I know I'm jumping around a bit, but I thought I'd share the chords to Nice Work If You Can Get It, another tune I'm playing with vocalist Jeannette O'Toole right now.

The singer had a chart. Band-In-A-Box Groups has a BIAB file. I have a fake book with a chart. They're all useless!

Why are these charts so bad? Either because they are obviously wrong, or really because they're just too elaborate to play with on a gig.

All of these charts seem to want to put a chord on each beat of the last couple of measures of the A section. That's fine for a custom arrangement, but I want the freedom to fill in those chords spontanteously, elaborating a simpler version, rather than having it all spelled out for me.

I went back to the sources - I listened to 5 versions of the tune on free.napster.com, and decided that the Joe Pass and Carmen McCrae were the ones with the most straightforward statements of the harmony. I picked one and listened in SlowGold for a while, but I have to confess, it still took some puzzlin' and thinkin' until I came up with a sufficiently boiled-down version of the A section, as follows (in C):

E7 A7 | D7 G7 | C7 F7 | D D#dim |
C A7   | D7       | Dm7 G7  | C B7alt |

Well, that's not too hard. A couple of observations:

• All the charts I saw had the first 2 chords altered in some way. You don't need to play or remember the alterations, but it might be useful to remember that the melody in the first measure is E - F - F - E, so E7b9 - A7+ would be the alterations that invoke or fit the melody best (which is most useful during the actual head, so you don't play, for instance, a regular E9, which would be nasty against the melody).
• In terms of memorization, this is just a cycle of 5ths for 3 measures, a little transition, and then a stretched 1-6-2-5 (and the B7 is just the transition back to the top).

I'm experimenting with stories and visuals as memory aids. It is a staple of memory theory.  Cycles of 5ths happen so often and are so easy to play through without much conscious thought that I am picturing them as Buddhas. Yup, that's right. And the 1-6-2-5 cycle is so common, I call it "Home" and visualize a house.

So I visualize the A section of "Nice Work" like this: 3 Buddhas roll down a 3-step staircase, crawl a very short distance up a very short dirt trail, and enter a very long (stretched) ranch-style house.

That's it, but what's it mean? The 3 Buddhas are for the fact that the first sequence starts on III7, and also continues for 3 measures (take me from E7 though the F7). Rolling down the staircase is another basic image I've created for the common move of descending by 3 half-steps (usually I-VI, though not so here, where we go F7 down to D).  A crawl up is a metaphor for hitting the diminished transition chords as you move up by half-steps, so it covers the move to the D#dim. Finally, the elongated ranch house is the "stretched home" which means I VI II ii V7 in this case.

OK, here's my story for "How High The Moon" - we covered the chords earlier in the blog, and it relates to the String of Pearls pattern: You're walking along a moonlit (naturally) path, and you encounter a pile of 4 gigantic pearls, each about 8-feet in high, stacked as a little pyramid (3 on the bottom one on top). (exaggeration and specificity are both important in memory. that's why the pearls are so large, and stacked in a particular way). You pass that stack and encounter another stack just like it. After that is a single 8-foot pearl. After that the path passes by one dark-colored house and then to a light-colored one.

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted. I made a lot of progress on the memorization project, but my interests now are a bit different (I will probably write a small book about memorization in the future). Currently, I'm doing a number of duo gigs with the lovely and talented jazz vocalist Jeannette O'Toole, and endings have been on my mind a lot. And, also, bass lines, learning methods and resources, chord chart accuracy, and the use of the blues in jazz. I'm just going to drop a few hints right now about the whole deal.

Chord Chart Accuracy

To connect a bit with where this blog is coming from, I'll start with chord chart accuracy. It doesn't pay to memorize the wrong chords to a song! Plus, the wrong chords often don't make as much sense as the right chords, so they're harder to memorize. There are a lot of good charts around, but there are also a lot with inaccuracies. Do yourself a favor - listen to what you're playing, and listen to authoritative recordings. If what you're playing doesn't sound quite right, do the work to make it right. Find other charts or, even better, use a tool like my SlowGold or one of its competitors to nail those chords!

Bass Lines

I started out by poring over Tuck Andress' DVD, but I have to say that, while it is definitely worth watching and thinking about (if only so your jaw can hit the floor and bounce back), it is pretty difficult material. On a more realistic level, I've re-rented (NetFlix is great for renting music instructional DVDs) and reviewed the Joe Pass DVD, Solo Jazz Guitar, which is well worth it if you haven't checked it out yet. Joe plays and talks for nearly an hour on the subject of I-VI-ii-V. It's quite amazing where he takes it. Particularly useful is his discussion of bass lines - but the best discussion I've seen about creating bass lines on guitar (and on various comping styles) is Jim Ferguson's book, All Blues for Jazz Guitar - comping styles, chords & grooves. I used to think, "hey, I'm a good guitarist. I can knock out a bass line anytime", but I guess my standards are higher now, and Jim's book hit the spot (disclaimer: Jim's an old buddy of mine from my Guitar Player magazine writing days).

Endings

I've read some material about endings, and gotten a good bit of advice, but recordings are really where it's at for these. Since I'm working with a singer with her head in the swing era (mine is there too) a lot, I've started looking for endings on vocal recordings. Ella and Louis is a total classic (if you don't know which Ella and which Louis, it's time to stop reading and start listening right now!) and we do some of the same tunes, so that's my first great source. In the next few posts, I'll start cataloguing some of these endings, starting with They Can't Take That Away From Me, which also has a wee bit of tastily-applied blues guitar tossed in at the perfect moment. So stay tuned!

- Warren

There's a current discussion about what key a tune in the BIAB forums at Yahoo Groups, http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Band-in-a-Box/message/28137 (presumably, if you try to go there and you don't have a Yahoo ID you'll be presented with the various registration options and can eventually get there). This is related to my discussion of the key of Footprints in the last entry.

If Footprints isn't exactly one of those "embarassing not to know" tunes, then it's pretty close. At any rate, it's fun to play The chords are easy, and this time I'll start to talk about memorizing melodies a little bit, too.

Here are the chords:

| Cm7 | x 8

| Fm7 | x 4

| Cm7 | x 4

| D7 | D7 | Db7 | Db7 |

| Cm7 | x 4

So what is this, really? It's a 24-bar minor blues in ¾ time with a II7 where you'd expect the V (I'm assuming that you'll just naturally remember, or hear or feel that the D7 goes down to a Db7). A 24-bar blues feels just like a 12-bar blues, so you probably will reduce the concise description to:

minor blues in ¾ time with a II7 where you'd expect the V

As far as the melody goes, first, a reference: How to Learn Tunes, by David Baker, Volume 76 in the Jamey Aebersold Jazz series is an interesting book, especially insofar as memorizing melodies is concerned. He has a system for memorizing chords as well. It shares certain elements with the system I'm developing here, but of course the fact that I'm developing a system at all shows that I didn't really find Baker's chordal system that effective for me personally, for whatever reason. Nonetheless, he has a lot of good ideas about memorizing melodies.

Before memorizing the melody, let's try and understand what key it's in, and something about where it stops and starts and where the jumps are.  So, before trying to describe it concisely, let's note some facts:

• Even though the tune is notated as being in C major in the Real Book, that can't be the real key! That's just mental laziness on the part of the transcribers. The tune starts and ends with Cm chords - the natural guess for what the key should be would be the key of Cm, or 3 flats. But, in fact, if you examine the melody closely, you'll see that all the A's are natural. The melody (with the exception of the II7 section) is really rather clearly in the key of Bb - two flats. So you can think of the tune as being
  • in Cm with natural A's (when you play a minor key, you often find that either a natural 6th degree of the scale or a flatted 6th work in a song, but not both).
  • OR/ALSO in Bb major, with the melody note beginning on I and ending on V.
  • OR/ALSO in C dorian
• The first phrase is scalar, starting on I (thinking in Bb maj), with skips coming off the high C and the F near the end
• The second phrase also begins on I, but goes up before going down, with only 1 skip, off the Bb, before repeating the last motif of the first phrase.
• The II7 section starts on B natural and has several m3 skips up.

I don't think this is quite enough description to memorize the whole melody - but it'll probably get you close enough to fake it, until you've played the tune enough to know it. I may have more to say as I continue to internalize the melody.

here's a real quickie: I just noticed that one of my favorite tunes, Kaper & Washington's Invitation is composed almost entirely of the up a fourth pattern. Of course, one of the tricks is that the chord changes tend to occur in unusual places (the first change is at bar 6 instead of at bar 5, where most people seem to expect it). But, aside from that, the entire A section is up a 4th. Then it's a switch to the minor to start the bridge, and continuing on the up-a-4th pattern up to the last 4 bars of the B section. After that it's a turnaround-from-iii back to the top (where a "turnaround from <degree>" could be considered to be a sequence that cycles in 4ths or descending half-steps, or a more generalized concept of "play any turnaround of appropriate length" for a more free-thinking approach). Memorizing the coda is an exercise for the reader.

Invitation is kind of amazing in how relentlessly it pushes up a 4th, without ever being tempted to resolve back to i until the very end of the AB form. It goes through every root in the chromatic scale!

Ok, now can you play the song in another key?

In my ideal universe, I'd never have to memorize a tune. I'd just hear all the changes as they come by and know what to play.

Unfortunately, my ideal universe appears to be on backorder, so I have to use alternate strategies. Like, the other day I was listening to a recording of "How High The Moon", and I recognized some of the chord patterns we've been talking about in the last couple of entries. So I decided to see how many of the changes I could write down off the top of my head, just from recognizing the patterns, without trying to work out the chords one-by-one with SlowGold.

Now, I basically know that the tune has kind of an A-A' structure - you might call it an AB structure if you wanted to be formally correct, but that misses the point that the "B" is just the A with a slightly different turnaround. So I decided to concentrate on the A part - the first 16 bars.

I could hear our old friend all over the place in this tune - this friend being the major-to-minor minipattern where the minor chord is then treated as the ii of a ii-V7-I. I knew the tune began on GMaj7, and I could readily hear 2 repetitions of this sequence at the start. That gave me the first 8 bars:

| G | G | Gm | C7 |

| F | F | Fm | Bb7 |

That seemed to work pretty well. Now, I thought the pattern might continue on to the Eb, but I wasn't sure. So I decided to call that unknown for now, and skip forward to a part of the song I had a good deal of confidence in: the turnaround at the end of the A section.

Knowing how the song is usually played, I recalled that the last couple of measures have a chord change every two beats, and there's an obvious descending by half-steps pattern that commences the turnaround. We haven't talked about this pattern yet, but, briefly, it's a variant (through tritone substitution) of the up-a-fourth pattern. For example, E7-Eb7-D (which might appear as various 7 and m7 chords with alterations to taste) is essentially "the same" as E7-A7-D, because the A7 and Eb are a tritone away from each other (try spelling out an A7b5 chord and an Eb7b5 chord - they're exactly the same!), which gives them a similar-enough-but-different-enough sound to make for an interesting substitution.

So, anyway, I can mentally hear that the section ends with descending by half-steps. Since I know that "the law" says that the last two chords of this section have to be the ii-V7 in order to turn around back to the I, the chords leading into the ii must be first 2 and then 1 half-steps above the ii. So that allows me to fill in the last two bars as:

| B Bb | Am D7 |

Now, I'm not sure whether those first two chords are going to be minor or dominant (I'm pretty sure they're not going to be Maj7 because passing chords rarely are). But I know that the key is G, so that at least tells me the B is likely to be Bm. As far as the Bb goes - well, the truth is that you can get away with either Bb7 or Bbm7 here (or even the tritone subs E7 or Em7 or Em7b5...) so you don't have to worry about it too much. Dominant 7th is often the best bet, since it is frequently used in place of m7 anyway, and in this case it's positioned between two minor chords and a little variety couldn't hurt. So, I'd go for

| Bm Bb7 | Am D7 |

as my "final answer" for the last two bars of the A section.

Filling in the rest of the A section was a little more tricky. This is what I had so far:

| G | G | Gm | C7 |

| F | F | Fm | Bb7 |

| Eb? | ? | ? | ? |

| ? | ? | Bm Bb7 | Am D7 |

This is the point at which I decided to consult the Real Book to fill in the gaps. I don't feel too bad about not getting the whole song this time around - I've written down a good large chunk of it easily and with confidence, which is better than I would have done before I started working on memorization. Here are the full chords:

| G | G | Gm | C7 |

| F | F | Fm | Bb7 |

| Eb | Am7 D7 | Gm7 | Am7b5 D7b9 |

| G | Am7 D7 | Bm Bb7 | Am D7 |

OK, now how do we memorize the rest of what's going on here, and describe the whole shebang concisely? Before describing the entire song, let's introduce one new piece of imagery to our lexicon: let's find a way to describe this very common combination of the the major-to-minor minipattern where the minor chord is then treated as the ii of a ii-V7-I that we've seen in this tune and Solar. I don't know if there's some standard description of this, but for my memory purposes, I'm going to call this the String Of Pearls patttern.

The succinct mental description

This is always the core of memorizing the tune. The succinct mental description of the A section is: Starts on I, follows String of Pearls through the first 9 bars. Then plays with ii-V7-I, first back to the minor and then the major. Then turnaround. Pretty soon, this becomes "Pearls, then ii-V-Is." Then we imagine lassoing the moon with a lasso made of pearls, and we can never forget it (there are a lot of other interesting general, non-musical, memory tricks and principles that you can also apply, and one of them is to create vivid, somewhat ridiculous mental images).

The B section is nearly identical. Just play the A section but omit the first ii-V-i to the Gm, and fill in with the obvious ii-V at the end of the form to make up the space.

- Warren

As we continue our memorization practice, we'll continue with another "absolutely must know" jazz tune, Blue Bossa, by Kenny Dorham. Like Solar, Blue Bossa is a simple "A" form - there is no B section or chorus (ok, these things are open to a little bit of interpretation - you could consider Blue Bossa to be AB form if you take it 8 bars at a time. I guess that the underlying similarity between A and AB forms are that both are "linear" - no repeating subsections).

Before we move on to consider Blue Bossa in greater detail, there's one remaining observation to make about Solar. Recall that the song starts with i then goes to a series of ii-V7-I patterns connected the Major to minor two chord mini-patterns. One more thing that you might have to remember as you play through the chords is that the harmonic rhythm (the rate of chord changing) doubles in the last 4 bars.  Up until bar 10, there is never more than one chord per measure. From bar 10 to the end, however, there are two chords in each measure.

Now, you might not have to remember this fact about the harmonic rhythm - you may just hear it or feel it, and things will just work for you. Personally, though, I had to take note of the fact at least once.

Anyway, back to Blue Bossa.

Structurally, the Blue Bossa is similar to Solar: both tunes have linear forms, both are in Cm, both start on i. 

Here are the chords to Blue Bossa:

| Cm7 | Cm7 | Fm7 | Fm7 |

| Dm7b5 | G7 | Cm7 | Cm7 |

| Ebm7 | Ab7 | Db | Db |

| Dm7b5 | G7 | Cm7 | Dm7b5  G7|

A strange thing happened as I was typing in the chords – I noticed that the second and fourth phrases are identical (except for the turnaround at the end). That's a striking "data reduction" mental note to make about the song – but even this is superfluous to my usual

Mental Description of Blue Bossa

Start on i, go up a 4^th, then turnaround back to i. Go up a minor third (our new pattern of the day), then go around in 4^ths till the turnaround back to the top.

I don't make particular note of how many measures I play before the turnaround or anything like that – I trust my ear (and my ability to make mistakes onstage quietly and to quickly correct them! Plus, sometimes you get 15 seconds to discretely play a few chords to confirm your memory before everyone's ready to go) to give me the rest of the information I need.

The up a minor third pattern, and more

This pattern most commonly occurs with m7 chords. It is fairly common. One thing I like about this pattern is that it's easy, in a way, to hear mentally. When I hear Blue Bossa in my head, I always hear the Cm in bar 8 stepping up to the Ebm in half-steps: Cm – C#m – Dm – Ebm (the first three chords are played in the last two beats of bar 8 as half-note triplets). While it would be cheesy to play bar 8 in this fashion more than a couple of times in a performance of the song, this is an unforgettable mental cue, at least for me.

The mental cue of the up a minor third pattern, by the way, is similar to the mental cue of the down a minor third pattern – when I see an F7 – D7 change, I always hear the half steps in between. It's almost unavoidable for me. This pattern usually occurs as part of a I – VI7 – II7 – V7 turnaround (which is the most common variant of the "traditional" I – vi – ii – V7 turnaround). Turnarounds are a subject in themselves, but we'll be seeing a lot more of these two in short order.

Exercise for the reader:

Can you find any songs that you can create succinct mental descriptions for using the patterns that we've seen so far, or maybe these with one or two patterns that you discover? Care to share any in the comments?

- Warren

As I've mentioned, I've been going to a bunch of jazz jams lately, and I'm treating the experience as a challenge to master. I've been a "jazz dabbler" for many, many years, and played (and led) a lot of jazz gigs. Yet, when it comes to playing in a "true jazz" atmosphere, with pianists and horn players steeped in the tradition, I feel... well, not like a "baby", but more like an advanced beginner.

For one thing, I have sax and piano envy. These are the instruments that defined and, in most respects, continue to define jazz, and it seems like they can both play faster than the guitar (more about that later, no doubt on a continuing basis). Also, sax players can blow their notes in a way that makes them swell after the initial attack, enabling them to add "distortion", if you will, in an expressive manner that, I'm sorry to say, beggars the best guitar fuzztones I've heard.

As a guitarist, almost all of my "after the note" expressive capability lies in my left hand's ability to bend the notes I'm holding. I can also add volume swells with the volume control, and footcontroller-induced after effects, but these are limited in expressiveness by two factors - (1) the fact that I'm not pushing against any dynamic resistance with these controls is something that I find to be a limitation, and (2) guitar notes can decay quite quickly, even after being compressed. without enlisting feedback (perhaps in the form of an ebow), there's just not enough signal to work with to get a six-second note that builds to an 'explosion", something that's not hard for a skilled sax player.

All that said, the main component of my envy is sheer jazz knowledge. And this is something I can remedy. I believe that it's generally true that jazz sax and piano players statistically have been exposed to much better training through their early years than guitar players. I know that in my specific case, I've had a year or two of jazz-specific lessons here and there, but I'm largely self-taught. But enough whining!

Today, the availability of learning and practice materials is amazing. As of this writing, Napster, for absolutely no money makes probably hundreds of thousands of jazz recordings available on demand. DVDs offering condensed, repeatable, private lessons with great musicians are available for less than the cost of a single private lesson with a local teacher (although, of course, everyone starting out should have a personal teacher to make sure that the physical basics of playing are established properly). Products like my own SlowGold make it easy to transcribe music. So there's no excuse not to work. My own main current project on the understanding front is to work through Mark levine's Jazz Theory book, using Napster to listen to the musical examples from the book (many are written for piano players and can't be played on guitar).

Well, finally, I'm getting around to what I started to write about: a strategy for memorizing jazz tunes for jam sessions. Here are some points relevant to this:

• My experience tells me that you need to know the chords to maybe 150 tunes to be able to do this.
• There are some tunes that it is just embarassing not to know - memorize at least the chords to these pronto! I don't have a complete list, but they include Autumn Leaves, Solar, Summertime, All Blues (and most of the simpler blues-based tunes; e.g. Blue Monk), Blue Bossa, Impressions/So What. I'm sure it would be easy to add another half-dozen to this list (do your own adding in the Comments section!)
• There is a difference between tunes you call and tunes that others call. Although it is ideal to learn both the chords and melodies for all tunes, from a practical standpoint, you generally only need to know the melodies for the tunes that you call. And learning the chords is often much faster (at least for me). So start by learning the melodies to maybe 25 tunes that you can call, and then focus on learning the chords to another 125 songs.
• You can learn the chords to one new song every day. Chords are easy to learn, especially if you start to recognize common patterns (more on this in a later note). Do this, and you'll have all the songs you basically need under your belt in just a few months. This small amount of work will offer a lifetime of rewards.

Warren