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!