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The Trip

Composer Art Pepper    (click to list other tunes)
Submitted by David Luebbert
Posted 11/1/06; 1:35:34 AM
Msg# 5026 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next 5025/5027
Reads 3603


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Chord changes for The Trip by Art Pepper.

 The form of this is very long and involved although the harmony is static and repetitive except for one section of the form. It begins with an eight bar vamp introduction. Each repetition of the main form consists of 5 sections of 16 bars in a A B A C A pattern with the introductory 8 bar vamp inserted at the end.

The A and B sections consist of eight repetions of a two bar vamp, with the last bar of the eighth repetition altered to lead into the harmony of the next section. Very static harmony during these sections.

The C section is harmonically active and consists with two exceptions of two bar ii-V patterns that shift down by half step as each two bar unit ends.

The 8 bar vamp just is four reps of the two bar vamp used in section A. Usually only the rhythm section plays during this vamp to set the mood for the story the soloist is going to tell. Towards the end of Pepper's performance,  the band abandons the form and repeats the vamp 10 times while Pepper improvises. 

I haven't included this loop on the vamp in this rendition of the changes.

Art Pepper served time in San Quentin prison. In the liner notes for his album The Trip which introduced this tune, he said that when he was incarcerated the prisoners would walk up to someone who was a good storyteller and ask him to "take them on a trip".

A trip was an imaginative retelling of some incident in the storyteller's life that the other prisoners could vicariously experience by intently listening along.

Here's a video clip by Art's wife, Laurie, which uses a live performance of The Trip as it's background music.

Page 1 and Page 2 of the score for this progresssion.

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Last update: Wednesday, November 1, 2006 at 3:17 AM.