[Harp-L] . "Take the A Train" Question (robert)

[JON KIP <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Written in C, as I remember.....

it's not really difficult, especially if you're a sax player, or if you can lose enough IQ points to think like a sax player........ Here's the approach I took, and it's really simple....on chromatic... if you're on diatonic, you're totally on your own....but it's really built nicely for the chromatic.... I may be missing your point, though....but I'll continue as if I understand correctly...

IF the bars you're typing about are  the last three bars...in the key of c.

the thing you can hang on to is the articulation.

I think you're working on the notes.... a, a#, b, e.... g gb f db and then C down to E

sing it, and phrase it like this....not sure if I can type it coherently, but here goes:

a, a#, b    those are considered to be phrased as one note, playing-wise, and you tongue only the front of the first note and  the back end of the third note, making it short and giving you time to articulate the fourth note, the E. You both start that note and end it with your tongue...

..giving you time to get down to the first of the next three eighths, the g, gb, and f, which are also played as one note with the breath change at the back end of the g natural 

so you tongue the front of the g, and the end of the f natural

then you're home free... Db down to the c, that's built in, and then the E.

however, I may be , as I said, totally missing the point....sorry if i am....

first thing, of course, is to stop considering that passage to be difficult. Consider it to be easy, a better place to start.

There WILL be a tempo at which it won't be playable, of course, but that tune is not usually a Charlie Parker "as fast as you can play it" tune..... it's usually swing or swing-adjacent.... 

IF getting to the E is daunting, then practice it slowly,  going up higher to a G, instead, for instance. Then once you have that down, it MAY be easier to hit the E.... or not....that method works at times.... other times it's just silly.

Seems to me that tongue switching is just adding more unnecessary stuff to the mix...but that's probably just me, oh, and I see slim's there also....


Ok, I'll stop, let me know if I totally missed the point...and good for you for going thru all the keys....I'm doing that on some tunes now, and as annoying as it is, you tend to get better more quickly after the annoyance fades.

On Jun 13, 2014, at 10:37 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> There was a discussion here a while back about playing the head of "Take the A Train."
> Anyway, I have been struggling for quite some time to play this darn thing fluidly and make it swing...I've tried corner switching and I've tried pucker, and I've tried mixing the two; I continue to practice all those but I seem to be stuck and I'm not happy with the way I play it. Anybody have any suggestions?
> WVa Bob
> P.S. I've moved it through all 12 keys and it's  easier to play it in certain other keys, but one needs to be able to play it in the key it was written in, C.

jon kip
http://jonkip.com

player of music, mostly written by dead people and played on a toy that everybody's Uncle except my nephew's has the good sense to keep safely out of sight in a drawer.