>Excellent solo. If you took away the chords, the improvisation may sound
>like it was all over a Db chord. Chet seems to avoid being specific with
>all the chords in the piece, choosing instead to generalize the piece using
>notes of the Db triad and Db major scale with a couple of chromatic
>leading, passing and neighbor tones.
>I presented a solo to a graduate theory class once that was almost totally
>constructed using motivic development. No guide tones, no outlines, no
>paraphrasing of the melody. One of my students brought in a solo in which
>he tried and tried to find motivic development, and was quite frustrated.
>There was no motivic development in the solo. In analysis of any kind one
>asks questions. Sometimes the answer is "no." Then you move on to the next
>question.
Well, this is the way Kenny G plays. I bought a book of his solos. This is a
serious observation because the average person gets confused by dense changes
in a solo. David Sanborn is a great alto player and his rock solos also sound
like this.
One can think that:
a) It takes great genious to play modally and make complicated changes.
or
b) The person is playing completely by ear and does not know what is going on.
or
c)Myself and others in the group may want to work on that method of playing.
When I was 16 and I played the head of "Stompin at The Savoy" without the
complicated bridge, all I did was run an Eb major scale, using my ear to
select the parts which sounded good at a particular time. (I played the bridge
straight.) One of Kenny G's hit records is similar to this. He plays the
melody over a complex bridge.
I guess, the conclusion is that complicated solos over complicated changes
sound wierd to most people and one will never get rich doing that.
So There,
jules