New Orleans Trad Jazz / Spiritual Tuba Parts

[motteatoj]

Hi all,

I am looking for sheet music for any and all tuba parts for typical NOLA trad jazz or second line spiritual parts.
Does any exist?
Can I just search for bass line parts?

J

[David Richoux]

The best way to do this is to find simple lead sheets (melody with chords) and then listen to recordings of a few NOLA brass bands - Olympia is probably most traditional but there are several other "old school" bands on record - while you follow along.

The few transcriptions I have seen are usually too simplified, but the traditional bass parts for most of these songs are not too difficult to pick out.

For other old jazz songs from New Orleans (and beyond) you could look for the Firehouse 5 +2 fakebook or the Lu Watters chart set. The Firehouse book does not spell out the bass part but the Watters charts do. There are several other traditional jazz fakebooks around that have hundreds of tunes that are often played.

[alloybrass]

If you noodle around on the Tulane University website, you'll find a treasure trove of early jazz PDFs. Most of what I found are piano scores, but some were published with chord changes. There are a couple of different special collections, all with a lot to look through.

http://library.tulane.edu/collections/spec_collections" target="_blank

[David Richoux]

By the way, the Firehouse 5+2 book is available as a PDF download if you do a little searching of the internets.

[alloybrass]

Firehouse PDF is here:

https://archive.org/details/fakebook_th ... -fake-book" target="_blank

[David Richoux]

Another important thing about sheet music for this kind of music - any music you find should be considered just a guide. reference, or starting point! There are very few NOLA songs with a "locked in" bass line. There may be some sort of introductory riffs that all the bands do, but after that you should get comfortable with improvising on the basic chord line. Listening to local bands, old and new, is very important.

( Several times I have played with old-time New Orleans musicians I have gotten a few comments - good and bad - about some of the notes I chose to play. Many of them knew about the San Francisco/West Coast revival of Turk Murphy, Lu Watters and many others, and they knew I was from California, but they didn't necessarily agree with some of the transcriptions of their traditional repertoire. )

[trnewcomb]

[quote="David Richoux"]Another important thing about sheet music for this kind of music - any music you find should be considered just a guide. reference, or starting point! [/quote]

Bingo - Dave as usual nails it. Trad jazz in general and NOLA jazz in particular is very much a 'feel'-based style. Every band I've heard does things slightly differently. There are some bands that are highly structured and who do specific and sometimes highly challenging arrangements. But most bands have their own style which is a conglomeration of everyone playing and listening to everyone else. That's the key. You as the bass need to meld well with the band, while simultaneously providing a rock-solid foundation. I tend to listen to records/CDs/YouTube videos/etc. YouTube in particular is a fantastic resource. I use the fake books for the basic chords when I am not overly familiar with a tune (or when I'm subbing and I don't know what the leader might call), but once I know the tune, the book goes away and the baseline is built on what the band is doing. Paying close attention to the drums is also good - sometimes he will initiate a particular beat and you need to fall in with it.