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!

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 Sunny, Autumn 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 (Sunny, Autumn 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.