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Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  1/16/04; 10:51:04 AM Topic:  Night Dreamer Msg#:  4096 (in response to 4095) Prev/Next:  4095/4097 Reads:  2013

Graham,

   You're correct. I hear the F bass note as you do.

   The source of my original Night Dreamer arrangement was volume 1 of the Berklee Real Book which incorrectly reported the second chord as Bb7. It also correctly reported the third chord as EbMA7 while I inexplicably used Eb7 throughout.

Now that you've notified me of  the problem, I've consulted the other sources of Night Dreamer scores that I've acquired since I did the original incorrect arrangement (Chuck Sher Real Book Vol. 2; the Jamey Aebersold Wayne Shorter Vol 33, and the Artist Transcription Saxophone: Wayne Shorter).

The Artist Transciption volume which includes Wayne's entire the main melody plus Wayne's entire solo reports the four chord cell that repeats through most of the piece as GMA9 Fmi7  EbMA9 Daug9.

Aebersold's version is  GMA7 Fmi EbMA7 D7(#9).

The Sher volume uses GMA7 Fmi7 EbMA7 D7(#5#9)

The first three chords of the Artists Transcription sound pretty close, but the Fmi7 seems a bit discontinuous because of the shift from 5 note to four note to five note chord. Your Fmi9 fills in the sound and better approximates what I hear McCoy Tyner doing in the performance. Substituting Fmi11 seems to also fill the bill.

 The Daug9 from the Artists Transcription version (which I interpret as D F# A# E) seems sour and incorrect.. The E implied by the 9th extension seems to be the incorrect note,  since D Aug without extension seems to fit with the melody and solo but seems like it is missing a note.

It suprises me that this version sounds so wrong, since Shorter apparently reviewed the transcription. There is a short interview with Shorter explaining what the tune is about before every transcription.

The D7(#5#9) from the Sher version seems to match Tyner's performance the best of all of the proposals. Using the Artists Transcription naming scheme this would be a Daug(#9), meaning the note that I felt was missing above D aug was the #9.

To my ears, a hybrid of all of these suggestions best fits the original Blue Note performance. I'll will be revising my arrangement to use GMA9 Fmi9 EbMA9 D7(#9#13) throughout.

I am using the SongTrellis Editor's D7(#9#13) as a synonym for the D7(#5#9) used in Sher.

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