Daily Licking 033: Bridge and Last 8 of Bill Evans on Oleo

Without further ado, let us continue. We left our hero approaching the bridge to Oleo, with 8 full measures of nothing but dominant chords for him to smite and lay waste to. Let us witness the destruction that ensues!

I added the generic Rhythm Changes for the bridge, just so you can see how many altered notes he plays against the standard chords. Again, no nice little box patterns in this solo for bass, it is all about melodic shapes that don't come from Bass-land. Knock yourself out analyzing those notes against those bridge chords. For instance on the D7 he plays F naturals, A flats, D flats - its a free for all!

Rhythm Rules

Before we get into the crazy notes of this section, (and they are crazy) the rhythms used herein is just as important as any cool melody he plays. There are few reoccurring things of note:

1. Simplicity - again, just eights, triplets, and quarters, with two little-ol sixteenths slipped in.
   
2. Repeated figures - he starts phrases on beat 3 of a measure 3 or 4 times in just these 16 measures. And if you look at the rhythm of the very first measure, and then look at measure 13, he uses the exact same pattern. The second time, he is so far behind the beat it can be written as a 16th rest like that, but it is pretty much exactly the same rhythm, just the notes are changed.
   
   
   

The Kitchen Sink

Now, we have already seen the use of chromatic notes from Mr. Evans in plenitude. But in measures 7 and 8 (last 2 of the bridge) he just quits this pussyfooting around and plays every note of the chromatic scale in two measures over the F7 chord. Every single note. All of em. All 12. Count 'em, look! I wrote them out, with the notes played twice stricken from the record.

So when I say you can play anything over anything, well, there you go, you cannot get a more perfect example than this right here - every damn note of the chromatic scale over a dominant chord. What can you say? Sure, dominant chords are the ones with all the alterations on them, but every single note? There it is. It happened. Wow.



G Gb F E Eb G D Db C Bb B A Ab Gb F

Below is the half-speed solo again, and then the notes themselves, in all their chromatic/altered goodness. This one is very deep. So far of all the transcriptions up here, this one has the most densely packed content, and this is only the first chorus!

Also, I left off the last measure because he starts a phrase that goes into the next chorus, so I will save it for next time.

This solo is some vitamin ridiculoso, for sure.

Bill Evans "Oleo" Bridge and Last 8 First Chorus

bass lick 4/4 tempo 230 | D7 d+8 g- b eb d b g r8 | gb r8 r4 f8 d f ab | G7 g gb f eb e g d c | db8 r8 r4 (b+8 c8) r8 r4 | C7 r4 r8 gb [g8 bb8 d] f a- | bb c db eb e gb a ab | F7 g gb f e eb g d db | c bb b a ab gb f4 | Bbmaj r2 [d+8 bb8 f8] [eb+ b gb] | [f+ c gb] [eb+ b gb] [d+8 bb8 f8] [eb+ b gb] | [e+ b gb] [eb+ bb gb] [d+8 bb8 f8~] f4 | r2 f+8 gb f eb | d f c b bb a ab8 r8 | r16 g8 r16 r4 gb8 bb16 gb16 f8 db | d f c bb b r8 r4 | r1 |