Dolphin Dance - Herbie Hancock tune

Dolphin Dance - Herbie Hancock tune



This Hancock tune is usually played in a restrained, laid back style, i.e. with a "west coast cool jazz" feel. The brilliant and unusual chord changes give this piece a floating feeling that does away with the usual dynamic arcs of tension and resolution found in more traditional "I-VI-II-V-I" type jazz compositions. In order to make it sound a little bit different, I decided to play it slightly uptempo and to play the changes as if it called for the same dynamic rise and fall of more traditional tunes, even when that is not what the chords changes are calling for, at least from my perspective. Something else I try to do in order to switch it up a bit is to vary my comping between light and dense voicings. I play two or three notes that imply a chord without explicitly stating it, or I try to go really dense, with lots of color tones to obscure the underlying chord. That is pretty much what I was thinking when I played this piece.