Ryan Devlin Boston Rhythm Changes

Here's a quickie post: This is my transcription of an Instagram post by saxophonist Ryan Devlin, and it looks like a chorus of rhythm changes, maybe in a hotel room. Excellent bop vocabulary!

March

March was pretty quiet. I played a couple of weddings, made a few videos. It feels like things are moving in the right direction, though.

On the first Saturday of March, I played a wedding reception at the Atlanta History Center. It was kind of a pick up jazz sextet with a vocalist, playing standards in really distant keys to accommodate her range. In spite of that (and being unfamiliar with most of the musicians), the fun of winging it made the night fairly enjoyable.

I wore a mask for this (pretty much the only way I was willing to play indoors with a hundred and fifty strangers!). Having to open the flap to insert the mouthpiece was a little bit of a hassle, but it was so much fun to play a gig! 

After about an hour and a half, we handed the room off to the DJ and split. Home by 10 PM. Love it!

A few weeks later, I was invited to play in a jazz duo in Decatur for a wedding--this one was for the ceremony and the cocktail hour.

Similarly, this one came together at the last minute, and I was paired with a musician that I'd never met. Our only specific request was to play Etta James' At Last as the bridesmaids came in, and then to accompany two vocalists who would sing At Last as the bride came in. It seemed so easy!

The coordinator came by at one point to say that it was almost time; maybe she told us to go (she spoke to the pianist, not me). Anyway, we started into At Last as an instrumental. I played the melody all the way through; no bridesmaids. I soloed over the form; no bridesmaids. I soloed over the form again, then played the melody again; still no bridesmaids. Piano solo! Still no bridesmaids. One of the vocalists arrived, and inexplicably, started singing! He sang a few lines, then stopped, so I took up the melody again. People are looking at us like we're crazy. I finished the melody, and the vocalist started AGAIN and then bailed out AGAIN! We finished out the form of the song for him. Finally, the bridesmaids began to enter, so we played the whole song a few more times, and the vocalist tried to jump in a few more times, and we were able to safely land the thing (somebody in the crowd actually said "One more time!" after we stopped!). Soooooo, then we started it all up AGAIN for the bride; I played the string part of the intro, the vocalists started singing...and no bride! (the pianist turned to me and said "Maybe she got cold feet!") All the way through the song with the doors to the room closed; we went into a solo, and finally the doors opened, bride entered, we handed the song back to the vocalists...whew!

After the ceremony, we made our way downstairs to the lobby for an hour of cocktail jazz while the upstairs room was converted for the reception. Our duo was parked right next to the bar in a marble lobby; needless to say, it was a pretty raucous, with everybody in the room shouting over the duo and each other, and the two us trying to play loud enough to hear ourselves. Nobody wins! It was nice to play some tunes with another human, though. Home by 9 PM!

That's it for gigs. I do miss the unscripted chaos!

In other news, I've continued to put out short music video projects. 

Change of Scene was a song written by Greg Lee, and recorded by the Yacht Rock Revue for our most recent album. This video demonstrated the sax section thing that I wrote.

Work to Do was a horn arrangement that I recorded for an upcoming Ladies of Soul livetream. It's the Average White Band horn parts over the Isley Brothers version.

There's something about the polyrhythm of playing two against three, and the genesis of this song was the duple rhythm of the baseline within this waltz. This song still doesn't have a name.

Somebody in college showed me the Telemann canonic flute sonatas, which are amazing duets because there's only one part (much like Row, Row, Row Your Boat) and the second guy starts a measure after the first guy. All these split screen performance videos reminded me of how easy it would be to play a duet with myself.

My friend Troy Bieser wrote and recorded his song Tell Me, and invited me to add a sax solo. I always envision myself playing something soulful and also wildly virtuosic, and then when it's time to record, I choke and end up playing safe, almost mundane ideas. Hopefully I'm chipping away at that, though, and will one day be confident about really going for it when I'm at the microphone. 

And yes, the video idea came from an old Hank Mobley album cover!