Dave Holland – Bass

Another monster Holland chart – 11 pages in all (the tune is 9:18 long). I did a rehearsal recently with a couple of guys locally and the piano player, whose name, by a strange quirk of fate, is actually Dave Holland, pulled out three Dave Holland charts (no he didn’t try to pass them off as his own), ‘Herbaceous’, ‘Mr. B.’ and this one. Having been given the chords, I had to didn’t I? In progressing the transcription, I had a moment of humility as I began without referring to the chart and flounced off transcribing in as a 4:4 bar followed by a 6:4 bar. It was only when I was half way thought that I started to hear that something was amiss and, checking the dots I had been given, I realised that the whole chart was the other way around; a bar of 6:4 followed by a bar of 4:4. In a moment of inspiration, I kept going and completed the transcription the wrong way around and then, when I had completed it, I ‘cut and pasted’ the whole thing and move everything only by one bar so it turned around the right way. Genius – only it didn’t work. The ‘fixed’ transcription did not line up properly and I realised that I had ‘lost’ a few beats in the bass solo. After much agonising, I realised that I had actually GAINED a few beats somehow. It took a while but I found the problem and then had to revisit the whole chart to redo ties on notes that fitted the 4:4/6:4 version but messed up the 6:4/4:$ version. And you think this is easy!

Anyway, here it is. From the 1998 Quintet album ‘Points Of View’, this is the complete Dave Holland performance of ‘The Balance’. The hardest part is the harmonics in the opening section whilst simultaneously dealing with the counting at what is a slightly choppy tempo. Otherwise, easy as pie!