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Was there a discussion on the forum of Bird's longest recorded solo?


medjuck

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8 hours ago, Spontooneous said:

I vaguely recall (or I'm imagining) a marathon "All the Things You Are" solo on the "Apartment Sessions" LP. I've been separated from my copy.

There's always that ecstatic long "Ornithology" solo on "One Night at Birdland."

Yes, there were some very long solos on Apartment Sessions, but I also recall what sounded like splices. (I too no longer have access to that stunning album.)

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Incidentally, the wealth of live recordings now available to us shows that Bird didn't choose to play very long solos. His art was based on the perfectly constructed solo - beginning, development and end - and little would have been gained (in fact, there might have been loss) by doubling or trebling the length of his solos. When we get to Coltrane, of course things are different. ^_^

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8 hours ago, BillF said:

Incidentally, the wealth of live recordings now available to us shows that Bird didn't choose to play very long solos. His art was based on the perfectly constructed solo - beginning, development and end - and little would have been gained (in fact, there might have been loss) by doubling or trebling the length of his solos. When we get to Coltrane, of course things are different. ^_^

It was mentioned in the liner notes to some Bird release (I can't locate it now) that Bird had some superstitious reason why he didn't want his solos to go on too long - 3 choruses were tops.

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1 hour ago, mjzee said:

It was mentioned in the liner notes to some Bird release (I can't locate it now) that Bird had some superstitious reason why he didn't want his solos to go on too long - 3 choruses were tops.

Interesting! I'd love to know what the reason was. 

Haven't listened to it in forever, but weren't some of lengthiest solos on Bird With Strings? 

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He plays a little longer than usual here:

61xQu2SBQCL._SL500_SY300_.jpg

Three choruses here, on a long form, and the amount of self--correcting is revealing, he'll flub a lick one chorus, nails it the next. I've noticed that Bird would do that a fair amount, if possible, he would NOT settle for less than perfect, even if it meant returning to a previous flub. Like he did with "Four Bothers" on that thing caught with the Herd, took him three times through the bridge to really start hearing it, but once he did, he had it, and then he was done.

7 choruses of blues

 

I agree about the Dirdland stuff with Fats, that's some of the best Bird ever.

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This is sure more than 3 choruses and maybe the longest Bird solo I've ever heard.   But I don't know where this is from. Not identified on Youtube. Can anyone here i.d. it?  Is this from The Apartment tapes 

Edited by medjuck
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Seems to be from that, yes. That video eliminates the splices/cuts/whatever of the original release (starts at 41:05):

Still, yes, more than three choruses before then!

That seems to be in Bb rather than the usual Ab? But there's no pitch-correction needed? At least not much?

Interesting...was somebody challenging somebody? Maybe Bird was challenging himself? And maybe that's why he played more choruses, challenging himself in an atypical key?

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8 hours ago, medjuck said:

This is sure more than 3 choruses and maybe the longest Bird solo I've ever heard.   But I don't know where this is from. Not identified on Youtube. Can anyone here i.d. it?  Is this from The Apartment tapes 

Yes, it's from the Apartment sessions - and I still can hear the splice. Sensational playing, though!!!

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1 hour ago, medjuck said:

So do you think it's a compilation from different sets? Ot is it one solo? 

Whoever recorded the Apartment Sessions omitted all solos except Bird's, so on "All the Things" he may have come back for a second solo after (an)other soloist(s).

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  • 1 year later...

Art Blakey used to tell his soloists not to go on after peaking. Good advice. It's partly a matter of taste.

Recently, I was playing "Relaxin' At Camarillo" by Bird (March 1947) and that copy was in B (as Allen mentioned, for another item). The piece was played in C, of course. Jazz performances are never in B. I could fix that by inserting the disk into one of my Pioneer CDJ 1000 house music players and recording it. Those have a speed control. So, it could be speeded up to C. If that turned out to be the wrong speed, it could be burned onto another CD and reinserted into the CD player. They have a pitch lock (mysteriously called Master Tempo) which allows the user to vary the speed without changing the musical pitch. Of course, that is vital when mixing. The result could be recorded and then burned onto another CD. But, it would be time-consuming.

The famous 1957 video of "Fine And Mellow" (Lady Day) is at the wrong speed and is heard in E, which they would never have used. So, was it in F or Eb? You can see Gerry Mulligan playing a top E* (concert G), so the key is the baritone's C (concert Eb).

__________________________________________________

* The keys for the top E are on the coiled neck, so you can see them clearly.

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  • 8 months later...
On 13.3.2019 at 4:20 PM, Shrdlu said:

 Jazz performances are never in B.

 

 

I also thought so. But once I had the honour and pleasure to play with the great  alto saxophonist Allan Praskin and he said we´ll play a Parker blues (I don´t remember what title it was) in B natural. 

Now you might expect that this might not be a problem for a piano player, but since I never played anything else but jazz, I´m not really familiar with "non jazz keys". Especially B natural could throw me. 

I somehow mastered it only because I thought about an old Parker record that runs too fast so a B-flat tune actually sounded like B natural. That´s how I could kept that B-natural sounding stuff in mind and managed to  comp and solo on it properly, but it was a challenge, of course an interesting one. Thanks God it was a medium blues, I don´t know what would have happened if he would have called an uptempo tune in that "impossible" key :lol:

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B wouldn't bother me, but I want to hear records in their intended key.

When I was starting out, on an alto saxophone, I often played with a friend whose doting Mom bought him a Fender Stratocaster guitar (with matching amp). He was into rock, and rock guitarists always play in E, so I had to get used to C# on the alto in a hurry. Actually, it isn't hard at all.

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Db is awkward on the bass clarinet. It pops up with "Epistrophy". The keys for the little fingers are clumsy, long and "springy", and that key is hard work. Symphony orchestra clarinetists (on regular-size instruments) have a pair of clarinets, in Bb and A, with the same bore diameter and mouthpiece, to help with awkward keys. An A bass clarinet would help with "Epistrophy", but they are extremely rare and none of us is likely to see one. The only ones that seem to exist today are German ones, with that dreadful keywork: it is called the Öhler system, a sort of Simple system with a lot of extra bits and pieces to make it play in tune. Ghastly system, but the older players such as Ed Hall managed to handle it well.

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