A Comparison of the Improvisational Styles of Trombonists Conrad Herwig and Steve Davis

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the playing styles of jazz trombonists Conrad Herwig and Steve Davis, and compare them side-by-side. Five improvised solos by each player are transcribed. The transcriptions are selected from two albums that the trombonists recorded together, Conrad Herwig’s Osteology and A Jones for Bones Tones. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and stylistic contents of the solos are compared, in order to determine in what ways the two subjects are similar, and in what ways they are different. Musical examples are cited throughout the analysis, and the full transcriptions are included in the appendix, as well as interviews with both Herwig and Davis