Sunday, December 8, 2013

Wes Montgomery: Sunny (Alternate Take) Melody Statement


In a prior post I laid out a framework for comping chords (here). In the last post (here), I used the comping chord forms to transform a typical lead sheet into a jazz ballad solo. I also made the assertion that we could get a long way with comping chord forms, single note and octave playing. Let's see if we can take an actual Wes Montgomery chordal solo and use comping chord forms to play the entire song, from melody statement through improvisation.

Sunny provides an interesting place to start. First, I have been unable to find transcriptions either in print or on the Internet. Second, there are two versions of Sunny from the California Dreaming Album (above, if the video gets taken down you can find the re-released California Dreaming album on iTunes here). There is a "commercial"(?) octave version and then there is a chordal version,  Sunny (Alternate Take) which is selection seven on the re-release album. The original album, released in 1966, only contained the octave version of Sunny and provides an example of the controversy surrounding over-use of octaves. The record was considered "pop fluff" by critic Scott Yanow as were many of the A&M records, although California Dreaming did reach #1 on Billboard Jazz Album Chart.

For the jazz guitar student, there is a lot to learn from every recording we have a Wes Montgomery. From all we know, Wes took every performance seriously (see for example Tom Fitzgerald's interview with jazz piano player Harold Mabern in 625 Alive: The Wes Montgomery BBC Performance Transcribed: "He put a lot of time on the instrument" p. viii) and Wes put everything he knew at that moment in time into every performance (from the same interview "Whatever you can hear, you can have, because tomorrow, he's going to doing something else. And you'll always be chasing him." p. ix). The critics have a point but for the jazz guitar student, don't get put off from studying these performances because of critical comment.

If you'd like to download the transcription up to the first key change you can click here to download the PDF file.

There is certainly a lot to learn from transcribing either the octave or the chordal version of Wes Montgomery playing Sunny. The sheet music above is not a precise transcription; it's a first pass. There's lots of different opinion about how to transcribe jazz solos (I'll get into this in a future post). I tend to keep iterating, improving my transcription over time rather than trying to get everything right the first time. This is just my boredom again. The minute I think I "get" a part of the solo, I want to go off and play it and then I get other ideas and just keep playing until its time to quit. There are lots of great transcriptions of Wes Montgomery solos (I'll make a list of the ones I know in a future post). Each one requires a lot of study and a lot of listening. Someday, I'll work my Sunny transcription up to this level. For this post, it seemed better not to hide the process from readers.


For example, in the first few measures after the four-measure vamp introduction, a better (second pass) transcription would the the one presented above. Wes uses emphasis (accent marks), grace notes, glissandos and tremolos in his actual solo to provide a bluesy feel. It's enormously important to understand Wes' use of the blues in everything he plays. On the other hand, it doesn't actually change the notes being played and, on first pass, that's what I'm trying to capture.


In the spirit of trying to capture Wes' fundamental ideas rather than the exact feel at first pass in the transcription, notice the use of counterpoint in the bridge. In the two measures above, I've pulled out the chords Wes is using between octaves in a call-and-response form (the octaves provide the call and the chords provide the response here, sometimes he uses the reverse). Notice that the lead melody note stays the same throughout this portion of the bridge while the chordal harmony and the octaves move underneath the melody. 



Finally, after playing the melody through once, Wes moves the key up a half-step to start the first improvisation. The last two measures of my first-pass transcription show the key change to C#m/Emaj with the line Wes uses to make the transition. The critics may think that Sunny is pop fluff, but Wes takes the music to a new level. How many jazz musicians will play anything in the key of C#m/Emaj? Here's another quote from the Mabern interview: 

You see, the music was challenging. See, it was about the music. It wasn't about anything else. Everything he threw at me, I tried to meet the challenge. It was a challenge, too, because of the fact that keys didn't matter to him. F# minor, F# major, Db. You'd be surprised… a lot of cats don't play in Db even now. Or A major. (p. viii)

Do I need to say more. In fact, the shift to C#m/Emaj is quite hard to play. It really tests my concentration and knowledge of the fingerboard. I find it easier to shift up a whole step and, in the couple of measures above, I give you a Wes Montgomery-style line to do the transition. If you also find the shift to C#m/Emaj a little bewildering on first try, do the whole-step key change first. But, you'll eventually have to figure out the half-step changes because Wes does a few more before he gets to the end of the song.

If you thought that John Mehegan's comment on page 32 of Jazz Improvisation that "…learning to play in twelve keys is so important to jazz improvisation…" was just some obscure academic idea, Wes' approach to Sunny should disabuse you of that notion. The solution to the problem of playing in twelve keys is, in John Mehegan's view and in my view, Figured Bass (or more specifically abstract harmonic analysis, the "Abstract Truth" of jazz). To go any further with Wes Montgomery, I need to present this area of abstract music theory in the next post.

As an obvious aside, it was quite a joke for me to pick up a piece of "pop fluff" like Sunny forty years ago thinking it would easier than anything else Wes might have done. It took me many years to realize it wasn't.

EXERCISES

1. Play either the Wes Montgomery melody statement above or my earlier melody statement (here) in twelve keys using Wes' octave line to make the transition each time.

2. Start transcribing the first Wes Montgomery improvisational solo for Sunny (use either the Octave or the chordal "Alternate Take" version) in the key of C#m/Emaj.

3. Invent your own transition lines and play Autumn Leaves (here) and Giant Steps (here) in twelve keys.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Sunny: Chordal Melody Statement



In a prior post (here), I laid out two basic root-position complex-comping chord forms, the G7-form on the E-string and the C7-form on the A- and the D-strings. I also gave you a II-V-I exercise to play these forms all over the guitar fingerboard. Once you've learned these two forms, you should be able to read a decent lead sheet (for example, any song in the Real Book) and play an accompaniment, that is, comp behind any instrument or singer (see Exercise 1 below). You could also play a simple vamp (repeating figure) such as the introduction to Sunny displayed above. But, could you go further and develop a chordal melody statement, that is, play the song solo?

I've developed a choral melody statement for Sunny using just the complex-comping chord forms and a fingerboard chart (download the pdf file here, the mscz file here for MuseScore, and the chord forms and fingerboard chart here). If you look at the original lead sheet (if you would like a MuseScore mscz file of the original lead sheet for personal study, please contact me), you will see that I have raised the melody a perfect octave for guitar (but otherwise made no changes to the notes), but I have changed the chord names. Some of the changes are based on functional harmonic analysis (figured bass using John Mehegan's terminology), which I will cover more fully in a future post. Other changes involve fitting the melody within the chords listed and just trying to give the song a little more jazz flavor.

As written,  the piece should be played as a slow ballad. You will get pretty bored if you play the melody as actually written. If you are a jazz musician, you will feel like you want to break out of the arrangement to make it more bluesy and to make it swing a little more. That's great! That's exactly the purpose of this exercise and of approaching every lead sheet with a lot of skepticism.

Let me go through the process of analyzing the lead sheet more slowly. The chords of the first four measures are written as:

Cm7 | Bbm7 Eb | Abmaj7 | Dm7 G |

but I have written the chordal melody statement out using

Cm7 | Bbm6 | Eb13 Bbm7 | Abmaj13 D7sus4 | G7 |

The Bbm6 chord was substituted for Bbm7 because the melody note, F, is the sixth degree of the Bbm chord. Some writers might have named this Bbm13 and, if you were following the complex chord form sheet (here), you might also choose Bbm13. To my ear, however, the chord sounds more like a Bbm6 when played against the following Eb13 and Bbm7 chords (see Exercise 6 below).

The Eb13 chord was chosen rather than Eb because the Eb major triad (Eb-G-Bb) doesn't sound right (to a jazz musician) and the melody line going from Eb to C suggests Eb13 (since C is the 13th degree above Eb). The same reasoning applies to the Abmaj7 chord which was changed to Abmaj13 since F is the 13th degree above Ab.

The Dm7 chord was changed to D7sus4 since G is the +4th degree of D. Finally, the G chord was changed to G7 since the G-major triad (G-B-D) doesn't make sense here. By "not making sense here" I mean that the G-major triad does not fit the functional harmonic analysis (the "abstract truth"):

|| (Eb/Cm) Im  (Ab) | II V | I (Eb/Cm) | II V ||

The song is in the key of Eb but based on the relative minor (VI or Im, that is, Cm7). The Abmaj7 chord is the IV of Eb but it is easier to see the II-V-I progression (from the last post, here) if we temporarily change the key to Ab. In the fourth measure, if we change the key back to Im (Eb/Cm) we can also clearly see the II-V-I turnaround. A standard jazz minor key II-V-I turnaround is typically written, for example, as D7sus4 - G7+ - Cm7. The Eb and G chords in the lead sheet were probably written this way because the writer was following the bass movement but not following the function of the chords within the song.

The next four measures just repeat the first four measures, so there is nothing new here.

The final eight measures function as the bridge. In the lead sheet, the chords are written:

|| Cm7 | Bbm7 Eb | Abmaj7 | Db | Dm7b5 | G7#9 | Cm7 | G7#9 ||

where I wrote the chord changes as

|| Cm7 | Bbm6 Eb13 | Abmaj 7 | Db9 | D7sus4 | G7 | G7+ | Cm7 | G7#9 ||

The same reasoning applies. The Eb major triad does not make sense here but Eb13 does. The Db major triad also does not make sense but Db9 does (given the second Eb melody note, the 9th degree of Db). The G7#9 chord in the lead sheet, although jazzy sounding, doesn't really sound right until the end of the bridge while the G7+ sounds better to my ear given the extended II-V-Im turnaround.

As a bonus, I've provided a two-measure vamp at the end. The reason for the bonus vamp is that, in the next post, I will start writing out the transcription for Wes Montgomery's chordal melody statement for the "alternate take" of Sunny from the California Dreaming album (here). I will try to demonstrate that the complex comping chord forms are enough to play a typical melody statement of the from Wes Montgomery liked to use. However, I'll repeat the musician Jimmy Stewart's warning that when approaching "…Wes' stylistic solos … it is advisable to first play the lead sheet form before you attempt the stylistic solo" (p. 18 in the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method).

In the next post I'll start explaining why Jimmy Stewart was dead on with this warning.

FINGERINGS

The fingerings are annotated with numbers 1-4 corresponding to the fingers of the left hand starting from the first finger opposite the thumb. The thumb is never used for "grabbing" a bass note on the E-string, although Wes Montgomery (and a lot of other guitarists) can be seen doing this on videos. The left thumb should stay firmly on the back of the guitar neck!

Barre chords are annotated by repeating the first (and sometimes the second, third and fourth) finger.

When a chord is not annotated, the fingering is the same as written earlier in the song. Single notes have  not been annotated but, at least in the song above, can be found around the chord shape and would use fingering based on the fret position of the chord (see the discussion for arpeggio fingerings here).

EXERCISES
  1. Pick any lead sheet in the Real Book and practice a chordal accompaniment (comping) using the chord forms laid out in the prior post (here).
  2. Write out a chordal melody statement for Autumn Leaves (see the prior post here).
  3. Write out a chordal melody statement for Giant Steps (see the prior post here).
  4. Pick any song in the Real Book and try to write out a chordal melody statement.
  5. Listen to Wes Montgomery's chordal melody statement for Sunny (it's the 7th cut, "alternate take" on the California Dreaming album here). Print out (download the pdf file here) and annotate areas in the chordal melody statement that differ from Wes' approach.
  6. Take a careful look at the | Bbm6 - Eb13 - Bbm7 | Abmaj 7 | II-V-I turnaround. From the perspective of a jazz improvisation, are Bbm6 - Eb13 - Bbm7 basically elements of the altered Bbm scale, especially when you go back and look at the G7 chord form shifted up to 6E? Can you find all of these chords within that chord form at the sixth fret?
  7. Start improvising: (1) combine the chordal melody statement with single note arpeggios (from work on the earlier post here) for a single-note solo, (2) combine the chordal melody statement with an octave solo (from the earlier post here), and (3) EXTRA CREDIT use the complex-chord forms to develop of chordal improvisation!


Monday, November 11, 2013

Jazz Guitar Chord Studies: Comping and Complex Chords

The four legs, if you will, of jazz guitar playing are: (1) single-note melody lines based roughly on closed-form, arpeggio chords (covered in a prior post here), (2) single-note "blowing" lines based on modal playing (to be covered in a future post), (3) chordal accompaniment or "comping," that is playing chords behind another instrument, such as a sax, a singer or sprinkling chords within a melody line (covered in this post) and (4) fully harmonized block chord solos (to be covered in a future post). Comping chord forms do not allow for complete voice leading but you can get very close, as I will show in future posts. And, the comping chord forms can be used as a visual aid to running Charlie Christian-style single-note lines (see Jerry Hansen's excellent e-book Charlie Christian: Legends of Jazz Guitar). Since Wes Montgomery started out listening to and learning Charlie Christian solos, it may be that Wes learned the guitar fingerboard this way. In any event, you can get a long way playing jazz guitar with a three-legged stool, that is, modal playing (to be covered in a future post), comping chords and single note lines.


The two chord forms presented above (download the pdf file for reference here) are the G7-form with the root on the low E string and the C7-form with the root on the A or D string. Why can you get so far with these two simple forms? In John Mehegan's words: (1) "Chords of less than a seventh are insufficient for jazz" (p. 11), (2) "Jazz is basically a 'root position' music" (p. 41) and (3) the "sensitive tones" (9, 11, and 13) "… can bring a tonal interest lacking in the root, third, fifth and seventh" (p. 133). John Mehegan was writing about Jazz piano where the left-hand plays the root-position chords and the right-hand plays the improvised arpeggios or modal blowing lines. This isn't possible on guitar (the right hand is busy strumming and the left hand has only four fingers to work with), but the jazz guitarist can get very close to this ideal form of playing as I'll describe in future posts.

The first step in simulating the piano players left hand is to understand how to "grab" any root position chord for accompaniment (either for another instrument of for your own single-note lines). The chord forms pictured above were roughly taken from Chapter II of William Fowler's "Guitar Patterns for Improvisation" (here and here). From the two basic seventh chord forms (G7 and C7) you can derive a large number of jazz chords and provide chordal accompaniment to any jazz chart that has the correct chord symbols for the song.

The problem at this point will be to learn the basic root position chords all over the fingerboard. There are a number of great jazz exercises you will run into on the Internet. The one I like best also helps understand Giant Steps. The exercise starts in some key (I'll pick C), plays a II-V-I progression, changes the I to Im and starts the progression all over again in a key one full step lower (Bb in this case). The first set of changes would be || Dm7 G7 | Cmaj7 (Bb) | Cm7 F7 | Bbmaj7 (Ab)| etc. The entire sequence is:

||: (C) II V | I (Bb) | II V | I (Ab) | II V | I (Gb) | II V | I (E) | II V | I (D) | II V | I (C) :||

And, in twelve measures were back to the key of C again. Coltrane uses I-Im change as a transition into the Giant Steps solo (form Eb to Ebm7 and the key of Db).

In the II-V-I Exercise above (download the pdf file here and the MuseScore mscz file here), I work this set of progressions all over the fretboard using only the root position chords. I've given the fingerings and fingerboard locations. The II-V-I Exercise is based on moving the following form (derived from the graphic above, download the pdf file here) around on the fingerboard starting with the C-maj scale.


To play a four-note open voicing, skip the red dot (which just repeats the 5th). For a five-note, open voicing, just add the fifth. For the broken voicings in the chord table above, skip (x out) the lower 5th and add the upper 5th (red dot). The fingering will be different, but it will be annotated in the I-V-I Exercise when needed.

In the next few posts, I'll take the II-V-I exercise to the tunes SunnyAutumn Leaves and Giant Steps.  These chord forms will also help to understand Charlie Christian-style single note lines, chord substitutions, enclosures and playing out, so we gain a lot from learning and playing a few chord shapes. You can get a long way in jazz guitar playing with a three-legged stool, that is, single-note lines, modal playing and comping chords. In fact, you could play pretty much like Pat Martino, if you had the facility (a big "if")! On a more modest level, with the chord forms pictured above and arpeggios, you could play a jazz version of Sunny with single note improvising and octaves. You could not play a fully harmonized, block chord, Wes Montgomery style solo sitting on this three legged stool, but then neither did Wes on Sunny.

MORE DETAIL:



The basic G7 chord is played R, 5, 7, 3 whether you start on the E-string, the A-string or the D-string. Right now, let's concentrate on the locations of the root, third, fifth and seventh on the E-string, the fingering would be 1,3,1,2, for the A-string the fingering would be 1,3,1,4 and for the D-string, the fingering would be 1,3,2,4). To play Gm7 or Cm7, you would flat the third. To play either Gmaj7 or Cmaj7, you would raise the 7th.



The chord table above presents the most used forms (you can download the pdf file for reference here). For the songs we've covered so far (SunnyAutumn Leaves and Giant Steps), you should be able to find all the chords you need and, as we proceed further along, I'll layout the exact fingerings.

EXERCISES
  1. Start in the key of B-maj and write out the II-V-I Exercise, copying the C-maj II-V-I Exercise above.
  2. Experiment with the "sensitive tones". Try, for example, Bm7 - Eb13 - Abmaj7, the second and third measures of Sunny (here).
  3. Try a minor progression starting with D7sus4 - G7+ - Cm7 (measures 8 and 9 in Sunny).
  4. Identify all the II-V-I progressions in Autumn Leaves and develop exercises from these progressions.
  5. Create your own version of Giant Steps (here) using the following progression ||: (B) II V I (G) II V I (Eb) II V I  (B) II V I (G) II V I (Eb) II V I :|| and fit it into 16 measures.
  6. Find your favorite II-V-I Coltrane lines in his Giant Steps solo (here). Try playing the lines and accompanying yourself with quick II-V-I chord changes after the single-note lines.

Monday, September 9, 2013

John Coltrane: Giant Steps Arpeggios



John Coltrane was a great jazz musician, musical innovator, teacher and student (interestingly, in Philadelphia he studied with jazz guitarist Dennis Sandole). Giant Steps is one of his best known compositions and solos. It encapsulated everything he had learned up to that point in his career and included many of his enduring jazz innovations. It has been recorded by many great jazz musicians (particularly guitarists, for example, Mike Stern's solo and Pat Metheny's solo). It has been studied intensely (see a few references below) and the entire piece has been transcribed and is available (in the video above by Dan Cohen) as "animated sheet music" where the solo is linked directly to the sheet music. Finally, Coltrane's solo makes extensive use of arpeggios, the topic of my last few posts (here, here and here).

Studying Giant Steps is typically not a topic for introductory students. To even scratch the surface of Coltrane's composition, we would need to first cover the cycle of fifths, the major thirds cycle, the Coltrane Changes, modulation, block chords, Be-bop scales, modal jazz scales, chord substitutions, figured bass, II-V-I progressions and lots of jazz theory. All these topics will be covered in future posts, but that's too long to wait to introduce Giant Steps.

There are a number of approaches to soloing over the changes (see the references below), but Coltrane favored arpeggios. I will look at the John Coltrane solo on Giant Steps where the arpeggios and rhythmic variations are particularly easy to recognize and for which we have his basic solo written out for study (contact me if you would like the solo for personal study--many transcriptions on the Internet do not use the correct chord changes, see below).

What would be useful at this point is to listen carefully for the use of arpeggios in the video above and follow the animated sheet music, reading the notes as you go. I would argue that Coltrane uses arpeggios for a specific purpose in the solo, that is, to add dynamic interest (more on that in future posts). While you are reading the music, you will probably be distracted by the weird chord progressions. The sheet music is written in the key of C yet there are actually very few chords native to that key. Also, the lead sheet is written in one set of chord changes and Coltrane solos over a different set of changes. What's going on? If you find this distracting or interesting or both, read the technical note below. Otherwise, concentrate on what you are hearing and listen for the arpeggios.

What I would particularly like you to listen for are (1) the different patterns being used, for example 1-3-5-7, 5-3-1-7 etc., (2) what they sound like to your ear and (3) where do the arpeggios seem to start galloping along, propelling the solo forward. In the pdf file below I have written out the first eight measures of the solo (mouse over the image to see the floating palette and download the file--you can also find the pdf file and the MuseScore msc file here--opening the msc file in MuseScore will allow you to hear the Coltrane solo at reduced speed or listening now to the solo) and annotated the arpeggio and scale patterns being used to get you started (here).

Next, I would like you to play (or listen to here or if you download the msc file and play it in MuseScore here) the Mehegan-style (from John Mehegan's Jazz Improvisation book) arpeggio exercises written over the Giant Step solo changes (here).

It's really hard for me to imagine starting with the Mehegan-style exercise and ending up with the Coltrane solo. If you keep listening to both the Coltrane solo and the arpeggio exercise, you can start to imagine Coltrane playing this over-and-over-again until it becomes a hallucinatory or religious experience (maybe the same as repeated listening to a Bach Chorale). John Mehegan would probably argue that the point of the arpeggio exercise is to come up with "your" Giant Steps solo, not Coltrane's. But, this still begs the question of whether arpeggio exercises are the way to get there.

In future posts, I will take apart the Coltrane solo and fill in different sections with different ideas based on block chordsBe-bop scalesmodal jazz scales, and chord substitutions. In the next post, I'll start by introducing a simplified approach to root-position block chords from William Fowler's Guitar Patterns for Improvisation. Then, I'll return to Giant Steps and move the solo closer to the way I would play it.


TECHNICAL NOTE
Giant Steps is essentially a collection of V-I and II-V-I progressions modulating through three key changes (B-G-Eb). The solo can be looked at in two ways. First, the key of Eb is changed to Eb-minor and the cycle repeats or, second,  the modulation is dropped a whole step and the cycle repeats (A-F-Db)--the reasons are discussed more fully in the references.

In figured bass notation with key signatures in parentheses, the cycle is:

(B) ||: I (G) V |  I (Eb) V | I |
(G) II V | I
(Eb) V | I (B) V | I |

(Eb) II V | I | (G) II V | I | (B) II V | I | (Eb) II V | I | (B) II V :||

I have divided the notation in parts (after the third Eb) because at this point, the II-V-I progression is very clear. Matt Warnock teaches the second part of Giant Steps first because the progression is clearer (see his references below).

To understand the first seven measures, we have to understand the Coltrane Changes. John Coltrane's early career was spent with the blues-bassed Eddie Vinson Band. In figured bass, the standard twelve-bar blues progression is

||: I | IV | I | I | IV | IV| I | I |
  II | V | I | I :||

Going back to an earlier theme of mine, Coltrane became bored with the last four measures and began innovating and experimenting.

II               | II           | V        | I ||
II (bVI) V | I (III) V | I (I) V | I ||
I  (bVI) V | I (III) V | I (I) V | I ||
      m3     P4   m3  P4  m3  p4

The innovation in the third line (the Coltrane Changes) forms the first part of Giant Steps.

For the solo, the key changes are simply replaced with (A-F-Db)--this isn't always correctly annotated in Giant Step transcriptions but is correct in the video above and in the Wikifonia transcription  (here).

Coltrane studied the cycle of fifths, the major thirds cyclemodulation and II-V-I progressions intensely.  Giant Steps, in my view, is what he learned and passed on to us as the product of that intense study. In doing this, he also pushed arpeggios and chord changes to the limit of their usefulness, after which he moved on into modal jazz scales, enclosuresoutside playing (playing out of the arpeggio or scale notes) and avant-garde jazz. Through studying Giant Steps and other Coltrane pieces we benefit from his intense study.

REFERENCES

Matt Warnock
Giant Steps Subs
6 Essential Giant Steps Licks For Jazz Guitar
11 Essential Coltrane Licks
Simplifying the Coltrane Matrix: Part I
Simplifying the Coltrane Matrix: Part 2 Comping and Chord Melody
3 - 9 arpeggios
Soloing over Major II-V-I chord progressions
Jazz Guitar Chords - Coltrane II-V-I Substitutions

Dr. Ronald S. Lemos Shredding Coltrane Changes with the Basic Pentatonic Scale
Jeff Brent's Lessons Giant Steps Analysis
Giant Steps Composition (Wikipedia Page)
Dan Adler The 'Giant Steps' Progression and Cycle Diagrams
Jeff Bair Cyclic Patterns in John Coltrane's Melodic Vocabulary


BACKING TRACKS
Eric Watson plays Giant Steps with a backing track (uses octaves for the melody statement)
Chris Bieniek plays Giant Steps with a Backing Track (uses chords to build excitement in the solo)
Giant Steps (Medium Bossa)
Giant Steps Funk Backing Track
Giant Steps (In Small Steps) B. T.'s by Randy Martin Guitar (uses modal jazz scales)
Giant Steps Guitar Solo (over Absersold) by Ben Rick
Giant Steps (Coltrane) Julio Chumbinho HERRLEIN GUITAR

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Mike Stern Master Class: Improvising on Autumn Leaves


In a few previous posts (here and here) I've claimed that jazz musicians actually use the kinds of arpeggio exercises that I have never had much use for. In this post, I will start providing the proof.

In the video above from a master class, jazz guitarist Mike Stern starts out by first arpeggiating the chords for Autumn Leaves and then takes off with a great example of jazz improvisation. Mike calls the arpeggios "chord turns" and explains how classical composers would outline chord changes in a "particularly beautiful way," for example in the Bach Corales. Jazz musicians can use chord turns for parts of solos as long as they make sure it doesn't sound like an exercise! Mike then goes on to demonstrate with the changes for Autumn Leaves.

In the pdf file (here) and the MuseScore msc file (here) I have written out an arpeggio exercise using the changes Mike was outlining. I've given the fingering for the the first note of each arpeggio in the first eight measures. In the second eight measures, Mike switches to a higher register. I've written these arpeggios out as octaves so you can either player the higher note or play the octave. In the sixth and seventh measures on the second page, Mike plays block chords (Em7, Eb7, Dm7, Db7). These are pretty standard root-position chords that many readers will be able to play. In a future post, I'll describe a very straight-forward way to play root-position chords on guitar, especially now that you are familiar with octaves and arpeggios.

Also, in a future post I'll go on to analyze Mike's solo in more detail. If you're interested, you can find a transcription of a Mike Stern Autumn Leaves solo from the Bob Berg In The Shadows CD here. Comparing the two solos is an interesting exercise in understanding the process of improvisation. One point I want to make here is that Mike knows and can arpeggiate the chord changes to Autumn Leaves by heart. So our first step is memorization! Then we go on to play arpeggios (and maybe throw in some block chords) until we are bored, at which point we move on to try different things that might interest us. In the Bob Berg transcription, Mike uses be-bop scales, side-slipping (outside playing) and guide tones (targeting)--all topics to be explored in future posts on jazz improvising.

In the next post, I will look at John Coltrane's use of arpeggios in his well known solo on Giant Steps. Hopefully, studying the Coltrane solo will provide enough proof that the greatest jazz musicians have made extensive use of arpeggios.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Improvising with Eighth-note Arpeggios


In Lesson 35 (page 57) of John Mehgan's Jazz Improvisation and Rhythmic Principles it is suggested that "as a starting point for improvisation, abandon the melody and play the arpeggios of the chords in eighth notes." In prior lessons in Section V (p. 53) Mehegan describes arpeggios and introduces the concept of arpeggios in rhythm. In a prior post, here, I worked out similar material for jazz guitar. In this post, I'll apply the ideas to the song Sunny by Bobby Hebb.

The pdf file (here, the first few measures are displayed above) provides an example using the changes from Sunny and using Mehegan's approach starting on page 58 of  Jazz Improvisation. I have just indicated the starting string and finger to use for each arpeggio. The fingering patterns are similar to what has already been presented here with some small differences:
  • In the first measure, second line, the descending Abmaj7 arpeggio starts with the +4 fingering notation at 9B. This means that the fourth finger is raised one half step to play the root of the arpeggio, Ab. The same notation is used for the descending Abmaj7 arpeggio in the second measure, third line. The way to think about this is that all the notes of an arpeggio (to include higher order 9ths, 11ths and 13ths) are found in or around the octave. This is the reason I introduced octaves before arpeggios and block chords. It's not the only way to play a descending Abmaj7 arpeggio in two octaves (one could also start with the second finger on Ab on the high E string, that is 2 at 4e) but it retains the octave structure.
  • In the third measure of the third line, note that even though there is a jump between C of the Dm7 chord and G of the G7 chord, the two chordal arpeggios are played in the same position on the guitar. Finally, in the third measure of the first line and the first measure of the third line, the Eb13 chord, the 13th is played as a 6th (C); it could also be played as a seventh (Db) with the 13th (C) played an octave higher than the 6th.
Once you can play all the chordal arpeggios of a song in root position, Mehegan encourages you to be more exploratory: "Do not 'set' the improvised figures. Use the arpeggios both ascending and descending as well as from various inversion points (third, fifth and seventh)" (page 57). The exploration of inversions and higher order tones (9ths, 11ths and 13ths) are exercises you can develop on your own. I would suggest first learning to arpeggiate the chords in root position from memory and then going on to explore inversions and higher order tones, converting the exercise into a real improvisation. Also, explore different rhythmic combinations: half-notes, quarter notes, eight notes, sixteenth notes and 32nd notes (Matt Warnock suggests using triplets involving 3-5-7 in different orders--think in terms of the octave for the root position chord and play the 3-5-7 inversions on the appropriate string). Write out your best ideas in a notebook and use the notebook to developing your own style (John Coltrane kept such a notebook). As before, play everything in different keys.

Now that you have "heard" Mehegan's approach to developing improvisational ideas, you should remain skeptical.  The arpeggios have a particular "sound" and use within an improvisation but must be supplemented with scales, modes, block chords that can be played on guitar and non-chordal tones. All of these topics will be taken up in future posts.

In case you are still resistant to doing exercises (as I was), in the next post I will show that arpeggios are routinely used by jazz musicians. The first example I will use is the song Autumn Leaves from jazz guitarist Mike Stern's master class where Mike explains how he uses "chord turns". In a following post, I will look at the John Coltrane solo in Giant Steps where the arpeggios and rhythmic variations are particularly easy to recognize and for which we have his basic solo written out for study (please contact me if you would like a MuseScore msc file for personal study).

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Friday, May 17, 2013

How to Warm Up For a Practice Session


Jazz Guitarist Matt Warnock recently posted this picture on his Facebook page (here and, no, I really don't look like the guy in the picture, yet). Matt was asking his followers if they had "Any big practice plans for the weekend." A few of them responded asking for suggestions. I can only pass on what my guitar teacher, Roy Plumb, suggested as a warm up exercise other than 2112 By Rush.

Warm Up Exercises by George Pasdirtz

The idea here is to play the ascending 1-3-2-4 pattern on each string and the descending 4-2-3-1 backwards on the same strings after which you move up a fret and repeat the entire pattern until you've reached the 12th fret (hit the "play" button above the score to here the exercise). As your finger strength, dexterity and technique improve you can, when reaching the 12th fret, do everything in reverse back down to the 1st fret. Another option is to make the shift up a fret when your fourth finger reaches the E-string (on the high E-string, 1-3-2-4 shift 4-2-3-1, etc.).

After this, you should be warmed up and ready to play. And, weirdly enough, I find myself using some of these patterns as scales (for short periods) in a solo. I have also heard jazz guitarist Jim Hall mention that he soaks his hands in warm water before playing. I have tried to play in the morning right after showering and it just rips off my calluses, so I'm not sure how he does this, but I'm not sure how Jim Hall does a lot of things (more on that in future posts).

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know. You can also find the .pdf file and the .msc file (for MuseScore, if you have it loaded on your machine) here.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Developing Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Skills

In the last post (here), we started with pretty basic material covering scale-tone seventh chords and arpeggios. The angel on my shoulder says "you have to learn this stuff and there are no short cuts or tricks" while the devil on my shoulder is saying "man, this is really boring stuff, yawn". I just read a post by jazz guitarist Matt Warnock (here) that could help with the devil that just wants to start improvising.

Matt's post was about sight reading skills, how generally poor these skills are among jazz guitarists and finding interesting ways to develop these skills. For myself, I'm great with the top two and the bottom two strings, but not so good with the middle two strings. The reason is simple: I've played a lot of charts written out in the correct register for guitar (an octave higher than the standard lead sheet) and those charts largely make use of the top two strings for melody and the bottom to strings for naming the chord changes (e.g., root position G7 can be played in either 3E or 10A--I'll introduce more of this in future posts). The important point here is that we learn by doing. But what you do is important. Although being bored is also important to jazz creativity, playing obscure sight-reading exercises may be just a little too boring.

Matt's suggestion is brilliant. Get a copy of The Real Book, start on page 1 and sight read four songs a day. Don't worry about fingering technique, use fingerboard charts (here and here) when you get stuck, but just plow through this concentrating on reading the notes and playing the tune. Play everything as written without transcribing up an octave. Since you will know most of the tunes (if you don't, find them on YouTube and get familiar--this is part of learning the jazz book), you will also know when you hit a wrong note.

Another way to do this is to print and play four Wikifonia lead sheets (here) every day. When you are just starting, pick songs you have heard before. As you get better, (1) pick songs you don't know and (2) transpose songs into different keys, increasing the number of flats and sharps over time. Don't annotate the songs for fingerings. Just play and move on.

Matt suggests going on to comp the chord progressions as if you were accompanying a singer, being careful not to conflict with the singer's melody line (which you already know at this point). If you have the The Real Book (pretty much a necessity if you want to work with other jazz musicians), chord comping works great. The changes are quite accurate and sophisticated (in a future post, I'll provide a simple explanation for how to play any root position chord you might find in The Real Book). If you're using the Wikifonia lead sheets, you might run into some problems here since not all the chords are accurate (John Mehegan has a lesson on page 201 of the Jazz Improvisation book titled 'Sheet Music Conversion' which may be necessary for some Wikifonia lead sheets and I'll cover it in a future post, but we need a lot of jazz theory first).

Matt has a number of other great suggestions and I strongly recommend reading his blog entry on Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Skills. The other suggestion I would have is to write a lot of music, but more on that in a future post. For now, here's an example exercise:

Ex. 1 Download four versions of Sunny from Wikifonia (here). Use the "Transpose" button on the right side of the page and choose "+3 (3 flats)" for the first (key of E flat major),  choose "+5 (1 flat)" for the second (key of F major), choose "-5 (1 sharp)" for the third (key of G major) and finally choose "0 (-)" for the fourth (key of C major). Play the melody for each version without annotation. Play the melody in both single-note and octaves. Play each at different positions on the fingerboard (for the E-flat key signautre, try the third and the tenth fret). Then, return to a question posed in an earlier post (here): Does Wes Montgomery make any key changes in his version of Sunny (here)?

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Jazz Guitar Basics: Scale-Tone Seventh Chords



Closed Form Arpeggio Chords by George Pasdirtz

In a prior post (here) I wrote out a simplified Wes Montgomery-style solo in octaves based on the C-minor scale. In my first attempt to play Sunny, forty years ago, I tried to play a harmonized version of the song and failed. I just didn't have enough background information and basic musical knowledge to do what I wanted to do. Even if I had been shown how to play the octave solo, I wouldn't have known why I was using the C-minor scale and what, if anything, it had to do with the song.

In this post, I'll start developing the necessary musical theory. I think that my guitar teacher, Roy Plumb, somehow assumed that I had received some background in musical theory, maybe playing some instrument as a child, but I hadn't. In any event, I would have been way too impatient to plow through all of this. After forty years of playing jazz guitar, I can only say to the person I was in 1970: "You need to do this".

"This" will essentially be working through the first few sections of John Mehegan's Jazz Improvisation book and translating it from piano to guitar. I strongly suggest you order the book. I am only going to provide enough to make it useable by the jazz guitarist. Part of the learning process will be to work through the rest for yourself.

The central argument in Mehegan's book is stated in the introduction to Section V Arpeggios:

The basic problem of jazz improvisation is to abandon the melody and build an improvised line on the elements of the chords in a tune...The chord elements are as follows: (1) Arpeggios; (2) Scales; (3) Chromatic tones (p. 53).

This will involve doing a lot of exercises with arpeggiosscales and chords. Mehegan argues that this is precisely what jazz musicians do and, back in 1970, I would have been skeptical. In future posts I will try to prove this argument by playing video of a Mike Stern master class where he describes how to improvise on the song Autumn Leaves and also a video analysis of John Coltrane's solo on Giant Steps (if you want to skip ahead, the videos are here and here). If you have an ear for jazz, the videos will tell you that Mehegan is right and that he accurately describes jazz played at its highest level.

The sheet music at the start of this post is divided into Figures.  This is a lot of basic, necessary background material on music theory and the briefest way to present it is by describing each Figure for you to work with yourself (you can right-click on the sheet music, "Open Image In New Window," and   print the window out for your personal study).

Figure 1. C Major Scale  Western music has evolved based on the diatonic or major scale (you can read more of that history here). In the C-major scale, there are seven distinct notes identified with consecutive letters starting with C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The intervals are T-T-S-T-T-T-S where T is a whole tone (two fret interval on guitar, a major second) and S is a semi-tone (one fret interval, a half step).   A to A would be the natural or relative minor with intervals T-S-T-T-S-T-T (to be discussed below).

Figure 2. Closed Form Chords in Thirds Diatonic harmony builds chords in thirds with each successive scale tone forming the lowest note, the root of the chord. The notes are described by root, 3rd, 5th and 7th. In John Mehegan's words "Chords of less than a seventh are insufficient for jazz (p. 11)". Chords that contain degrees greater than a seventh (9th, 11th and 13th) are considered complex chords, which I'll discuss in a future post. The Roman numerals under each chord (from I - VII) are called Figured Bass Notation. They are the "Abstract Truth" of music theory for the jazz musician and open up a more general understanding of chord progressions and "where chords come from" (much more about that in future posts). Songs never follow the chords in order from I-VII (to hear this, hit the "play button" at the top of the sheet music above). A common chord progression in Figured Bass might be II-V-I, for example, as an ending to a song. Figured Bass lets us abstract from Am7-G7-Cmaj7 chords and see the underlying abstract structure of the progression. It's important to note that, due to standard guitar tuning, the closed form chords in Figure 2 are generally not playable (more about that below). The chords can and should, however, be played as arpeggios.

Figure 3. Intervals John Mehegan makes the point that "No jazz musician thinks of lettered chords when he is playing; he hears interval steps based on the distance between one chord and another" (p. 8). Figure 3 shows the basic intervals of the C scale with guitar fingerings. The name of the interval is given beneath each interval and below the name is the guitar string where either the second or first finger of the left hand sounds the note. The finger used to sound the upper note of the interval is indicated by the note. The string on which to play the upper note can be found on the Fingerboard Chart (here). You are already familiar with the octave fingering (the 8th) from a prior post (here). The notes for the other intervals are found either within or above the octave. Here is your chance to start playing something that is important for understanding both music theory and improvising. A lot of interest in jazz solos is generated when you play an interval other than a 2nd (chromatic tones) or 3rd (chordal tones). Learn to hear, sing and play these intervals to let your ear tell you where to use them in a solo. For sure, be able to hear, sing and play middle C and then be able to work up to intervals from there (these are the first steps in ear training, an essential skill for jazz improvisation).

Figure 4. Interval Groups Intervals can be further classified into groups: P for perfect, S for secondary, o for diminished, + for augmented, M for major and m for minor. The interval group names are used to describe the qualities of chords (discussed in a future post).

Figure 5. C Major Scale in Two Octaves, A-string Unlike the piano where the notes are sitting in front of you (once you've located middle C) as either white or black keys, guitarists have to rely on fingering patterns and, because of the standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E), there are different patterns at different points on the finger board.  The first step in learning the fingerboard and fingerboard patterns is to start playing scales. Figure 5 shows the C-major scale in two octaves starting at the 3rd fret of the A-string. For this scale, I've annotated not only the fret and string (second finger of the left hand on 3A, to start) but the finger to play each note on that string. When you change strings moving up the scale, for example from the A-string to the D-string, the position for the next note is shown at the appropriate fret (first finger at 2D, for example). The last fingering annotation, +4, indicates that you move the fourth finger up to get the final note, which is high D in this case.

Figure 6. C Minor Scale, A-String The fingerboard pattern for the C-minor scale should be somewhat familiar to you since you used the C-minor scale to play the octave solo for Sunny (here). However, to make things more complicated, this scale is different from the one used in Sunny. It is the Ascending Melodic Minor scale (also know as the jazz minor scale) and has only one flat (1 2 -3 4 5 6 7 8).  The scale played in Sunny is called the Natural Minor scale and has three flats (1 2 -3 4 5 -6 -7 8). There is yet another minor scale called the Harmonic Minor scale and it has two flats (1 2 -3 4 5 -6 7 8). And, to top it off, the Descending Melodic Minor scale is the same as the Natural Minor Scale. Confused yet (I'll talk about this in a future post after we've had more music theory)? To play the jazz minor scale as single notes, a different fingering pattern from the major scale is used starting with the first finger on 3A. Notice that the first G-note in the scale is annotated as -4; this means that the fourth finger is positioned one fret lower than normal. This is because we are about to make a pattern shift to having the first finger on 2G for the A-note. Extra Credit: work out the fingering for the relative minor scale (A-minor) discussed in Figure 1. Extra Extra Credit: work out the fingering for the Natural and the Harmonic minor scales in C. Play the Ascending and Descending Melodic Minor scales together. Listen to the differences.

Figure 7. Arpeggios C Scale Fingerings Within the pattern for the C-major scale, we can find patterns for arpeggiating each of the chords in the scale. In the annotation, I have just indicated the string on which to play the chord's root and the fingers to use in playing the other chordal tones. I leave it to you to find the correct string without shifting position. For reasons I will discuss below, once you learn the various finger board patterns for playing each chord, you will find it easy to simply annotate the fret, string (3A, for example) and the left-hand finger to use, 2 for example.

Figure 8. Arpeggios Octave Fingering Since you are already familiar with octaves from playing Sunny (here), thinking in terms of octaves generates some very easy finger board patterns to play and remember. Once you know the fingerboard, you can use these patterns to arpeggiate any chord at any point on the fingerboard. For now, concentrate on identifying the pattern you are playing and where the notes are located on the fingerboard; your goal is to read the notes, not to read the fingerings.

Figure 9. Ending Example I With the knowledge you've developed so far, you can play a simple improvised ending. The progression in Figured Bass notation is I-II / III-IV /V-VI-VII-I / I6. I will leave the fingering to you but first play it starting at 2A and, as extra credit, try to play it again starting at 8E with different fingering. The C6 final chord is a great jazz guitar barre chord played by pressing down multiple strings with the first and second fingers (work at this chord until you can sound all the notes cleanly as a prelude to block chord playing, to be introduced in future posts).

Figure 10. Ending Example II To confirm my initial statement that very few closed-form chords can be played on guitar, I've provided another ending example that uses two closed-form chords, D flat maj7 and C6. At the end I provide another C6 chord that can be played at 7D with an open A-string annotated with 0 (zero). Extra credit: Why can't we play all the closed form chords as block chords?

Figure 11. Name That Tune For extra credit, here's a progression that I really don't expect you to be able to identify but that I will reveal in future posts: VI / II Ix. For now, use it as a brief sight reading exercise.

Figure 12. Guitar Range There are two effective ranges for guitar depending on the type of guitar. For a classical guitar, the effective range stops at high E (or slightly above it for single notes). The electric jazz guitar with a cutaway can go all the way up to high B or slightly higher.

Figure 13. Double Octaves To round out your ability to play octaves, you can also play double octaves as Wes Montgomery does on the song Bumpin' on Sunset (starting at 1:48 in the video until about 2:50--this may well be the ONLY recorded, prolonged playing of double octaves in the history of jazz guitar and you can find the solo written out in the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method which may now be entirely out of print and unavailable).

Figure 14. C Major Scale in Two Octaves, E-string Here is the answer to the extra credit question in Figure 9. It is also important (particularly for writers and arrangers) to realize that you can play the same named note in at least two different places on the guitar. The notes are in different registers and sound different, that is, have a different colour (for example, play middle-C at 3A or 8E and listen to the difference). For this reason alone, annotation is very important. If the score isn't annotated, the guitarist will have to make some decisions about which register to play chords in and do the necessary annotation before playing.

Figure 15. C Minor Scale in Two Octaves, E-string Here is the fingering for the C-minor (jazz minor) scale. Concentrate on reading the notes and learning the pattern.

The reason that these exercises are subtitled "Creativity Through Boredom" is that the path to jazz improvisation is through the boredom of arpeggio, scale and chord exercises. The necessary path to really understanding a lead sheet such as Sunny is through playing the melody, arpeggiating the chords, trying different scales (such as the C-minor scale), playing accompaniment chords (comping) and developing chord solos. All these will be covered in more detail in future posts. But the idea is always the same: play these as exercises until you know the song by heart. The minute you start becoming bored, abandon the exercises and do something you find more interesting. At this point, you have the  necessary intimate understanding of what you're doing to start being creative. You hope that your audience also finds it interesting!

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know. You can also find the .pdf file and the .msc file (for MuseScore, if you have it loaded on your machine) here.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

"That Doesn't Work, Does It?"


One of the questions raised by my last post was: How does a Jazz musician come up with chord progressions that are somehow "better" or more interesting than the ones provided in a commercial lead sheet? In future posts, I will use this question to motivate a detailed look at Jazz harmony--a topic about which I knew nothing when I started trying to play Jazz guitar. But first, I want to play my favorite clip from the movie Amadeus (above) since it provides a wonderful illustration of Jazz improvisation.

In the first part of the clip, the composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is seen composing a "March of Welcome" to be played by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), a patron of the arts and amateur piano player, at the Emperor's first meeting with Mozart (Tom Hulce). Salieri is seen noodling around at the piano trying to come up with a melody line which, when it falls into place, he thanks God for the inspirational moment.

The scene then cuts to the Emperor trying, not very successfully, to play Salieri's March as Mozart enters the room not knowing that it is the Emperor at the fortepiano. As the Emperor continues to play, Salieri beams with pride over the accomplishments of his illustrious student. Upon finishing the piece, the Emperor offers the manuscript to Mozart as a remembrance. Mozart claims not to need the manuscript because he has already, on one hearing, memorized the piece. The Emperor asks him to prove it and Mozart sits down at the pianoforte and plays it through once flawlessly.

On the second time through he starts critiquing the piece and starts improvising over a more sophisticated harmonic line, transforming Salieri's "trifle" into the "No more gallivanting" march from the Marriage of Figaro.

Essentially, this is the process of Jazz improvisation:  try to get the composers intent from either hearing the song (if you have great ears like Mozart) or reading the sheet music. You are probably going to find the sheet music a little boring, as Mozart did,  so you go about adding chord changes "that work better" and a more interesting melody line. It helps to have a good understanding of Jazz harmony so you don't have to sit at the piano, as Salieri did, and pick out notes until you figure something out.

Amadeus is one of my favorite movies. It sets up the conflict between genius (Mozart) and mediocrity (Salieri) so beautifully. Salieri is a good enough musician and composer (he was quite good, quite popular in his time and his music is still played) to know genius when he hears it and to know that he isn't at the same level. One can be sympathetic!


NOTE: If you can't wait to find out the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post ("How do Jazz musicians come up with chord progressions that work?), start reading Lesson 76. on page 201 of John Mehegan's Jazz Improvisation: Tonal and Rhythmic Principles. If you get lost, back track to the beginning of the book and work your way back to page 201. If you are a Jazz guitarist, in future posts I will work my way slowly through Mehegan's book, which was written for piano, and translate the main ideas to guitar.



Friday, February 22, 2013

Wes Montgomery -- Sunny

Sunny by George Pasdirtz

I'm going to skip a bit ahead and layout an octave solo with a re-harmonized chord progression for Sunny (the first song I tried to play on jazz guitar--the background for this lesson is in earlier posts, particularly here). You can compare the octave solo and re-harmonization to the original lead sheet (you can download a MuseScore file here, but you will have to change the key to Eb/Cm). I'll explain how to play the chords in a harmonized solo and the music theory behind the reharmonization in later posts. For now, I'll just describe the octave solo and give you a challenging assignment to work on once you can play the octave solo.

The notation here is similar to the last post that showed the fingering for playing the C-minor scale in octaves (here with fingering charts here and here). To avoid clutter in the fingering above, I've just provided notation at the start of a sequence of notes that are played on the same strings. For example, we start the song playing an octave using the first finger on 5D (the fifth fret, third string up from low E) and the fourth finger on 8B, skipping the G-string in between. I don't change the fingering notation as long as we stay on the same string. When we change strings, for example in the second half of the second measure, the new fret position is annotate below (since the 1-4 fingering pattern stays the same, it is not changed). If you need help at any point with the fingering, go back to the C-minor scale in the previous post (here) where every position is identified for every note. The finger notation will eventually be reserved for difficult passages or where you want to make sure to start at a particular position on the finger board (since there are multiple places to play most notes). Right now you should be concentrating on learning where the notes are on the fingerboard.

Hopefully, while you are learning the octave solo you are also listening to the Wes Montgomery version of Sunny (here). Listen particularly to the jazz guitar approach which is hard to capture in notation (to play the stilted midi version of Sunny, hit the "Play" button in the upper left-hand corner above the score). Try to move your solo closer to Wes' approach. Also notice that the last two measures of the song are used as an introduction and as an extended vamp (or ostinato) after the first two improvisations.

Once you can play the octave solo, start listening to Wes improvise on the second and third times through the tune. Here's your assignment: does Wes continue playing in the same key or are there any key changes? If so, how many key changes and to what keys does he change? In a future post, I'll return to this issue as well as to the extend vamp after the first two improvisational choruses (HINT: Wes' entire approach to this tune can be described as a vamp or ostinato).

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know.

"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method: Octaves

The exact path I took to learn how to play block chords as Wes Montgomery did on Too Late Now is a little blurred after over 40 years of studying guitar. My guess is that after hearing Too Late Now I realized that I would have to start out with a simpler tune and purchased other Wes Montgomery records, most of which were in my collection until very recently. My guess is that I bought the album California Dreaming which was released in 1966 and maybe a few other of Wes' pop records (although critics consider these songs pop fluff, they are great for learning Jazz guitar). In any event, my search for a simpler tune ended up with Sunny by Bobby Hebb (Sunny is one cut on California Dreaming you can download from iTunes or listen to Wes play here). I also, at some point, purchased the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method.

With sheet music for Sunny from Patti Music (in Madison, WI) and some instructional books, I somehow figure out how to play enough chords to get about 3/4 of the way through Sunny, but then got stuck or at least realized that I needed help. I started asking around about guitar teachers and everyone pointed to Roy Plumb. I played 3/4 of Sunny as my audition and told him I wanted to play like Wes Montgomery. Roy must have had an opening (I had to be available at a specific time every week during the day) and what I played or said was good enough to get me in (I have heard that he turned away some Rock musicians who would eventually become his students).

What I'd like to do in the next few posts is look back on that period with what I know today and fill in some of the stumbling blocks that faced me in trying to play a Jazz version of Sunny. What I'm going to assume is that if I got anything useful from instructional books, it was from the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method (last I checked there was one used book available on Amazon, but it is probably quickly going out of print and out of circulation), so I'll start there.

C Minor Scale in Octaves by George Pasdirtz

The book starts out explaining how to use your thumb for single-note playing. The sample given is the break from Tear It Down. I doubt that I even tried to play the excerpt (I still can't play it at speed with my thumb)! The book moves on to octave playing with some simple exercises. I probably worked on these since Wes plays mostly octaves on Sunny (I'm not sure if I actually played octaves for my audition). The technique is illustrated in the photos above. From the guitar fingerboard (here and here) you can see that octaves (the same note, one octave higher) can be found either three of four frets higher (depending on the string) if you skip one string in between. The left-hand technique involves playing the lower note of the octave with the first finger, deadening the next string with the first finger and then finding the higher octave note on the next string either with the third or the fourth finger. The right-hand technique can either involve playing with the thumb, playing with the first- and third-finger using Classical guitar technique (sometimes called parallel octaves), or with a pick.

One very important point about octave playing comes from Jesse Gress in a Guitar Player article (here):

The trick with octaves is to focus on either the lower (my personal preference) or upper notes only and let the higher octaves “shadow” the lower notes, or vice versa. 

I have tried both concentrating on the lower and the upper notes of the octave when playing and typically I concentrate on the lower note in descending lines and the upper note in ascending lines. Symptoms that I have lost my concentration are usually not playing a clean octave, that is, sounding the strings that are supposed to be deadened or playing a 7th interval rather than an octave. If you're having these problems, concentrate on playing one note in the octave and let the other note take care of itself (let it "shadow" the primary note).

The staff above has some better notation. The fingering is shown to the left of the notes and the fret and string for the first finger is given below. The first note of the C minor scale (in the Key of E flat) starts at the third fret of the A-string and the octave higher C is played on the G-string (skipping the D-string) on the fifth fret. Notice that when we get to the D-string, the first and the fourth fingers are used (the right photograph in the picture above). I've also added a few more extra notes in the last measure to complete all the notes you would need to play the Wes Montgomery version of Sunny in octaves. Also notice that if you start in the second measure with E-flat and go to the second note of the last measure, you have the E-major scale. Why the E-major scale is contained within the C-minor scale (or actually, vice versa) will require an understanding of some music theory which I didn't have when I started playing but will explain in future posts.

Octave playing is a great initial exercise for learning the keyboard and building hand strength, speed and precision playing. Play the C-minor scale linearly from C-to-C and then try to skip notes and create improvised ideas. Try to find other notes from the C-minor scale at other places on the keyboard and try building them into your solos. Learning the guitar keyboard is no trivial matter. The white and black keys are not sitting there staring at you along with middle-C on the piano. Try writing out your good improvised ideas and note the correct fingering.


The reason I chose the C-minor scale in the key of E-flat is that it is the scale Wes Montgomery used to improvise on Sunny and the key he plays the song in. The first four measures of Sunny are displayed above. You should have enough information now to play these measures. When I explain block chords (the symbols above staff), I will provide notation for the chords and get into not only chord solos but also single note solos, which Wes does not use on Sunny but which we could try to imagine and play for ourselves. In future posts, I will also discuss what to do with sheet music when the chord notation is incomplete or even wrong (see the lead sheet for Sunny at Wikifonia here, change the key using the "Transpose" feature changing it to "+3 (3 flats)" and compare the first four measures above). These are all the problems I ran into when I started playing. Now they look easy, then they were insurmountable without help.

For today's aspiring Jazz guitarist, there is a wealth of information available on the Internet: YouTube videos of great players (Wes MontgomeryPat Martino, Kenny Burrell, George Benson,  George Van Eps,  Barney Kessel, Joe PassLarry Coryell, Lee RitenourJohn McLaughlinEmily Remler, Steve Kahn, Pat MethenyGabor Szabo, Attila Zoller, Jim Hall, John PizzarelliCharlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Ximo Tebar, Graham Dechter, Bireli Larene, Philip Catherine, John Scofield Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana,  Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mike Stern, and many others) video Jazz guitar instruction (here), Jazz guitar solo transcriptions (here, here and here) sites devoted to music theory and analysis, sites that make sheet music available (wikifonia), etc. etc. Some of the instructional material is similar to what was available 40 years ago when I started, unintegrated tidbits from a complex topic. If given enough time, I will try to present what I know in an integrated manner.

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know. You can also find the .pdf file and the .msc file (for MuseScore, if you have it loaded on your machine) here.