Jazz Solo Transcription of On Green Dolphin Street

Learn how to improvise a solo over Jazz Standard On Green Dolphin Street, with transcription, video and brief analysis.
This is the solo piano video of the jazz standard posted by theimprovisor. The transcription I’ve prepared for this post is from 01m45s until 02m56s of the video

Here’s my transcription in PDF format.

On-Green-Dolphin-Street-Jazz-solo-transcription-pdf

The left hand part is basically spreading out chord tones in this two types of rhythmic figure

Thus helping to maintain a salsa feel throughout the solo.

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Sliding to the 3rd and 5th note of the key, from the note one semitone below, would produce a bluesy feel

This is the technique applied in these two bars of the transcription

The chords are evidently the ii-V-I of the C major key. Refering to the degree of scale in this key, the 3rd and 5th note would be E and G. Thus,

• The D# is used to slide to E
• The F# is used to slide to G

When applied, we immediately hear a bluesy kind of feel to the solo lines in these two bars.

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The D/C and Db/C chords are actually treated as D7/C and Dbmaj7/C respectively, which requires the use of different scales to solo over. Here’s a sample of a solo line over these two chords found in the transcription

• The half diminished scale is used over the D7/C chord
• The Db lydian scale is used over the Dbmaj7/C chord

Hope you find this transcription and analysis educational. Feel free to drop comment on any further enquiries.
Have fun and Enjoy… 🙂 

Check out also the transcription of the starting few minutes of this video in this post :

Learn to play On Green Dolphin Street in Salsa, with video, transcription and analysis

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