The weather has been grim. It’s been raining for days. More guitar time then! On the Strat-Talk forum where we discuss all things stratocaster there is a weekly challenge that I sometimes join in with. This week’s challenge was to record oneself playing over a backing track for Wayne Shorter’s Footprints. I liked the sound of of it, and decided to gve it a go.
I spent a happy morning teaching myself the melody by ear then recording this…..

Here’s what we have….
Drums intro, 4 bars keyboard turnaround, 2* Melody, 4 choruses improvisation, 2* Melody, 2*tag, outro.
I recorded using a 1967 ‘Chet Atkins’ Gretsch Country Gentleman – also know as the George Harrison guitar, through a DV Mark Little Jazz amplifier into Ableton Live. The backing track was posted by Monte over on strat-talk. Here’s the challenge thread in case you fancy having a go, or checking out what other players made of it.

A great morning on the guitar learning about a tune that I was not familiar with. What you been up too?

“Footprints” is a jazz standard composed by saxophonist Wayne Shorter and first recorded for his album Adam’s Apple in 1966. The first commercial release of the song was a different recording on the Miles Davis album Miles Smiles recorded later in 1966, but released earlier. It has become a jazz standard.