2/2/12 was a warm February evening in Decatur as witnessed by The Adrian Ash Group + Hip Custom Transcriptions of 3 Classic Pop Tunes

Java Monkey's wine tasting rolled around again - this time it was Big Ass Reds.  When it's that evocative of a theme, I have to relay it to ya.  To support the occasion, TAAG showed up and plays some jazz music.  Got to be proud of this little combo.  We have a nice sized songbook from which to draw many styles of fun music for just about any occasion.  We played through a number of songs that we will be featuring on Valentine's Day, namely, romantic and popular (ie pop) tunes.  We pulled out In Your Eyes, Knocks Me Off My Feet, My Cherie Amour, Just the Two of Us, Blue Monk (well, we have a Thelonious Monk tribute night coming up later this month as well), and Overjoyed.  Yes, that was 3 Stevie Wonder tunes.  It all sounded good.  I had been dealing with the fact that another band I play with regularly has since booked a Valentine's Day show at Fernbank.  I did the noble and expected thing and let the leader know and then called a sub.  It all worked out, but I wish those conflicts just wouldn't happen to me.  I've had too many already this year so far.  I guess that means I'm getting more busy, but here is another weekend where I have nothing going on.

[ed. update 2/4/12  Spoke with said leader and things have worked out in my favour for 3/17/12 (ie St. Patrick's Day) where I can play the 2 earlier shows with RWD and then scurry over to the Stone Mountain area for an evening show with the other band.  Yes!  Sometimes things do work out.  I am not superstitious but fate and karma play a huge part in this juggling of schedules.  If I do the right thing on 1 gig, it will pay off on another.  A case in point was my recent ploy with MartaY, and it backfired.  How was I to know that the benefit job I was trying to keep would be postponed?  You never know - that's the point.  Best to keep what you agreed on before trying to scoop up the better paying gig that comes along after the fact.]

Now, where were we... oh yes.

Getting down to business, I brought the old upright for this evening, as I am hoping to use it on VD.  I hadn't played it in a while.  I guess I sounded that way.  To be honest, I wish I had recorded last night.  I think there were some good moments when my intonation was on, my attack was strong, and I managed some rather melodic motifs manifesting from my muscle memory.  Mmm.  I had the compressor up on my Fishman Platinum Pro EQ, always striving for that old Stanley Clarke tone, perhaps settling for that Christian McBride sound, maybe just lucky to have that Paul Chambers thump.  I learned that the real culprit frequency is the 2nd from the left on the graphic eq, labeled low-mid but centered near 200 Hz.  The think the real frequency is higher, perhaps 400 or so, but not as high as the mid 1-1.25 kHz range.  Will try to get better with that control, as I hate rolling off critical low mids ona upright as that thins out the tone so much.  I was trying to be more aggressive with the playing of it.  Upright bass is certainly a physical instrument and not a delicate one in the least.  Nobody wants you to baby it.  They want to hear the string vibrate against the fingerboard and growl like a protective pitbull.  I was in that mindset, if I wasn't entirely successful in the delivery.

As you can see here, we had some musical guests come by.  The guitarist broke out his Ibenez and astounded us all with a brilliant rendition of Darn That Dream, which I hadn't played in many, many years.  How do I know the words to it?  Do I even have a recording of it?  I had my Real Book, I took a deep breath, and away we went.  Nice song, and he played great.  I was the only other soloist, so I felt obliged to jump in for a chorus.  It wasn't a great fit, or a happy ending(!), but we got through it nonetheless.  The bassist who strolled in with him wisely chose to sit it out.  I guess when jazzers see an upright bass, they assume I'm going to know a lot of tunes and be able to put my Patitucci licks out front and center.  Little do they know...  I may contact my buddy Charlie for a mid-week tutorial lesson on thumb position starters.  I need some help!

Here are some of the charts we read down, recently completed by Guy & myself.  True labors of love!
Charts for In Your Eyes, Knocks Me Off My Feet, & Just the Two of Us, along with transposed charts for Bb Tenor Saxophone or like-minded instruments.