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.

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

For 35 years, I've resisted memorizing tunes...

but a few years ago, when I moved to the NY area, I started to show up at jam sessions with my Real Book (or Pocket Changes) in hand. I soon learned that this practice is looked down upon somewhat in these parts, and I guess there are some good reasons for it.

First of all, it's great to show up at a jam session, say "what tune do you want to play?", and then all jump in without anyone fumbling for books or groping for music stands. It makes everyone look more professional, makes the flow go smoothly, etc.

But, more importantly, memorizing the tune (a) lets you really learn it and get inside it, and (b) learning the melody in particular improves your ear and gives you a readily-available musical vocabulary for quotes.

So, now that I've started going back to a regular weekly jazz jam session (great Wednesday night sessions at the very friendly and comfortable Cornerstage Music & Spirits in Middletown, NY, led by the fabulous bassist Robert Kopec and the great house bands he brings. You have to check it out if you're in the area.), I've finally bitten the bullet and embarked on a program of memorizing a tune each week, both chords and melody. Sometimes I fall short of that goal, but I am making steady progress.

One of the big issues is how do you pick the next tune to memorize? Well, first of all, it's a good idea to make a list of all the tunes that you've nearly memorized, and work on really getting those down. After that, what I do is to try and identify one or two tunes (depending on difficulty) from each week's jam to memorize (I do bring my Real Book to play tunes that other people call that aren't yet in my list).

Next, how do you memorize a tune? This is an extremely important and interesting question, with no really simple answers. I'll be covering some aspects of it as we go on. But practicing it a lot with Band-In-A-Box (see below) is a great place to start.

Resources

Before I sign off on this entry, let me recommend the one critical piece of software for practicing jazz tunes: Band-In-A-Box from PG Music. (disclosure: PG Music does distribute some of my own software, so the sales of certain BIAB packages yields a small amount of income to my stream, but this recommendation has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the way I practice myself). What's really cool about BIAB is that the arrangements are more-than-good-enough for practicing, the speed and looping are easily altered, and there's a vast library of jazz tunes available for free if you join the Band-In-A-Box Files Group over at Yahoo

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