Red Garland’s 1st chorus of “Almost Like Being in Love“
Red Garland, perhaps best known as the pianist in Miles Davis’ First Great Quintet, is joined by bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor on his 1957 record "Red Garland’s Piano.” I wrote down the changes that Garland implies on “Almost Like Being In Love“ with his left hand, and it is worth noting that the left hand is consistently playing the offbeats of 2 and 4 throughout the entire piece, and the changes are simplified. In the A section, the changes in Eb major the first two measures would typically be Abmajor to Bb7. He instead simplifies it to Fmin7 to Bb7.
One of my favorite moments occur during his voice-leading into the B section. Recently, I have been trying to fit larger pieces of vocabulary into my improvisation, so I have been taking the lick from m. 18-20, and I have been applying it over tunes that go from I, VIIm7, V/VI and then I resolve it to either VIm or VI major if it happens to modulate as it does on “Almost Like Being In Love.“ I also love the upward-moving enclosure-like structure in m. 9 and 10. where he is continually placing non-chord tones on strong beats. It really stands out in a slivering, clever way that contrasts the more standard arpeggios and downward-moving chromatic enclosures elsewhere in the solo.
Overall, it was very beneficial for me to work this out on piano, as I am trying to improve my pianistic abilities in order to connect my ear more to my in-the-moment sense of music analysis. (I am not sure that make sense, haha?) Plus, working on singing and playing this solo apart and along with the recording allowed me to really marinate in the vocabulary due to the fact that I was both working on declarative learning as well as procedural learning. When it comes to composition and practicing, it is really important to constantly change the ways in which we approach learning and especially deep memorization.
You can watch my performance of the transcription on youtube, but let me know in the comments below the transcription how your process of learning and memorization works and or your thoughts on Red Garland?
