How High The Ornithology by Gord Sellar

My take on How High the Moon and Charlie Parker's contrafact of the tune, "Ornithology." A contrafact is really just using the chords from one tune and adding a new melody to make it your own tune. (Sometimes the changes are altered, but usually not much. With How High the Moon and Ornithology, you can get away with using the same changes.)

I even throw in (a somewhat haphazard attempt at) Bird's most famous solo (the one in the Charlie Parker Omnibook) between How High the Moon, played in a more swing style, and my solo on Parker's contrafact, played in a more modern, post-bop style.

And yeah, I cheated by "punching in" when I started the first statement of the head on Ornithology. It was a tough transition... sue me!

More about contrafacts over at NPR, where they discuss "Koko" (a contrafact of "Cherokee").