“Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise”
,George Gershwin

The solo piano video shown here is posted by a guy who calls himself the improvisor, and he sure knows how to improvise.

Here’s his solo piano salsa version of On Green Dolphin Street

And here’s my transcription of the first few minutes of this video.

Green-Dolphin-Street-Piano-Salsa-transcription-pdf

It would be interesting to see how the improvisor orchestrated a whole salsa version of this jazz standard with just a piano.

The typical piano guaje in a salsa montuno would look something like this

In the video, we can see the first few bars of the left hand is a repeating pattern of this

Notice how the rhythmic placements of the notes closely imitates the salsa piano guaje shown earlier?

In the later part of the transcription, we observe the right hand took over this rhythmic role.

The left hand now imitates the basic bass pattern of a salsa montuno, which would look something like this

Two thumbs up for the improvisor on his playing in this video!!

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