In response to a request from Ekerette Uko, here is a track called Mueva Los Huesos or ‘Move Your Body’. It was written by Gordon Goodwin (b.1954) , an American pianist, composer and arranger and played by the Big Phat Band. The style is a Latin-American groove I would describe as being in the big band tradition mixed with an element of a Disney Showband. It is jazz-influenced and has a childlike almost naive cheerfulness.
The style has a mixture of very tight sectional phrases played by the brass and saxophones, with a guitar and bass in the rhythm section and I think three drummers playing a complex layered line. There are also solos for soprano saxophone, trumpet and percussion.
Mueva is in A minor based on a 17 bar chord progression using: [Read column 1 then column 2. ]
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8 bar percussion Intro
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32 bar Unison Riff 2 (8 bar Riff played four times with polyphonic brass melodies)
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Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am (Bass plays melody)
Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am Ami C F E7 Am C F E7 Am (Chords) C F E7 Am C F B7 E7 Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am Ami _____________________________ |
33 bar Unison figures echoed by percussion solos.
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16 bar Unison Riff 1
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4 bar Interlude
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Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am Saxophone solo
Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F B7 E7 Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am ____________________________
16 bar Unison Riff 1
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C F E7 Am C F E7 Am
C F E7 Am C F B7 E7 Am B E7 Am C F E7 ____________________________ |
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Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am Trumpet solo
Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F E7 Am C F B7 E7 Am B E7 Am C F E7 Am ____________________________ |
9 bar Ami Outro
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4 bar Interlude (I play a brief solo in this clip)
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For this video I mixed the bass louder than it would normally be just to highlight what I think is an interesting bass line that has a mixture of written parts and also opportunities for improvisation and variation.
The thing about playing with brass players is they are very much into rhythmic precision making sure that the players synchronise their articulations, staccato, legato, marcato, breathing, tone, and dynamics. This presents some challenges for the bass when we play unison passages because the bass is slow to speak as they say. So the bass needs to get up on the beat. To help most players would as in this video opt for a bright trebly sound in this case focused on the bridge pickup.
This tune was on the programme of a show I played with the West City Jazz Orchestra in west Auckland 25th March 2017. We rehearsed it but did not perform it. I hope we play it again another time.
The thing about playing with brass players is they are very much into rhythmic precision making sure that the players synchronise their articulations, staccato, legato, marcato, breathing, tone, and dynamics. This presents some challenges for the bass when we play unison passages because the bass is slow to speak as they say. So the bass needs to get up on the beat. To help most players would as in this video opt for a bright trebly sound in this case focused on the bridge pickup.
This tune was on the programme of a show I played with the West City Jazz Orchestra in west Auckland 25th March 2017. We rehearsed it but did not perform it. I hope we play it again another time.