My First Post!/Richie Powell Solo Intro

The other day I decided to transcribe Richie Powell's piano intro to What Am I Here For?, the seventh track from Clifford Brown + Max Roach, one of my favorite jazz albums of all time. 

Now I'm no transcription or theory expert, but from my limited knowledge I wanted to talk about this transcription a bit. Based on nothing but my slightly trained ear, the whole song seems to be Rhythm Changes, and the solo only supports this. 

Quick nerd out about Rhythm Changes

This tune is in the key of C. The typical chords for the first phrase of Rhythm Changes in the key of C are Cmaj7-A7-Dm7-G7. But, in this song it, the progression is Cmaj7-C#dim7-Dm7-G7. 

Chord Symbols for the first 4 bars of the solo

Now an explanation of the second chord being changed to a C#dim7 is best explained by Mark Levine in The Jazz Theory Book. He states how "Diminished chords are usually played in place of V7b9 chords to create a chromatic bass line" (Levine, 1995, Pg. 85), and this substitution applies to typical V7 chords too (Levine explains the why and how this substitution works on the same page, but that's a discussion for later). Applying this to Rhythm Changes creates a great sounding chromatic bass line, and in the case of this song, makes the entire melody function later on. 

To the Solo!

I'm going to start off small, and then zoom out to the big picture, to show how the little things add up to the final product of a solo.

Chord anticipation
leading into bar two

Note Choice

To start off, the scales/arpeggios used are pretty normal for bebop-esque, and without going too in-depth (also I'm no bebop expert, so take my "analysis" with a grain of salt), here goes nothing. The solo primarily uses notes from the chord in each bar, with a few exceptions. The notable exceptions are the chord "anticipations" in bar 1, beat 4; bar 5, beats 3 & 4; and bar 7, beat 4 (there are possibly others that I missed, but these were the most obvious). I believe these anticipations were likely employed to propel the already blazing fast solo to another level of speed, however that is less of a true hypothesis and more of a hunch.

Here's the link to the pdf of the highlighted chord tones: Chord Tone Analysis

(On my Chord Tone analysis pdf, the blue notes are notes from the chord listed, the red are common extensions for the chord, purple are passing tones or enclosures and yellow are uncommon/spicy extensions. It made sense to my brain, so hopefully it will to yours as well).

Rhythmic Structure

This section would work better for non-bebop solos, as this solo is almost a constant stream of notes, but there are a few moments of rhythmic interest here. The start on beat 2 of the first bar, along with the anacrusis (pickup note) and the drums almost disjointed entrance, makes for a rhythmically chaotic and confusing first second or so of the music. Almost immediately after, the time locks in and makes sense. The only other pause is at the end of the solo, sort of like a breath of a human singing, or a period before continuing onto a new sentence. It occurs after beat 3 of the 8th bar.

Overall Structure

Examining the structure I noticed a few things. In typical fashion, the solos are 4(ish) bar phrases, and they follow a call and response type feel. The "call" section is the first approximately 2 bars of each 4 bar phrase, though the second call anticipates by cutting into the previous phrases response. This again is probably done to propel the motion of the song forward.

Second call anticipates the next section by starting in the 4th bar 
rather than the 5th

If you look, you'll realize that both "Call" phrases begin with almost the exact same phrase. Another musically wonderful thing I noticed in this structure is the repetition of phrases, and this first phrase is a great example of one, as it starts off the second phrase too. 

Almost exactly the same phrase in red, just offset slightly by a beat.

But something almost twice as epic that it took me a few minutes to even realize was that this phrase is repeated a third time as a response, just moved down a whole step! Richie took his awesome call phrase again and transposed it down a whole step slapped it onto the end of the second phrase, and it sounds epic!

The red is the call phrase and the blue is the response phrase.
They actually not only are the same phrase transposed down by a whole step;
these two phrases actually OVERLAP!

The absolute absurdity of how complex this short 8 bar solo he probably just willed into existence with not too much thought just boggles my mind. It only shows how masterful Richie was at his craft. Here are the 2 last files.

Call and response: Here

Full Transcription:  Here

Wow this first blog post was a doozy to make! I thought it wouldn't even take me a whole day to make and it ended up taking probably two or three. I hope to continue doing analyses like these, as they teach me a whole bunch and also allow me to organize my thoughts, instead of forgetting them or writing them down in the most random places. 

Anyways,

Signing off for now 😭

Maybe I'll go touch grass.

(But I won't, maybe I'll go practice tho)