Pasquale Grasso Wins the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Competition

The winner of the 2015 Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition has been announced and it is New York guitarist Pasquale Grasso. Second place went to Roland Balogh of Budapest Hungary and third place to Michael Valenu of New New York.  You can see all the finalists video submissions here.

In the video above, Pasquale is playing Just One of Those Things with Pat Bianchi on B3 and Carmen Intoree on drums (you can hear this backup group behind Pat Martino at the 2014 Lotos Jazz Festival here). This song, played a break-neck speed, is a good demonstration of Pasquale's facility and approach to playing.

Now that you've seen the winner and the finalists, would you think about entering next year's competition? In future posts I'll present what I think would be an interesting strategy to pursue for any young guitarist that might be interested.

Wes Montgomery Competition Finalists: Pick the Winner!

The 5 finalists for the Wes Montgomery international Jazz Guitar Competition were announced on September 1, 2015 (for background read my earlier post here or visit the website here). In alphabetical order they are:

• Roland Balogh from Budapest, Hungary.
• Pasquale Grasso from Italy.
• Lucian Gray from Toronto, Canada.
• Michael Valeanu born in Paris but now residing in New York.
• Dan Wilson from Akron, Ohio, US.

I have included their video submissions below (you can find their other submissions on the website here). After listening to the finalists, I have my favorites. Can you pick the winner? What do the selections tell you about the criteria used by the judges (compare your guesses to mine here).












The 30 semi-finalists were announced in September (here). What is a bit surprising to me is that Graham Dechter was not a finalist. I've included Graham's video submission below. My guess is that Graham is considered an already established guitarist.



Graham is playing a great song by Josh Nelson "Takin' It There". In a future post, I'll analyze the songs that were used in the submissions and give you a chance to match your technique to the finalists.

The winners will be announced at a concert given by the finalists on October 10, 2015 at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. If you're free, it should be interesting!

So You Want To Play Like Wes Montgomery, Part 1

This post originally started out recapping my history trying to learn jazz guitar (starting with early  Wes Montgomery recordings), only because I think I made some mistakes that I would encourage students not to make as they learn the guitar. But things have changed as explained in my last post (here). There is now a Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition. This is only the first year for the competition. How long it will last I do not know but my hope is that it lasts for a very long time. In any event, if you enter the competition, you have to confront the Wes Montgomery jazz guitar legacy (certainly, this is one of the purposes of the competition). So, whether or not you want to play like Wes Montgomery, you will have to decide before the competition how much like Wes Montgomery (if at all) you intend to play for the submission. To do that, you have to learn something about how Wes Montgomery played. If you are an instructor teaching jazz guitar, you might have to deal with more student interest in Wes Montgomery.

Suppose a guitar student shows up (as I did forty years ago) and says "I want to play like Wes Montgomery" or "I want to enter the Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition". What do you say to them? Is there a book you can give them? Is there an educational program you can put them on that they can complete? Is there someone you could point to who has actually done this?

First off, it might be a poorly stated goal. Did I mean I wanted to follow the steps Wes Montgomery did to learn Jazz Guitar? If so, don't read this blog, don't look for a teacher or for an instructional book, since Wes did none of these things. He started with a four string tenor guitar given to him by his older brother Monk Montgomery. He switched to a six string when he heard his first Charlie Christian record. He worked out and memorized all the Charlie Christian solos he found on records. He went out in Indianapolis clubs and played these solos note for note. He played so well he got a job with the Lionel Hampton band (Hampton worked with Christian in the Benny Goodman band and was looking for the Christian sound in his band). Wes never had a formal teacher (the best teacher in Indianapolis was all booked with students). He evidently never read instructional books (this is a little hard to believe but what the books of that era contained was pretty poor in any event). He worked everything out by brute-force saying that every guitarist has "the same six strings I do". He stumbled onto octave playing and playing with his thumb by chance. He never used his fourth finger when playing single-note lines. He played sophisticated chord voicings but struggled with the names for the chords and could not read music.

It's safe to say that today (1) no one knows exactly how Wes Montgomery learned to play jazz guitar since he did it by himself and never wrote an instructional book and (2) no one would or could ever duplicate exactly the steps Wes went though learning the instrument. However, in the words of drummer Jimmy Cobb, "He left a whole lot of stuff there for you to work on, if you're a guitar player" (Fitzgerald, 2009: 1). Unencumbered by instruction and surrounded by great musicians (Monk Montgomery, Buddy Montgomery, Mel Rhyne, the Lionel Hampton Band and more) and great music, Wes discovered new territory for the jazz guitar. In the post-Montgomery era, this new territory has been well studied (see references below).

The bigger challenge for jazz guitarists today is to understand what was discovered by Wes Montgomery and build on it. The person that succeeds at this will stand a good chance of winning the Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition and will, at least, be a very competent jazz guitarist.

A place to start would be to see what has been written about playing in the style of Wes Montgomery. Here's a summary of topics, some of which I have already covered or will cover in future posts (references and interesting quotes below):

1. Play With Your Thumb (tornado in classical guitar technique). If you don't think you can play fast enough or are just coping Wes Montgomery lines, listen to Jim Mullen or Emily Remler. 
2. Play Octaves using jazz guitar technique or classical guitar technique (parallel octaves). See my prior post here. Also, learn to play double octaves (for example, Bumpin' on Sunset transcribed in Sokolow, 1988: 28-33).
3. Use a fat body arch-top jazz guitar (Wes used a Gibson L-5 CES, way too expensive now--there are many other excellent reasonably priced jazz guitars, for example the Epiphone Joe Pass, the Aria Pro guitars and others).
4. Play along with recordings. Wes memorized Charlie Christian solos from records but he also slowed down the turntable to study Giant Steps and communicated with Creed Taylor using tape recorded songs. In Wes' era, turntable or tape speeds could be slowed down to learn songs. Since we can no longer do that with digital media, consider using a free audio-editor and recorder such as Audacity and use the "Change Speed Effect" which does not change pitch while slowing the recording down. 
5. Watch Wes Montgomery play the guitar in every video you can find (for example, Wes Montgomery Live in '65 Full Concert). Notice that Wes never gets locked into a box, he is always moving fluidly up and down the neck in response to the flow of his improvisation. Most of the improvisation is done on the top four strings, especially in the higher registers (possibly a holdover from Wes' start on the four-string tenor guitar). Compare these visuals to, for example, Pat Martino (particularly the Pat Martino Trio -- Lotus Jazz Festival 2014) who seems to work mainly on the middle four strings all over the neck.
6. Learn the Blues (for example, Blues in F, Blue Monk, Twisted Blues, and many others). Be sure to read the excellent discussions of Missile Blues (Marhsall, 2001: 9-10), West Coast Blues (Marshall, 2001: 24), Naptown Blues (Sokolow, 1988: 70), Movin' Wes Part I (Sokolow, 1988: 55) and Movin' Wes Part II (Sokolow, 1988: 92).
7. Learn to swing (it's hard to teach but there is a good discussion by Emily Remler here).
8. Play Ballads (required by Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition for example Misty, Ghost of a Chance, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, Serene,  Angel Eyes and more).
9. Play Pop Music and Smooth Jazz (The origins of Smooth Jazz have been traced to the albums by Creed Taylor and Wes Montgomery, for example the Bumpin' album).
10. Play Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz (for example, How Insensitive, Here's That Rainy Day, Watch What Happens, Besame Mucho, Nica's Dream, and more)
11. Play Rock (for example, Green Peppers, Goin on to Detroit, Winds of Barcelona, Wind Song, Goin Out of My Head, Windy, Eleanor Rigby, and more).
12. Learn to "first play the lead sheet form before you attempt the stylistic solo" (Garson et. al, 1968: 18). Make sure to add bluesy touches to the lead sheet; don't play it straight. Most lead sheet melodies can be played easily within two-octave boxes choosing the position based on the key signature. The boxes extend nicely on the top four strings, showing how Wes Montgomery certainly visualized the fingerboard. If you don't have a lead sheet, play the melody along with a recording and memorize it (how Wes did it) or write out the melody and make your own lead sheet (for the chords, play the bass line and use Figured Bass--I'll talk more about this in future posts but also see Mehegan, 1959: Chapter 76). 
13. When improvising "retain enough of the notes of the original melody to maintain the feeling of the tune"(Garson et. al, 1968: 18). Either explicitly or implicitly target the melody notes (Garson et. al, 1968: 18).
14. Play Vamps and Ostinatos (for example, Movin' Wes Part II, Scarborough Fair, and Sunny).
15. Use three-part structure improvisations (single-note, octaves, and chords, for example Full House). Wes did deviate from the pattern leaving out a single-note or a chordal improvisation but my guess is that he experimented with each form before deciding what worked best for the song, for example compare Sunny and Sunny (Alternate Take). In the more commercial records, the decisions were often made for him to just play octaves (Ingram, 2008: 47). 
16. When playing single-note solos, visualize the Comping and Complex Chord shapes  of the underlying harmony as Charlie Christian did (Hansen, 2001) and Wes surely picked up through transcription.
17. When playing scales use  sweep-picking, especially effective with the thumb (see useful closed-form arpeggio fingerings and exercises here).
18. Learn to play chords (triads, chords built in thirds, chords built in fourths, and spread chords) and chord scales. A useful place to start is with Comping and Complex Chord shapes which are root-position chord forms widely used in jazz (you can pick up inversions later or see Fowler, 1977:5).
19. Learn voice-leading, harmonization of non-chordal tones, treatment of appoggiatura, treatment of chordal anticipations, and  reharmonization of lead sheets (see Garson, 1968).
20. Play every Wes Montgomery transcription (here) and Charlie Christian transcription you can get your hands on (Hansen, 2001).
21. Listen to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow (Ingram, 2008: 50) musicians  who Wes liked and studied.
22. Listen to and use Big Band horn section ideas and arrangements, particularly call and response (for example,  Twisted Blues, Naptown Blues,  Movin' Wes Part II, and others). 
23. Write your own songs (possibly as a jazz contrafact). In Adrian Ingram's (2008) discography, Wes Montgomery is credited with writing forty-five songs. Start with Blues Structure, add II-V-I progressions, add Cycle of Fifths, use some unexpected chords.

This would be a lot to have to study in preparation for a guitar competition! For the current Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition, you are going to have to be selective. One idea would be to chose the cover song you want to play, identify all the Wes Montgomery stylistic elements and bring them in to your other selections. You might also want to listen to the current submissions (here) to evaluate your competition on the Wes Montgomery stylistic elements listed above.

So far, I have posted about octaves, arpeggios, melody statements and complex comping chords. I'll try to pick up the rest of the topics over time, but I have one word of caution. We do not know definitively how Wes Montgomery approached jazz guitar playing. We know that Wes did not have a formal teacher "Wes did remember though that he once tried to get some guitar lessons for Indianapolis guitarist Alex Stevens (without success) " (Ingram, 2008: 16). We know from video recordings that his approach was somewhat idiosyncratic (he evidently did not use his fourth left-hand finger for single note playing although he did use the fourth finger for octaves on the top two strings). We know that Wes understood more musical theory than he would openly admit (he said he did not know the names of the chords he was playing but proceeded to give Pim Jacobs, here,  a sophisticated discussion of chord changes and substitutions in End of a Love Affair in the BBC sessions). Utlimately, Wes' comment that other guitarists were playing with the "same six strings I have" saves us here. We are all playing with the same six strings Wes did.

The title of this post implies that there will be future posts where I add my own insights to this list. It is also a play on the title on two great Wes Montgomery tunes Movin' Wes, Part 1 and Movin' Wes Part 2.

QUOTES

"...by the time he had reached his twentieth birthday he was playing Charlie Christian solos regularly at the 440 Club" in Columbus, Ohio" (Ingram, 2008: 12).

"I...[Wes]...even took his album 'Giant Steps' and played it at 16 rpm to study what he...[Coltrane]...was doing and every note was correct." (Ingram, 2008: 53)

"I...[Creed Taylor]...worked with the arranger, he would put a piano sketch on tape and send it to Wes  wherever he happened to be on the road.  He'd rehearse between jobs and then come into the studio to record. He didn't read at all..." (Ingram, 2008: 34).

"These few minutes in discussion with pianist Jacobs lay to rest one of the mythologies surrounding Wes and the nature of his musicianship. How often in liner notes and articles have we been dutifully reminded of Wes's supposed inability to read music, the fact that he was 'self-taught' and all of the other points of lore trotted out to somehow mystify the genius that is utterly self-evident in the legacy that is his music?"

"In a particularly illuminating exchange, we see Wes discussing the harmony with pianist Jacobs. In requesting one of his favorite variations on the tune's ...[The End of a Love Affair]... descending harmonies we hear a musician not only fluent in the traditional nomenclature of harmony, but one who is thoroughly enlightened, eloquent and direct. (Instead of Bbm7/Eb7/Abmaj7 direct to the following Abm7/db7/Gbmaj7, Wes requests that an additional II-V anticipating the next change a half step higher be added to set up the next sequence, resulting in Bbm7/Eb7/Abmaj7/Am7/D7/ the onto Abm7/Db7/Gbmaj7 etc.)" (Metheny, 2007: 7-9).



REFERENCES

(If you are aware of further references, let me know and I'll add them to the list.)

Amazon Wes Montgomery.

Pete Billlmann and Paul Pappas (nd). Wes Montgomery Guitar Anthology. Milwaukee, Wisconsin:Hall Leonard.

Dan Bowden (1995) Wes Montgomery: The Early Years. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications.

Corey Christiansen (2001) Essential Jazz Lines in the style of Wes Montgomery. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications.

Tim Fitzgerald (2009) 625 Alive: The Wes Montgomery BBC Performance Transcribed. Tim Fitzgerald Music.

William L Fowler (1977) Guitar Patterns for Improvisation. Chicago, IL: Maher Publications.

Lee Garson, Jimmy Stewart and Charles Stewart (1968) Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method. New York: Robbins Music.

Ralph Gleason (1961) Wes Montgomery.

Dave Gould (2013) Wes Montgomery Interviews: Interview by Ralph J Gleason first published in Guitar Player Magazine in 1973

Dave Gould (2013) Wes Montgomery Obituaries

Jesse Gress (1998) The Godfather of Cool: Wes Montgomery's Baddest Solos Note for Note. Guitar Player Magazine.

Jess Gress (2008) 10 Things You Gotta Do to Play like Wes Montgomery. Guitar Player Magazine.

Garry Hansen (2001) (ebook) Charlie Christian - Legend of the Jazz Guitar Scrib

Jamie Holroyd (2013) Play Like Wes Montgomery Today.

Adrian Ingram (2008) Wes Montgomery. Ashley Mark Publishing.

Henry Johnson (2006) Mel Bay Presents: Wes Montgomery Best of Boss Guitar. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications.

Steve Kahn (1995) The Wes Montgomery Guitar Folio. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Gopam Enterprises.

Wolf Marshall (2001) Best of Wes Montgomery. Milwaukee, Wisconsin:Hall Leonard.

John Mehegan (1959) Jazz Improvisation. New York: Watson-Guptill.

Pat Metheny (2007) Wes Montgomery Jazz Icons DVD Liner Notes.

Matt Mullenweg (2013) Wes Montgomery | Jazz Quotes

George Pasdirtz (2013) Wes Montgomery Transcriptions.

John Purse (1995) Mel Bay Presents: Wes Montgomery. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications.

Emily Remler (2014) Bebop and Swing Guitar. Video and Instructional booklet.

Sheet Music Plus Wes Montgomery.

Fred Sokolow (1976) Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Solos. Hialeah, FL: ALMO Publications.

Fred Sokolow (1988) Wes Montgomery Artist Transcriptions for Guitar. Milwaukee, Wisconsin:Hall Leonard.

Leo Valdes (2013) Transcriptions: The Guitar Solos of Charlie Christian

Matt Wampler (2013) Wes Montgomery

Matt Warnock (2011-2014) Wes Montgomery

Matt Warnock (2011) Jazz Guitar Chords: Wes Montgomery Chord Scales

Matt Warnock (2012) Wes Montgomery Chords for Jazz Guitar -- V-I Concept

Matt Warnock (2013) 3 II-V-I Wes Octave Licks for Jazz Guitar

Matt Warnock (2013) Learn About Wes Montgomery (1925-1968).

Matt Warnock (2013) Learn About Charlie Christian (1916-1942).

Matt Warnock (2015) How to Play Jazz Guitar in the Style of Wes Montgomery. e-Book

Josh Workman (2006) The Top Five Wes Montgomery Riffs of All Time. Guitar Player Magazine.

Josh Workman (2005) "Motgomeryland Funk": As Performed by Wes Montgomery. Guitar Player Magazine

Enter the Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition

Resonance Records, Inaba Music and the Wes Montgomery Estate are holding a competition in New York City at the Merkin Concert Hall on October 10. Although the purpose of the contest is to find "this generation's next great jazz guitarist" anyone ages 14-33 can enter. The web site (here) provides all the details. Although the competition is stiff (Graham Dechter has already produced three great submissions, one of them above and another below), it's a great opportunity for students to get into the mix and provides a great learning opportunity. Also, anyone can vote on each submission (see the "Vote Now" button above).

Here are the details:

• Contestants must between the ages of 14 and 33.
• Applicants must provide three audio samples of their performances. The samples must include one Wes Montgomery cover song and two additional songs, one of which must be a ballad. Additionally, a video performance sample, not to exceed six minutes, must be submitted via YouTube or Vimeo. Notice in Graham Dechter's submissions, the performance is cut off after his solo to meet the time requirements.
• The cover songs were all written by Wes Montgomery: Jingles, Four on Six, Far Wes, Full House, Road Song, Leila, The Trick Bag, Wes Tune, Serene, West Coast Blues and associated  Finale Files. Transcriptions of actual Wes Montgomery performances are available for the songs (see the sources here, except Leila--does anyone have a transcription?). Lead sheets for each song are available for download on the web site (here).
• Total performance time for all three submissions must not exceed ten minutes. The submissions  are meant to show the contestant's abilities and need not be broadcast quality. The performances can either be solo jazz guitar, fronting a live band or playing over a pre-recorded track.
• The judges will include Pat Martino, Robert Montgomery (one of Wes Montgomery's sons) and others. Five finalists will get the trip to New York city.
• The grand prize is a $5000 Pat Martino Signature Model Benedetto Guitar.
• Submissions are due by 2:00 pm Eastern Time July 15, 2015.

For those thinking about a submission, an interesting strategic issue is how close to base your performance on Wes Montgomery's existing discography. This is really a tough question since Montgomery's performances of his own songs are all canonical and not many other jazz musicians have covered every song. One place to start would be to listen to Pat Martino and Emily Remler who have both freely played Wes Montgomery songs in their own style and some transcriptions are available (here and here). My guess is that some quotes or stylistic elements from Wes Montgomery's solos wouldn't hurt (see my next post).

The submission process is easy and I suggest all eligible jazz guitarists (particularly high school and college students) give it a try. Since you can listen to all the other submissions, there is a lot to be learned about playing jazz guitar and entering competitions which are not everyday events specifically for jazz guitar. I wish I met the age requirements!

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.

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.