Booked In
What is it with bass books at the moment? There’s loads of them coming out. Two more essential reads are on the way, the first from Ron Carter and titled Chartography—Reinvented Transcriptions. It includes five of his performances of the jazz standard ‘Autumn Leaves’ with the Miles Davis Quartet from 1963 to ’67. The maestro explains the concept with the words: “This is the first book that explains all the factors that go into what has made the greatest bass-lines in history so great. And that is context... By looking at how a bass-line evolved over multiple choruses and performances, you will understand that a onechorus transcription cannot help a bass player find out how that bass-line was actually built, much less how to write one like it himself.”