I had this dream the other night where I was back in high school and, for whatever reason, was spending a semester studying drums. In these dreams it's always the end of the semester, and I've totally forgotten to go to English class. But this time, I went to my drum teacher and said you know, I've realized that what I need to do is, instead of front-loading "knowledge" about the drums, I need to just learn some tunes and PLAY the damn drums... And my teacher gives me kind of a bop on the head as if to say "At last you figure it out, huh?" And I wanted the semester back so I could go do it right.
This has always been the conundrum of the "serious jazz student." And, partly because my default setting is to think like a teacher, I'm always having to remind myself to stop making lists of chord voicings and scales and just play the damn banjo.
Now here's the thing about comping for bebop. It's not Not Not just a matter of playing cool sounding chords. You get to do that, but the melody you create should generally stay grounded in the home key. Go back and listen to what Oscar Peterson does behind Ray Brown's bass solo, particularly the top notes in his right hand. More on this later, but for now take some time to enjoy the OP Trio's wonderful version of Tricotism (which I'm told refers to a heartbeat in triplets), to try out this arrangement and fiddle with these chord voicings.
This has always been the conundrum of the "serious jazz student." And, partly because my default setting is to think like a teacher, I'm always having to remind myself to stop making lists of chord voicings and scales and just play the damn banjo.
Chord voicings on the 5th, 4th and 3rd strings
Chords played on the three bottom strings, with your thumb, will naturally give greater emphasis to the melody note on the 5th string. These can be used effectively in the same way a pianist uses their left hand to stab some chords into the spaces in a solo.
(...and you ARE leaving spaces in your solos, yes?)
First let's look at Tricotism, by Oscar Pettiford, a great bass virtuoso of jazz's earlier days. Now, part of the deal with Tricotism is that it's in Db. I know, why not just do it in D? It was a big deal back in the day for a bass guy to solo like that in Db, for the same reason it would be today for banjo players. So that gimmick is kind of baked into the tune. I play the Oscar Peterson Trio version, which is a little different than Pettiford's original, but it's my favorite.
Here's the head and chord changes for banjo. I play this in drop-C, which also provides the most possibilities for those 3-string chords. By the way, I take back what I said in an earlier post about TablEdit being clunky and hard to use. It's the ONLY software for banjo tabs that I can see, and actually is quite easy to deal with.
Tricotism
Now a bunch of those three-note chords. You'll notice that for most chords ,rather than give you individual chord positions I've provided multiple versions of each, arranged into little melodic cells. You'll also notice these pretty much center around the tonic note Db, and there's a reason for this.
Now here's the thing about comping for bebop. It's not Not Not just a matter of playing cool sounding chords. You get to do that, but the melody you create should generally stay grounded in the home key. Go back and listen to what Oscar Peterson does behind Ray Brown's bass solo, particularly the top notes in his right hand. More on this later, but for now take some time to enjoy the OP Trio's wonderful version of Tricotism (which I'm told refers to a heartbeat in triplets), to try out this arrangement and fiddle with these chord voicings.
See you in part 2.
