Felipe Gianei: Charlie Parker’s “Cherokee” Solo on Bass

We can learn a lot about our instrument by transcribing other instrumentalists, and Charlie Parker’s recordings are a lifetime of lessons. Bassist Felipe Gianei spent four months transcribing Bird’s solo on “Cherokee” and applying it to bass.

“[The] first time I listened to this recording of Cherokee I thought, ‘Man, I want to know what he’s doing here, I wanna be able to play these cool jazz phrases,'” Gianei shared. “But after listening to this solo almost everyday for the past 4 months I realized how amazing his playing is… it’s incredible! So I started to transcribe. It was really hard to understand some phrases with all his articulation and also because of the old recording. It was hard for me to play those difficult Parker phrases at his tempo, so [I had to] build and re-build the tempo about three times, from really slow to his tempo. I want to make it my own, absorb the phrases I most like and try to take the best of it.”

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  1. Adam Mallett

    Absolutely fantastic! Definitely want to hear more.

    • Felipe Gianei

      Thank you Adam! Stay tuned to my channel and Facebook..

  2. wow! What an accomplishment. That was awesome!

  3. This was great and its amazing how styles change from Country to Country, all that matters is it sounds terrific and very much accomplishment.

  4. Care to share the transcription? I’d love to learn some more phrasing and things!

    • Felipe Gianei

      Man, I do all transcriptions on my notebook. But you can find it on the internet. If you want, I can sent to you

  5. Mike Matthews

    Bravo – Well done!!!

  6. Steve Rosati

    Awesome!!!

  7. GIGI HERRERA

    amazing!!!

  8. thicker strings

    Very, very impressive

  9. Ed Dietrich

    Great job! Would love to have the transcription.

  10. Steevo

    Superb playing that man!

  11. Ced

    Well done man. That is some serious shedding and will pay off for years to come.

  12. Chris Rosset

    wow, great job on this Felipe