The Bud Powell line that pulls you through the changes 🎹

Reader,

Yesterday, while driving to Costco for a hotdog, Spotify shuffled a Bud Powell track onto the truck stereo. As I reached down to my phone to rewind and listen again, I nearly took out a mama duck and her babies crossing the road.

Realizing I was a distracted driver, I pulled into a school parking lot and stopped being an idiot.

We've talked a lot about bebop lines lately. How they're built with scales, arpeggios, and enclosures to pull through the changes.

This might be the perfect line to show you, and I had to take a note.

Satin Doll

Bud Powell - piano
Gilbert Rovere - bass
Kansas Fields - drums

The phrase happens on the B section of Bud's second solo, at 1:43.

Download my transcription: Satin Doll.pdf

Satin Doll is in C major, but it modulates to F here for the B section. The G7 chord highlighted above is the V7, pulling us back to C.

Whatever line we play in this measure has to create gravity back to the home key.

Bud does it with four movements. A big downward gesture, and sticks the landing with an enclosure.

In red: Bud comes up a G9 arpeggio. (That Bb is a half-step decoration, not a chord tone.)
In purple: He comes down chromatically starting a clear downward gesture.
In green: He continues the downward gesture, but switches to a G7 scale, with that Eb (b13) alteration.
In blue: the line wraps up with a classic 4-note enclosure around the G.

Landing on a G seems curious at first. It's the 11th of Dm, which is colorful, but it doesn't anchor the harmony. But remember, this line is creating gravity back to C major. In that key, G is a very strong landing note.

Your Wednesday Woodshed

Here's what to practice this week to learn some of Bud's language:

Take each of the 4 colored segments around the circle of 5ths
Practice bringing them back together, 2 at a time. Eg. red, then purple. Purple, then green. Around the circle of 5ths.
Take this line, exactly as it is, into another song that you know, and see how it fits.