:41  
Alright, man, I appreciate that. I hope so, man, the technology stuff. You know, it's not my forte, but you know, I do what I can, man. I do what I can.

56:50  
So you're doing great. So,

56:53  
Josh, Listen, man, as always a thrill to have you on jazz piano skills. I cannot thank you enough for taking time out of your day. I know you've got a million million things going on. So I cannot even begin to thank you enough but I appreciate it. And I know all the jazz panel skilled listeners appreciate it as well.

57:11  
It's always so much fun, man. Thank you for having me.

57:14  
Yeah, well, you're gonna be back on we're gonna we're gonna find another solos to dissect here. Coming up here in another month or so. We'll be back at it again and see what we come up with. All right, my friend. All right.

57:26  
Sounds perfect.