This afternoon I did a quick transcription of Kenny Garrett’s solo on “Solid”, a blues in Bb written by Sonny Rollins. The transcription is from Woody Shaw’s album of the same name, which features Kenny Garrett on alto along with Peter Leitch, Kenny Barron, Neil Swainson and Victor Jones.

 Here’s a link to the PDF. The MP3 is here.

Kenny was only about 26 on this date, but he already had his own sound and conception. He has always been a master of building intensity, and this solo is no exception. The first chorus is relatively spare and he leaves lots of space between ideas. By the third chorus, he is furiously double timing. Kenny likes to lean on altered notes of the Bb7, especially at the end of each chorus. He uses a straight up F harmonic minor scale over the Bb7 going to Eb7, this isn’t something I’ve heard often and I found it very interesting. Another interesting substitution he uses is Abm7-Db7 instead of Dm7-G7 leading into the Cm7 chord at the end. He plays a Dm7 arpeggio directly before the Am7, which makes it sound especially striking. The strangest phrase from a notation perspective was the descending blues scale starting in bar 41. He crams in 4 notes before the downbeat of 42, yet clearly doesn’t start his phrase until after beat 3. Since the meter of his phrase is roughly eighth notes, I notated it a 16th note off, but in playing this phrase, I hear it as starting on beat 3 and just lay far behind the beat.

There’s a few things the transcription doesn’t reflect. The first is accurate chord changes; It’s a Bb blues, and the chord symbols in the PDF are basically just standard jazz blues changes. Kenny Barron does some great comping throughout, none of the intricacies are reflected in my chord symbols. The second thing I don’t attempt to get 100% accuracy on is rhythmic feel; Kenny is a master of laying back and pushing the beat. The way I learn rhythmic intricacies is by playing along with the soloist. While I think it can be useful to have them in the notation, you can only go so far.

Anyways, enjoy, and please let me know if you spot any mistakes.

I haven’t really blogged in a long time, mainly because I’ve been really busy and I don’t think anyone reads this anyways. however, I am going to try and start writing more about music, composition, and hopefully posting some transcriptions I’ve done recently. I am also working on some interesting non-work software stuff, which hopefully I will post about also. I am not going to blog about my workouts anymore because it is inconvenient to search my history, which is really the only reason I started doing that in the first place. so if you had subscribed to my feed and were too lazy to unsubscribe and had to read my workouts every day, I apologize. I’ll try to post more interesting stuff going forward.

couple quick lunchtime workouts, going to be out of town for a few weekends so no crossfit classes for a bit.

warmup: 3 rounds of 10 pushups, 10 situps, 10 squats, 5 pullups
squats: 165×5, 185×5, 205×5, 215×3, 220×2, 220×1. went very deep on these and my hamstrings are still sore 2 days later.

today I did:
30 chinups
press: 95×5, 105×5, 115×5, 120(f), 120×3, 120×1. I failed on 120 initially from not thinking enough about form and positioning, press is one of those things where I feel that matters a lot since a small imbalance or inattention can really throw you off.

thursday:
21-15-9 reps of:
135 squat clean
ring dips
my time was 12:49.

friday:
bench (all x3): 155, 185, 190, 195, 185
squat (all x3): 185, 195, 195, 205, 205
press: 95×5, 115×5

115 was pretty hard which was weird given I pressed 145 the other day, probably sore from ring dips the night before or something.

warm up: 30 situps, 15 pullups, 30 pushups.

press 5×1: 115, 125, 135, 140(pr), 145(pr)

my old personal record was 135 so I felt awesome about this, really good to put up that much weight. kept good form and minimal layback to boot.

afterwards, did the newly minted crossfit southbrooklyn metcon “heidi”: burpees/boxjumps/knees to elbows, 30/20/10. my time was 11:50, this pretty much sucked to do but felt pretty good about it afterwards. like most metcons I do these days, I felt like the mental part was my limiting factor. I was tired but the little “rest breaks” I take are mostly unnecessary for me anymore, but I do them out of habit or something. have to keep this in mind for next time.

warmup: 15 pullups, 15 chinups, 30 pushups, 30 situps, 30 squats

was reading “olympic weightlifting” by greg everett last night before bed, and for squat depth he pretty much says you should go as deep as possible without reconstructive surgery :). for crossfit, hips breaking parallel with knees is generally the standard, but today I went as low as possible, which for me was quite low.

3x: 135, 185, 190, 190, 195

this was pretty tough for me and I started to lean forward on a few, which is kind of a no-no in a high bar back squat from my understanding. I’ll have to ask a coach about this next time I go to crossfit.

saturdays are my favorite days to go to crossfit, we start pretty early and then I usually feel great for the rest of the day.

run 4 miles, warmup was 50 squats, 30 pushups, 40 situps and 20 pullups.
press 3×5: 105, 115, 120, 125, 127.
other stuff: 4 sets of 10 weighted situps (45lbs) and 15 russian twists (35lbs).

the last rep of 127 barely went up, but the whole class was yelling at me to do it so I got it done, which felt really great. definitely one of the benefits of working out with other like-minded people, I would have failed it for sure if I was working out by myself in the gym. after the workout I tried to lift 140 but it wouldn’t quite go up, my previous 1 rep max for press is 135 so I should be able to beat that easily next time we do the total.

warm up: row 500m, 30 pushups/situps/squats

deadlift: 225, 275, 305, 315, 320

bench (3 reps each): 135, 155, 185, 190

5×3: 165, 185, 195, 210, 215. form started to break down at 215. accessory work was reverse ladder of odd numbers, 15 handstand pushups 1 L pullup, 13 hspus and 3 L pullups, and so on until they’re reversed. 14:31, switched to kipping pullups to keep it under 15 minutes.

warm up: 500m row, 2:00.

bench (x3 unless noted otherwise): 135, 155, 185, 190×2, 185, 190

row 2k, 7:54.

I tried a wider bench grip on the first 190 set and that didn’t work out too well. rowing was really hard today, definitely going to try and get in some rowing workouts especially in the winter when running outside sucks.