Reginald Veal – Bass

I am really proud of this one but it comes with a health warning.

This is my interpretation of the complete Reginald Veal bass performance of the Gershwin tune ‘Embraceable You’ recorded live at Dizzy’s Club in New York on December 27th 2013. The performance was captured on video so the transcription is from that video (attached) and not from a recording. The bass part is so profound, you have no idea! I struggled to see hoe best to write things down as Veal plays in absolutely straight sometimes and then kind of hints at double time without ever committing to it. The normal conventions of ‘triplet quavers’ doesn’t work so I ended up with single notes divided into sextuplets/double triplets with the first three of the two triplets as a dotted quaver/8th note tied to the fourth and fifth as a quaver/8th note so that I could indicate the sixth note of the double triplet accurately. He then plays some of the triplet quavers as triplets and some straight. It make for a beautiful and fascinating performance but a nightmare to get down on ‘paper’.

Anyway, it’s mostly playable as the tempo is so lugubrious but hugely useful as a way of gaining insight into the ways in which Veal approaches his ballad playing. This is what musicians do when they get over the thousand notes a minute indulgences of adolescence (which seems to be following people into their 40s and 50s nowadays). Genuinely deep stuff.

The bass comes in at around the 2:30 mark but you’d be an idiot not to listen to Marsalis’s opening head.