Transcription of Chick Corea’s Solo on Got A Match

“Got A Match” is a very catchy bebop style composition by the great Chick Corea. I stumbled upon a video of it on youtube, with Chick doing a solo that’s totally out of this world. Here’s the video:
 

Here’s the free transcription in PDF format

Transcription-of-chick-corea-solo-on-got-a-match

The transcription is from 0m35s to 2m30s of the video.

One of the wonderful part of this solo is how Chick Corea broke away from the straightforward 2-5-1 harmony, thinking horizontally instead of vertically, and improvising way out of the context.

Harmonic Forward Motion

One of the skills seen quite often here is the application of harmonic forward motion, some prefer to call it rhythmic displacement, or playing over the bar lines.

We can see here, how the line which was obviously meant for the Em7 and A7 chord of bar 51, was extended into bar 52. It wouldn’t make much sense analyzing it vertically

The same can be seen here in bar 88.

The last few notes don’t seem to coincide with the respective chord, they are actually shifted forward from bar 89.

Chromatic Turn

There’s a particular ornament used quite frequently by Chick Corea, and can be seen here in bars 33 and 45.

It is easily applicable, consisting of four eight notes, and targeting the same note it starts with. The chromatic nature of it adds a little bit of flavour to your improvisation.

Whole Tone Scale

Observe the cutout from the transcription as shown below.

It can be seen here a scale that closely resembles the whole tone scale is applied. This would be interesting for the ears of a listener who’s expecting a D dorian or D melodic minor scale over the Dm7 chord. 

Have fun and enjoy..