This song begins with a vamp intro featuring a bass ostinato, in C♯ minor. The head, however, begins a half step lower in C minor. The C♯ minor bass figure reappears at the end of the form; this chromatic approach makes the form cyclical. The head begins with some dialogue between the long notes of the melody and more active rhythm section figures. The A section melody and changes move in contrary motion: the melody ascends as the root motion descends. Though the first A section establishes a C minor tonality, with a bass figure in that key in the last two measures, the second A section moves away from C minor in these measures with some further contrary motion (descending melody, ascending changes). The bridge begins with parallel minor 11th chords descending in thirds, which leads to a C section in which the bass line from the intro reappears under the long notes of the melody—first in B♭ minor for four measures and then C♯ minor (written as D♭ minor) like the intro.
On this recording, the in head is played twice, with the out head played only once. Check out other titles on the
same album.
The solo changes are considerably simplified, for example going to Cm7 in the seventh measure of the first A section and D♭m7 in the same measure of the second. There is a coda that is just the C section repeated twice, ending on B♭m7 instead of the expected D♭m7.
Another version of
Falset appears on the album "
Quintessence" by a quintet called Meeting Point: Rotondi, tenor saxophonist
Eric Alexander, drummer Lenny White, pianist Andrei Kondakov, and bassist Dmitri Kolesnik. This version is about the same tempo, but the intro is twice as long and the in head is played only once. A tenor sax harmony part is added for most of the head except for the first half of the bridge.
Percussionist Jason Hann, who makes two guest appearances on the "
Four Of A Kind" album including
Falset, is not primarily a jazz musician. He is best known for his work with the bluegrass/rock band The String Cheese Incident.
From Wikipedia: Falset is the latitude for a brasswind player's pitch-control of a harmonic by adjusting lip or air pressure. We initially thought that was Jim's inspiration for the song, but instead, Jim says, "I wrote that song about a small town in Spain where I had a really beautiful concert experience, but the other definition is completely applicable, just by coincidence!"
