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In honor of Yusef Lateef, who we just lost a few days ago, at age 93 , here is the thing that inspired yesterday's post : Lex Humphries playing on Ching Miau, a one-chord modal tune in 5/4, played over a one-measure vamp, from Lateef's album Eastern Sounds. The transcription starts at the beginning of the saxophone solo, at 0:29, and ends shortly before the head out: The vamp has the rather unusual 2+3 phrasing, while Humphries's time has a 3+2 feel; I don't suppose the crossing interpretations is intentional; it seems more likely that that is the only way Humphries knew how to play in 5 at the time. He likely plays the bass drum (lightly, at least) on every beat one, but I've only notated it where it's audible. Get the pdf Audio after the break: And to ease Yusef's passing, here is one more tune from that record, The Plum Blossom:

Oh, what the hell, happy Saturnalia— I went ahead and transcribed the solo from the GOTD of a few days ago , Tarik, by Ed Blackwell, from Dewey Redman's album of the same name. It's a real study of hand independence, and not very readable, but at least roughing it out measure by measure or phrase by phrase should give you some insight into Blackwell's way of playing. At least into this tom tom thing of his, which you should recognize right away if you've heard much of his playing. The tune is basically just a drum groove, with Redman improvising freely on the musette, along with Malachi Favors on bass. Possibly the opening phrase on musette was composed. Throughout the piece, there are many times when the snare is played with both hands in unison, or nearly so, which I've indicated with a B. I included them based on the sound, and haven't worked through them on the drums prior to posting this, so if you hit anything really unplayable, probably one of those both-...

Hey, some time ago I promised you a new book— a collection of transcribed intros— before the end of the year. Work on that got sidelined as I was preparing for tour, and there's no way I'm finishing in the time frame I wanted. But I'll get back to it now, and see if I can't slam it out by January. You may also have noticed the style of my printed music has changed slightly; I've upgraded to Finale 2014, and the default styles are a little different than my old one. I'm trying to maintain as much continuity as possible, but some of these transitional things may look a little different as I figure things out. If there's one thing I learned from Joel Rothman , it's that continuity of style matters... you can always tell one of his books by just looking at the style of the copy ... So, here's another drum intro, from our man Tiki Fulwood . The tune is Good Old Music, from the first, self-titled Funkadelic record: Yesterday we made big deal out of Fulwood...