Transcription VI - Steve Grossman "Fancy Free"

In December of 2019 I presented a partial transcription of Dave Liebman’s solo on “Fancy Free” from Elvin Jone’s Live at the Lighthouse. Today I am presenting a partial transcription of Steve Grossman’s solo on the same recording and song. There are many challenges to performing something like this on guitar. Of course, one has to contend with the incredible speed of certain passages. Generally speaking I like to pick as much as I can but to do so in this context I have had to make calculated switches between economy and alternate picking. Some of my favourite moments in Grossman’s solo are the most saxophone-specific—the ‘barked’ low notes which skip up or down an octave, for instance. This can be imitated of course but such effects are incredibly hard to execute on the guitar. You can find a partial transcription of the solo here and watch my performance of it here.

Transcription IV - Dave Liebman "Fancy Free"

People familiar with Elvin Jones’s recording Live at the Lighthouse will know that the performances of Jone’s two saxophone players Dave Liebman and Steve Grossman are, well, insane. Both players maintain feverish intensity throughout unusually long solos—all while articulating what now seems like canonic but what then likely seemed pretty fresh post-trane language. A full transcription is beyond the scope of this blog but you can find about a minute of Liebman’s solo transcribed here and watch my performance of it here.