midnight tango bass solo

So I was thinking this morning that I've never done a bass transcription here. I remembered that there was a short, cool one in DiMeola's "Midnight Tango" (from the most excellent cd Elegant Gypsy) played by Anthony Jackson, so here it is. The solo starts at 3:52. Though short it's very interesting -- click on the gif to get a bigger image.

There are a number of things worth mentioning here:

1. The first motive (rhythmically 2 eighth notes to a long note, melodically a double stop of a perfect fourth that jumps up a 3rd and comes back a 2nd) is unifying but falls on different beats in the first 2 measures. It comes back on the 2nd beat in the 3rd measure but is varied.

2. The descending leap of a P4 in measure 5 is echoed but varied slightly in measure 7 (on the same chord).

3. Nice pedal point on C in measure 5.

4. The rhythmic motive of 16th triplets with 2 (non-triplet) 16ths in measure 4 is used again in measure 6.

5. Tonally measure 6 is a little surprising because rather than playing a form of A major over the E major chord he plays the parallel major, i.e. he opts for E mixolydian.

6. Overall the solo moves from longer note values to more florid ones (a well-used technique of composers going back at least to the Renaissance if not earlier).

Of course all of the above points are good food for thought, but in no way are they meant to be taken as the only interesting points. Actually the one main point (if you will) is the emotive content of the solo. The details we've pointed out are good for us a improvisers -- they may make us think and become more creative -- but their real use is in attempting to find correspondences between them and the emotive effect that they produce.

Also if you're interested I transcribed Al's solo (sequentially right after the bass solo in this tune) years ago. I was a sweep picking fanatic back then, so be warned: I did re-finger it slightly to bring it into my world view. I wouldn't actually play it the same way these days.