Here’s a pretty-close-to-finished mix of my song Lift Off. It’s the fifth of six songs on my forthcoming computer jazz album, and the most straight-ahead bebop number of the bunch.
https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/LiftOff50.mp3
This song was originally developed for my pre-pandemic jazz group as a vehicle for some uptempo tenor sax shredding, inspired in part by John Coltrane’s Countdown and Steely Dan’s Bodhisattva. The changes are in the mode of standards like Have You Met Miss Jones? and A Foggy Day, but with a half-step modulation inside the ii-V’s, a streamlined version of the Giant Steps trick (i.e. ii-bii-bVi-V). It’s pretty challenging to solo over, but even with the constant modulation and implied dissonance, it’s pretty smooth to listen to.
Like other songs that I’ve previously played live, it’s hard to completely unwind the arrangement, so the live version was used as a starting point. It’s a tenor sax backed by a rhythm section of piano bass and drums. I introduced an organ in lieu of a guitar, and then the organ is sometimes doubled by a synth for emphasis.
There’s actually two bass parts. One is a bass guitar played fairly softly and EQ’d with much of the middle scooped out to make is sound more jazzier. The other is a synth bass, and the patch is layered with an organ to suggest the organ player is doing it with his left hand (which is actually true, I guess). They double for much of the song, but in the solos when it goes to a walking quarter note pattern the bass guitar just outlines the chords, and the synth takes over. I can’t walk on those changes on a bass guitar at 200 bpm!
I put alot of effort into the dynamics and the drums to make it swing. I’m using mainly sequenced drums here, again because of my limitations playing jazz drums at that tempo and doing it justice. So something resembling human feel and interaction was important. Alot of the song is carried on just the ride cymbal and hi-hat with the snare and kick drum doing accents. I practiced and developed a few patterns out of the bebop drumming book to really get what I wanted to program.
There’s a section where drums and sax are trading fours. I tried a few different ideas for this. I was inspired by Mahavishnu orchestra and their vocalized drum solos, and went with something kinda like that, but doubled on snare and toms and with a heavy flange effect. I think it sound cool and works pretty well.