Two of my friends, Peter Schlamb and Matt Villinger, mentioned working on Blues for Alice by Charlie Parker during Covid. They’ve been playing it through the keys, one key per week, really trying to get it down. I thought I’d work on it too at home and started by transcribing the original version. I was not that surprised to discover that all the versions I could find written out, both in the fake books and in the Omni book, have the melody written wrong in several places. Since I learned it originally in high school from the Omni book, I had internalized it wrong. When I transcribed it a few weeks ago, I slowed it way down just to double check every note that Bird played. What Parker wrote is actually far more sophisticated, interesting and detailed with stronger voice leading than the multitude of misrepresented versions.
If you know the song, you’ll probably realize you learned it wrong as well, or, maybe not, if you transcribed it yourself. Most recordings other than Bird’s embrace the mistakes of the fake books and Omni book. A few of the things I discovered: Bar 2 has no chromatic passing tone, bar 8 has the 5th (Eb) on the Ab-7 as the lowest note. Bar 8 has the 5th (D) on the G-7 as the lowest note. The biggest issues by far are the last two bars; the correct Major 7 (E) on the F major and the 5th (D) on the G-7. The resulting melody, as Bird played it, is much more beautiful and well crafted.
In any case, the way I’ve been learning the song over again and playing it through the keys, is first by singing it really well in one key. I’ve spend 3 weeks now singing it every day many, many times and I can finally sing it in tune without going flat over the course of one chorus. For me, this is actually a really hard line to sing in tune, partially due to all the chromatic harmonic motion which makes it easy to start going flat over time if you don’t have perfect pitch!
Now, having learned to sing the melody first, it has made it pretty easy to play it through the keys, at least slowly. I’m hearing every note ahead of time so I’m essentially playing the song by ear, which makes it pretty close to just singing through the horn. The speed in my hands (muscle memory) will come organically in time, so I’m just playing through the line once or twice in each key per day.
Below is exactly how I learned to sing it. I used the midi mp3s I made to sing along with until it was deeply ingrained and than I started to sing it voice alone while imagining the fingerings in each key. 2 of the mp3s have chords one is just over a drone of the key center. I find both these methods helpful. I put these tracks in my phone and kept them going in my ears throughout the day while working out, cleaning etc. and sang along to them.
If you’ve not tried this method of learning a tune, I highly recommend it. Often times we think we can hear or sing a be-bop head and after closer inspection we realize we’re far from hearing it. I call this approach, “getting the message” from the tune. Alternatively, you could just sing it along with Bird – IF you can slow it down and really get each pitch to lock in and resonate.
~Enjoy!
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