Analyzing Wynton Kelly's Solo on "Freddie Freeloader": Ornaments, Rhythms, Arpeggios, and More!

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Hi everybody, Jeremy Siskin here. I'm the author of Playing Solo Jazz Piano.

[00:00:04]I'm the author of two books of solo standards for piano and I'm the author of the jazz piano fundamental series.

[00:00:11]Check out all my offerings at jeremycyskin.com. I'll offer you anything. My house, my home, my heart.

[00:00:18]Um, all right. Gun to my head. What's the greatest jazz piano solo of all time? It probably is Whiten Kelly solo on Freddy Freeload. At least, you know, that's the most legendary solo of all time. What are some other ones? I mean, Bud Powell, Celia, I mean, Chick Korea on Matrix. I don't know you. I'll ask you to list some. I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

[00:00:42]Bill Evans and concerto for Billy the Kid maybe. I don't know. Um anyway, indisputably one of the legendary alltime solos. Um, and I want to guide you through some of the elements that make it um that make it incredible.

[00:00:59]Um, so I have a transcription. This is from the official kind of blue um full transcription. Um, so I don't vouch for it completely, but it's pretty darn good. So let's take a look. And if you're not familiar, let me play this first chorus for you.

[00:01:50]Ah, it's so good. It's so good. It's so swinging. Um, I don't totally agree with every uh bit of the notation here, but that's okay. Uh, it's it's really close.

[00:02:00]So, okay. Um, where to start? So many places to start. Let's start with ornaments. Okay. And I want to keep a little list of things. Um, you know, I never want to just look at these things to complement them. What I'm always asking when I'm looking at a solo is what can I steal? What can I use? And you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to suggest an exercise for each thing that we that we look at. All right. So, ornaments. This is a very highly ornament ornamented solo, right?

[00:02:31]And when I say ornaments, probably first thing that comes to mind is grace notes.

[00:02:34]And we can find quite a lot of grace notes. I love a grace note for an octave. I think that's pretty fun. Um, you know, there's a grace note roughly, not quite every other measure, but at least three times per chorus.

[00:02:52]Let's say it like that. Um, grace notes are always a half step below their target note and they're giving things a really bluesy character. Grace notes are also I can say always in this screen um excuse me they're always for the third of the chord right and this is typical of a blues um and a bluesy sound is that we're trying to uh blur the line as to whether the third of the chord is major or minor. So you could see um actually sorry this this first one's not for the third of the chord but every other one this G is for the E flat 7. U these D's are for the B flat 7, D is for B flat 7, G is for E flat 7. So he's always or often um doing a grace note for the third of the chord. and a lot of other places where he doesn't do a grace note.

[00:03:54]He's still approaching the third by half step. Can you see all these instances?

[00:04:00]And I'm sure I'm missing many, but those are just ones that pop out to me that he's approaching the third by half step.

[00:04:06]So, I know you can't see the chord anymore now. This is an F7, and he's going, and this is an anticipation of the E flat 7. He does this a couple times in the solo, by the way.

[00:04:23]and then again.

[00:04:29]Okay, so we've got thirds of the chords.

[00:04:33]And then, you know, the other kind of ornament that we have is what I refer to as a turn.

[00:04:41]And in a turn, you'll see that the first and third notes of the triplets, sorry, of of uh 16th notes. Here's another turn down here, um, are the same. And then you go up by a step in between.

[00:04:58]And what's key about a turn is that if you took out the middle notes, this would be the this would be the nonoramented phrase. And this is why I refer to it as an ornament.

[00:05:14]um or in the case of this measure that I'm circling in blue versus right when we add in that turn it's just a little bit more fancy. Okay. So what would my assignment be? What would you practice? I would say you put a timer on for 10 minutes and play a tune. And every time you hit the third of the chord, use a grace note slide from below, having the minor third leading to the major third. Or hey, maybe you're going to have um the um the note below the minor third.

[00:06:03]I think turns are also really worth practicing. And how I like to practice turns is I play a phrase without a turn and then I add a turn in. So right. Um, so super valuable. You could do that for 10 minutes and then you could just everything's good. Uh, you could just improvise for 10 minutes trying to use a turn in every phrase.

[00:06:44]By the way, turns only work going downwards. So you could see that we're going down, for instance, in this first one from G to F. U, for the next one from D flat down to A flat. Um, they don't really work for ascending. So, if you're having trouble fitting in turns, make sure you're using some phrases that are moving downwards. Okay. So, we've got ornaments as number one. I had to clear my screen, so I lost my um let's say, how about for the next thing, let's look at triads.

[00:07:20]when Kelly mixes in a in my mind surprising number of just straight triads into his improvisation. So for instance, in this moment, in this moment, um here it's a little more complicated, which we can get to in a second. In this moment, we're just playing B flat major triads. and even here.

[00:07:49]So, that's really a lot of time to spend just on these triads.

[00:07:54]Um, I'm going to take it from the third line so you can hear it.

[00:08:01]Right.

[00:08:08]Okay. So, here's an interesting moment.

[00:08:10]Yes, he's using a B flat major triad, but now he's using it over this A flat 7 as what we would call an upper structure. So that's I don't know, maybe a different category of of using triads, but he's still just clear so clearly outlining a triad.

[00:08:31]And here there is a a bonus note in the triad, but it's almost just totally a triad.

[00:08:43]And there are a couple times where he plays for on the triad for a long time, but just as one bonus note. And two of those times there happens to be that same E flat. And if we keep going and analyzing more of this solo, we're going to find more and more of those triads.

[00:08:59]Trust me, I've done the work. Um, so that's kind of interesting. You know, we think about when Kelly is maybe using like the blues scale, being an incredibly sophisticated improviser, and I'm not saying that he's not, but we don't think of triads as necessarily being like that interesting and sophisticated, but I think he finds really interesting ways to use them. Um, and so it would be a great exercise to um to improvise over a tune and include one moment where you're using all three notes of the triad in each and every phrase. And then around that, you can do some other things. I think it's also really interesting to consider this one, two, four, wait, let me do that again.

[00:09:51]This 1 345 kind of formulation. and practice using that.

[00:10:01]Right? Just in case anybody doesn't understand what I mean by 1345 is using the 135 of the triad, B flat, D, and F, but he's adding in the four, the E flat.

[00:10:13]And that's a really great sound and somewhat typical of that Whitten Kelly sound.

[00:10:20]Okay, we got ornaments, we got triads.

[00:10:23]I'm gonna have to keep reconstituting this list um each time I clear my analysis.

[00:10:31]Let's see. Um so the next thing that is really interesting is the different parts of the beat that he's using. And I I don't love this uh the way that it's notated. What I want to actually highlight is that he does what I call what I refer to as reverse swing.

[00:10:47]Um, which means, and I'm I'm circling a really good example, that he's actually doing I I don't agree with this notation at all.

[00:10:58]Uh, he's engaging in the first and second parts of the triplet.

[00:11:09]But regardless of whether you want to think of it as a 16th note to a dotted eighth or you know this triplet formulation that I've written out um it's very weird in jazz to have the first eighth note the onbeat eighth note be the shorter note and when Kelly does that quite often in this solo. Um, here's another moment at a phrase ending.

[00:11:36]That's kind of part of that double timeline.

[00:11:44]Just looking for the next example.

[00:11:57]So there's another moment where again it's notated here as 16th notes but I hear d.

[00:12:07]Um so that's a really interesting concept and you notice that it's really highly associated with phrase endings.

[00:12:15]So a third thing would be to practice set a timer for 10 minutes and practice playing over a standard using just reverse swing uh for your phrase ending.

[00:12:29]So All right, I'm going to do two more quick ones. Um, this one might surprise you because it's probably not what you're paying the most attention to, but there's kind of an amazing way that he's connecting between phrases here.

[00:13:08]starting phrases on last note. So he very frequently, not always, you know, nobody would do anything all the time, but he very frequently starts his next phrase on the phrase that the previous one ended on, right? You could see it there. You could see it here. Um, if you've paid attention to this channel for a long time, I refer to practicing in this way as the telephone game. And here it's not exactly the same, but it's so close.

[00:13:39]Here, here again, it's not exactly the same, but he's moving by a half step. Here he's moving by a half step again. Um, and so he's very frequently starting phrase on the note that he ended on or a half step away.

[00:13:58]All right. So, that's a great lesson for how to can create a sense of connectivity between phrases.

[00:14:07]And so, you could probably figure out for yourself what kind of an exercise you would do. Um, I would simply play over a tune for 10 minutes and first always begin my phrase on the last note of the previous phrase. Second, always begin my phrase a half step away from the last note of the previous phrase.

[00:14:27]Um, okay. And then for the last thing, I just want to highlight the amount which his melodies move. Uh, what I refer to often as the span or the range of his melodies. He uses really big intervals and big shapes and travels a long way frequently just within a phrase, right?

[00:14:48]Let's take this phrase. So, it peaks over here at a high C and then ends at a mid-range F. That's an octave and a half from top to bottom.

[00:15:00]Um, and then this phrase here, you know, does a lot of things. Maybe it peaks over here at a high a flat and a goes all the way down to these two notes and then ends again at an F. Right? You know, here it's a little obscured because we're in octaves.

[00:15:22]But I mean that phrase travels basically two octaves from low F to high E flat.

[00:15:30]So I think this is really important.

[00:15:33]Uh so I'm going to call it wide span. So 1.5 octaves to two octaves for a phrase.

[00:15:44]Now this kind of goes with those triad arpeggios. Often it's those triad arpeggios getting him up and down. But this is definitely something to practice. Um, and a good way to practice it is to give yourself two notes, maybe an octave and a half apart. Maybe I'm going to choose this F and this C and say, "Okay, each phrase I'm going to hit that low F and that high C." So, And I mentioned this in particular because so many students and um aspiring uh jazz pianist who I meet play within a very small range. You could see that when Kelly he's going all over.

[00:16:42]And I said that was the last one, but I I have to address these octaves, right?

[00:16:46]And I totally realize I have not talked about the famous first phrase, and that's okay. Um, right, I filed the octaves kind of under the category of ornaments, but I I didn't mention them.

[00:16:56]So, let's talk about that there's all these moments in here. I'm going to highlight them in green just to give them a a little bit of a visual push.

[00:17:05]Um, in which he's placing octaves beneath the melody. And notice it's not for full phrases, right? I I coach a lot of students and they want to just like be liber, right? And that's not really uh helpful or productive to put octaves under every single melody note. Um he highlights certain melody notes and particularly as the melody goes high. Do you notice that? It's when the melody really gets up into the upper range. And this makes sense first of all because in terms of your hand shape, you need your fifth finger or maybe your fourth finger to be the one you're using if you're going to put octaves below, right? So, we can't put octaves below our thumb that's playing the lowest note of the melody.

[00:17:55]That's just, you know, necessity, physical necessity, but also it's kind of reaching down and helping him fill out some of the sonic middle of the piano. So, what I would assign you to do would be to practice um practice phrases um and add octaves as you get to the peak. Maybe just two, three, four notes with octaves and the rest without. Okay? Not all octaves.

[00:18:39]And what I love about using those octaves is that it makes every note sound a little bit different. And that's what we want in jazz because we want it to be conversational in this way that some words pop out, some syllables pop out rather than everything sounding the same.

[00:18:56]All right, that was a lot of info. We just looked at like the first chorus of Winton Kelly's solo, but we talked about ornaments. We talked about arpeggiating triads, maybe with one extra note. We talked about using this reverse swing phrase ending that really gets you into that beautiful triplet feel. um starting phrases uh related to the last note of the previous phrase, using a wide span, and then highlighting certain notes with octaves. If this is a good style and a good level for you, you might be interested in checking out elements from Jazz Piano Fundamentals book two, the purple book. Um you might also be interested in reading through some of these arrangements from playing solo jazz. No, sorry, from solo standards for piano. I should really know my own books, but you know, sometimes you guys, it's just tough. Um, all right. If you've watched this far, uh, first of all, tell me what you think the most legendary jazz piano solo is, and don't say any of my solos. You, uh, and second of all, tell me about, um, you know, we have Freddy Freeloader, but what would you have named the Freeloader? Maybe you have a freeloader in your life. We have a dog named Frankie who's kind of a freeloader. Um, all right. Thanks everybody.