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No. Played Alto, African american, tatoos on next.

Hey guys, at the last gig, 'All Blues' was quite a hit and high energy so perhaps you can all pass ideas for groove-based high energy tunes.

Two I'm adding for next time are 'Mr. PC' and 'Cantaloupe'. These are pretty uptempo so it should really get the mood up.

What else? Modal stuff is better so there's time to build a groove. For modal, I'll also add Footprints though the tempo is pretty moderate.

People like a good slow blues.
Work Song.
Killer Joe.

I already do so many vocalist Blues so I'm over "Blued".

So now I need a Groove tune.

Mercy, mercy, mercy
Canteloupe (sp?) Island
both groovy and pretty easy to listen to.

Moanin'
So What

I'm already practicing Canteloupe. I really like the energy that Herbie brings to it.

Keep 'em coming. Great ideas!

Talking about Blues...

My vocalist does Blues in Eb so it takes more thinking than before. I can play Bb and F blues with my eyes closed. Then my drummer suggested 'Mr. Day' in F#...Never ending woodshedding...darn.

Why would a drummer suggest a key for a tune? Is he playing the timpani or something? Also, what is 'Mr. Day?' I've never heard of it.

Mr. Day - Coltrane F# Blues. I think that's the standard key for it. Yeah that's a good question, maybe there are licks specific to Sax or bass? Don't know.

But I did choose to add Mr. PC so that's another Coltrane tune.

BTW - the last tune I decided to play was Windows. There was considerable debate because the bass player said "I don't get the tune", and the sax said "It's Chick so it's not going to make sense"...but the Drummer and I voted to go with it.

Well now I realize that there are two sets of changes to Windows and I was playing it in B and the Sax was playing in the Bb. It truly sounded outside...The worst musical moment of my life ended when the sax solo ended. Not a single note belonged to the key.

The audience probably said -- "sounds like jazz"

But rather than panic, the Sax player said, when you've screwed up, DO IT TWICE. LOL.

I warned you earlier about Windows :-). People play it in 2 keys, because in the old fakebook, it was in Bb. So many have it this way.
And so usually it just gets skipped for simplicity's sake.

Other Tune:
Mr Magic. Can give a nice funky beat.

We all have IPhones/Ipads so that' how we were calling the tunes. So in theory, it's all in the same key in the app. Well at least I didn't screw up though playing it at 200bpm was a little manic.

We had another interesting event. We were playing a tune for the vocalist called "Indian Summer" but the vocalist sang the tune in the wrong key. So she was out of tune. Now I just calmly let her know and she stopped after 4 bars and we went directly to solos. None of us knew the tune so we didn't know the head. No big deal. The first 4 bars were quickly forgotten and we ended the tune without a head as well. Just a couple of short solos and we were done. That's quite a recovery

I don't think the audience ever figured it out. I think they figured it was just some obscure tune and they didn't recognize the melody.

what did you do for intro on indian summer ?

Great fun reading about your foray into the world of live performing JW.

At my trios gig last Friday I pulled out Windows, handed it to the guys and said: -"let's play."
Blank faces . . .
After a looong drawn out piano intro we stumbled a bit, I goofed here and there, the bassist occasionally swore behind my back, and the drummer went "oh, it's 3/4. or is it???".
Kept us on our toes . . .

http://www.box.net/shared/h4s6cyrgi0

We played the first 4 bars as a vamp...

I encounter some people who can't hear rootless voicings.

I'm discovering a lot of ballads that sound great in double time feel (Latin or swing). Very modern sounding...

The ones that crossed my radar are Soul Eyes, Naima, Here That Rainy Day. I heard these on the radio. I suppose they sound a little bit like smooth jazz when done that way but the the first two have really interesting harmonies.

LOL. Sounds similar to the grumbling on my end!

That was a very beautiful laid back version. Very nice! I might try it like that too. You had some really nice voicings/reharms there, perhaps you'd like to notate?

I'll have my band members listen to this if you don't mind. I think they'll be surprised at the different approach here.

Now my bass player grumbled (he's never played this before) but he soloed on it and sounded good. So hopefully it made up for the outside/wrong key sax solo.

I try to pass the tunes to the band early on but they don't really want to learn a new tune. They just want to play it when it's in front of their face. Good thing they're good enough to do that.

Naima is a really cool tune. Even on solo piano, the harmonies are just exquisite. This has to be my new favorite.

anything from this Coltrane era is amazing. Try Central Park West

How about Impressions? Coltrane has several versions of it, and McCoy Tyner does fantastic things with the tune on his version. Fine thing for a beginner like me is that the tune has only two chords, so there is a fine opportunity to try out chord voicings, and use of the left hand. McCoy Tyner does a nice job with that.