“Take Five,” was the first instrumental in jazz history to sale more than one-million copies. This album and song made many people become interested in jazz music. A lot of these new jazz listeners were young adults who were still in college (Brubeck Biography). “Take Five” was different than some jazz at the time because it was written in a somewhat unusual time, which was 5/4. Dave Brubeck got the idea to use these unusual times when he first saw Turkish street musicians playing songs in the time of 9/8. Dave experimented with many different types of exotic sounds in jazz after this. Another important piece was “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” This piece was also featured on the album Time Out with the song “Take Five” (Brubeck Biography). This song also included exotic sounds, an unusual time, and some influences from blues. “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” were both widely imitated as they were both very popular. It was covered by many different artists (Brubeck Biography). Dave Brubeck also had a song called, “In Your Own Sweet Way.” Brubeck described this tune as, “the first original tune that he has written in years” (Jazz Standards). Another reason he wrote it was because one of his friends and group mates, Paul Desmond, said, “We really need new, original material. We are just playing all the standards” (Jazz Standards). Brubeck said that he wrote this song and …show more content…
As mentioned before, this song was written in an unusual meter which is 5/4. The song starts out with just the piano, bass, and drums playing for a few seconds before the saxophone comes in. When the sax begins to play, he plays a very nice, catchy phrase. I feel that this saxophone solo had a very nice range of pitches in it. Throughout some of the song, the bass, piano, and drums are all playing the same thing which very little drums, but the sax player, Paul Desmond, improvises a lot of what he plays. he begins improvising around one minute into the song. About three minutes and 15 seconds into this song the piano player, Dave Brubeck, starts to improvise what he plays after the end of Paul’s sax solo. The piano solo was very dense, it had a lot of notes in it. Like the sax solo, I feel that it also had a very good range of pitches in it. The piano solo lasts for a little over a minute before the band final returns to the very first phrase that they played at the beginning of the song. One thing I really like about this song is the fact that is uses an unusual meter. It gives it a nice, exotic sounding rhythm and beat. The next song is “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” This song is fast. It uses an usual meter too, giving it an exotic kind of feeling. This song starts off with the same phrase being repeated by the sax, piano, bass, and drum player. There are places in this phrase where the key changes