song: Familiar Flower
artist: Julian Lage
album: Squint (2021)
writer: Julian Lage

electric guitar: Julian Lage
double bass: Jorge Roeder
(drums: Dave King)

This is a full transcription of “Familiar Flower”. This Modern-Jazz composition is a beast storming ahead, starting at a pace of Q=258 BPM. The head/theme features a series of melodic components dotted onto a 4/4-time grid, but with a few free-time phrases in between, which releases the improvisational timing from the gridlock. From then on, it is very fast free guitar improvisation as Julian Lage does like no other. Enjoy!

“ It's a lot of swing-based music. A lot of this record is a study of, frankly, medium swing. 4/4 music. It's more centered on that time feel and that cadence. (…) [Y]ou have something like "Familiar Flower," which is … an ode to Old and New Dreams—the way Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden would have felt time. And Dewey [Redman] and Don Cherry. It's not about locking together. It's kind of like everyone has their own place, own tempo, own variation, and it just kind of goes and builds this beautiful tension. ”
– Julian Lage (Grammy, 9th June 2021)

For more on this song, watch this interview with Don Was, executive producer of Squint, where Julian Lage dedicates it to Charles Lloyd.

Finally, check out the this insightful clip where Julian Lage and Jorge Roeder discuss the musical mechanics of the groove: