| Don't Get Sassy | by Christiaan 'Niliov' van Hemert | ||||
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The second transcription in our "Transcription-of-the-Week-Series" is another piano-arrangement of the Ray Brown Trio. These pages are not exclusively for transcriptions of Ray Brown piano-arrangements, but this one was just too good to pass by. The transcription is from the title track of their CD "Don't Get Sassy". If you want to learn what "swing" is. Buy the CD, listen to the first track, practice my transcription and play it with your own trio!! Let's start with the intro followed by the theme:  The intro immediately leads the trio in the right groove and prepares the audience for some real "swinging". The theme is played in block chords. It sounds like a section of a bigband: great stuff!!! Watch your fingerings! The Interlude (also used as outtro):  Wow!! Is this great or what!! Listen for the fills of Jeff Hamilton: simple but effective and swinging. Ray Brown's "Hey!!" adds to the excitement of the solobreak. When you play this take care of dynamics. I didn't write them in the transcription, but you can hear them on the record. Special 1:  Block chords again. Difficult if you don't have any experience with playing them, but practice makes perfect! Also listen how Benny Green gets into the special; this is just as important as the special itself: the audience needs to be "prepared" for the special. A proper builld-up is a must. Special 2 (also used as finale interlude):  This is just a shouting bigband special. Listen to the record for the right feel. A very important aspect of all transcriptions played by Benny Green is the use of "slides". I didn't write them in the transcriptions, but he uses them with great frequency. The use of slides gives you a more "fat" "dirty" sound, which you need in this style.
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