Why "Passing Moments"?   

It's truly what it is.   I spend a lot of my playing time meandering through Joe Pass versions of classic pieces.  They're full of great phrases, chord sequences and little runs, and it's very pleasing to play them with a little freedom and re-imagining.   And when playing arrangements of pieces from other guitarists, I find myself dropping in the odd moment or two from a Pass version.

What I've done with this collection is to take some of the transcriptions of his performances and play them in a way that hopefully adds some variation and interest.

I see so many internet videos of young guitarists especially, using the same transcriptions and playing them note for note.  This is great for showing us you can learn the pieces and have the movements in your fingers, but in the end adds nothing as a performance.  I'd encourage them all to take the pieces, quote Pass' best phrases and passages (after all, they were exceptional) and then vary them and add your own ideas and feeling into a re-imagined performance.  You're not only showing how good an understanding of Pass you have, but also  you're presenting your own feel for the songs and therefore why you deserve an audience as well.

After all, Pass never wrote down an arrangement in order to repeat it note for note every time he played it.  He never played the same piece the same way twice, in his life.  He took a lead sheet, set a structure, worked out some great phrasing and used it all as a basic arrangement to underpin his next performance of a piece, knowing he'd  improvise the overall song around those underlying parts to produce a unique and special performance.

So, on reading transcriptions of his arrangements, I'll start to play. sometimes going off in tangents, sometimes losing my place and just continuing until it felt right to rejoin the basic arrangement, sometimes absolutely playing just what Joe Pass played himself.  These pieces here  are snapshots of such meanderings.



Thanks go to those that produced the freely available transcriptions, to all the kids playing them through, and those that take this further and perform standards and  help keep alive great musical traditions and the beauty of Jazz Guitar.