My pleasure, Steve! Sounds great. I can really hear you building ideas and playing through the changes on the improv section. Nice work! Bruce

Thanks Bruce

I am up to the Db before going back to the 1. The Db is 4 bars, but here i am listening to the bass for a cue and i fumbled. 

I am not done yet. 

Duke is in town Wednesday. My wife and I have tix. I will say hi. 

Cheers

Steve

Cool! Please pass along my regards to him if you get a chance. Have fun! Bruce

Will do Bruce

Hey Steve, mind if I offer my 2 cents?  The A section actually starts on the Bb7 for one bar, Eb7 for one bar, then Ab6 for two bars.

A section (first 16 bars)

Bb7 | Eb7 | Ab6 | Ab6 | Ebm7 | Ab7 13  (Ab7 b13) | Db6 | Db6 |

Db6 | Dbm6 | Ab6 | F7 | Bb7 | Bb7 | Eb7  (D7) | Eb7 |

and here's the last half of the B section (the first 8 bars are the same as the A section)

Db6 | Do7 (diminished) | Ab6 | F7 | Bb7 | Eb7 | Ab6 | Ab6 |

 You can also get these chords from Duke's first lesson on the PDF transcription. I put parens around chords that you don't really need to think about so much for soloing. 

(part 2 coming up!) 

(part 2)

One of the techniques I use for soloing over a lot of chords is to think about dividing the song into "tonal centers". When the chords are all diatonic to the key, like Ab6, Bbm7, Cm7, Db6, Eb7, Fm7, etc, you don't even have to think about those so much as different scales, because they all use the Ab major scale (i.e. play over the I chord). There are better notes and worse notes to use for the chords, but the notes will all sort of fit for the most part. So the Bb7 that starts the tune off is not diatonic, but close. The only difference is that it uses a D natural instead of a Db, making the Bb major instead of minor. If you played a Db by accident, it would sound a bit bluesier than you might want in this tune, but you could always just slide up to the D natural. So I think of the first four bars as being basically in the Ab major tonal center and the second four bars as being in the Db tonal center. The Ebm7 to Ab7 is a II-V that brings us into the new tonal center of Db. So you could play the first four bars in Ab and the second four bars in Db and it'll be pretty close. But if you know some good II-V licks to play over the Ebm7 to Ab7, it really helps to emphasize the change in tonal centers. 

Does that make any sense? I hope it helps! Looking forward to hearing that sweet vibrato of yours on this. 

Best, 

Bruce

Thanks so much for your feedback Bruce. It is really appreciated. I'll dig in again tomorrow on this. 

Cheers

Brother Steve

Hey Bruce 

Yes, I remember those "tonal centers" exercises from my brief Berkeley studies 100 years ago. Thanks for reminding me.

Duke goes to what he describes as Ebm at bar 5. The notes he is using here sound like the Ab major scale (root 5). Here is where the 2/5 passing phrase can be used to go to Db correct?

the next 8 bars don't fit the 'tonal centers" analysis. I'll take this up again tomorrow. 

Thanks again.

Hey Steve. Yup, the Ebm is in bar 5 (I have it marked as Ebm7) and it is indeed the II of the upcoming Db. You could easily get away with just playing an Ab7 (dominant 7 like in blues) over both bars 5 and 6. Bar 9 is still in Db major and in bar 10 as long as you play the Fb (or E natural) on the Dbm6 it's easy. The next part goes through a small section of "cycle of 5ths". You can actually play that a bunch of ways; you can substitute chords with the same tri-tone, which happens to always work out to be chromatic. For example,  Ab | F7 | Bb7 | Eb7 | could be played as Ab | F7 | E7 | Eb7 , going down chromatically to make it easier.  The tri-tone in Bb7 is D and Ab, where D is the 3rd and Ab is the 7th. Where on a E7, Ab (or G#) is the 3rd and D is the 7th. Functionally they both work and you can intermix them to get a really interesting sound. Sorry, I get very geeky when I talk about music theory, I've always found it pretty fascinating. Regards, Bruce

Thanks again Bruce. Appreciate the info.