Lucas Brar on Ted Greene.

This needs a bookmark too. After being so impressed yesterday with Lucas Brar’s rendition of “Take Five”, my click-stream wound up referencing Lenny Breau, and then Ted Greene, and that reminded me of an absolutely brilliant clip of Greene demonstrating improvisation in the style of Bach, which I saw years ago and figured I should probably bookmark here as a resource.

What’s funny is that I then saw a reference to that very session, along with a little analysis…from Lucas Brar.

Brar’s analysis is truly excellent, I think, and his demonstration is inspiring. Happy to give that its own bookmark.

And also, I can now close the loop on what I remember from the legendary Greene himself. Turns out there’s an entire YouTube channel called TedGreeneArchives, and on that channel there is a playlist to the five-part series called Baroque Improv:

There is so much to unpack there…holy cow. And watching Greene work, in this context, reminds me of watching Oscar Peterson demonstrate his ideas, on a different instrument perhaps (piano), but very much in the same way. Clearly, here, there is a synchronicity of knowledge, skill, intelligence, presence, and availability to the muse, that seems to suggest the word genius.

Anyway, it is now bookmarked, and I’m happy to have it here.

‘Take Five’ for solo guitar…daang.

Lucas Brar for the win today. I’ve long loved the Paul Desmond classic “Take Five” made internationally famous by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and have even studied the score a bit. Today I ran across Lucas Brar’s treatment of the tune for solo acoustic guitar, and…

uh

Hard to take in all the awesome of that, in one sitting. His phrasing is glorious, and I’ve studied enough of the score to recognize that most of the sax solo part is bloody note-perfect. (For me that is one of the most perfect solo breaks I have ever heard–unbelievably lovely from Desmond’s alto sax, and I’d be hard pressed to imagine it being better translated to guitar than Brar manages here, plus a flash or two of his own devise. Wow!)

I nearly spit my coffee when I realized he was also incorporating the rather famous-unto-itself Joe Morello drum solo (in 1959, even in jazz, anything in 5/4 time was pretty unusual–going to the point of the album as a whole–and an effective drum improvisation within that framework stood out even within that context); I haven’t studied that part nearly as extensively as the sax solo, but I think Brar does brilliantly at bringing out all the identifying signatures of what made Morello’s break so distinctive. Truly, amazing.

And I’ve never really even considered trying to arrange it for solo guitar. At one point I could play almost the entire sax solo part by itself, but certainly not along with the comping chords. I might guess that it would be harder to do in my tuning (Guitar Craft standard tuning, C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4) than in standard–intervals are spread out further–but I haven’t tried it before.

Seeing something like this, though–something like this done this bloody well–makes me want to try it. Thank you, Lucas Brar, for the inspiration!