I think that the most trappy way to work with Jazz harmony is to work on chord melody, the type of playing you hear from Barney Kessel and Joe Pass where the melody is used as a foundation that you can add wondrous chords to, but you do need to work on it the right way to really get all the benefits, You dont want to just play something from paper trying to make your way from chord diagram to chord diagram. You want to explore all the wondrous colors and embellishments that you can add to the music.
I sort of stumbled my way into chord melody, and weirdly unbearable the first song I overly made a chord melody wattle of was unquestionably a song that I don’t really like, and when I made it I had never heard of Barney Kessel and Joe Pass who later became my main inspirations for this.
My First Chord Melody Arrangement
I was finishing a stay at a folk upper school, which is really a Danish thing, a type of boarding school for sultana education. I had spent 8 months practicing and trying to learn Jazz without getting my bachelors stratum in Mathematics at the university. I wasn’t very far in learning, but having the time to practice and play with others for that long was of undertow incredibly useful, and it was a part of what I used to prepare for getting into a school to get a stratum in Jazz performance, which I did in The Hague a few years later
It was in June and I was sitting outside in the sun practicing, something that I am sure that you can tell that I don’t do often. A few months earlier, I had bought a real typesetting which at the time was an incredible source of information since this was surpassing the internet and online resources, it was all books and cds, and I whimsically had any when it came to Jazz, in fact, the only thing I had was the real typesetting and 5 or 6 jazz cds, which were mostly Scofield and a little Charlie Parker.
During my stay, when we played, a friend of mine unchangingly wanted to play Misty, considering he had a Dexter Gordon version of that song that he really liked. I was bored with the arpeggios and scales, so I started flipping through the real typesetting looking at the songs when I saw Misty in there, so I decided to play that. My favorite maj7 voicing at the time was the vital root position maj7 (Cut in – Incredibly Hip and Advanced, I know….) and when I played through the chords then I realized that the melody was the top-note of that chord in the first bar. And this really made some things click for me.
At the time, I had heard people play chord melodies, expressly Scofield and Wes Montgomery, but I hadn’t thought well-nigh doing that myself, then I realized that it could be fun to try and do that with this song which I had once played the chords of many times though I didnt know it by heart.
Getting Started
I was of undertow lucky, that there were two things I once had going for me:
I could read music well unbearable to icon out how to play the melody,
and I was enlightened that I needed to transpose the melody up an octave which moreover makes it easier to put a chord under it.
Harmonizing The Song – First Rule
Misty doesn’t really follow one of two the things that I usually tell students to do when making their own chord melody arrangement, which is: Play the melody on the two top strings.
The reason for saying this is of undertow that if you can play the melody there then it is a lot easier to find chords to put under it.
For the first phrase you have a pick-up and a long note:
It works unconfined with the Ebmaj7 chord, and later in the video, I will show you some nice suspensions you can add here on that long note, considering there are a lot of trappy options. As you can see then once the next phrase has a Bb which is of undertow not possible to play on the B string and there are quite a few notes in the melody that are lower than B. Luckily there is a fix for that.
Harmonizing The Song – Second Rule
The other translating that I requite is to only add chords on beats 1 and 3 in the beginning, just to make it easier to play and moreover to make the harmony well-spoken when the chords change. This makes Misty a lot easier since the melody moves virtually really a lot but only subtracting a chord in the important spots makes it a lot simpler.
That is well-spoken once in the next phrase:
or
or better
There are two things you want to notice here:
As I said, just playing a chord on the heavy beats sounds great, and Shell-voicings are very useful considering most of the time you can hands add a shell-voicing under a melody note or plane just use the shell-voicing as I do here on Bbm7 and Abmaj7.
And that is lucky considering the next part has an plane increasingly rented melody with the arpeggio as a pickup.
You moreover want to notice that I am using an Eb7 shell-voicing, but subtracting an uneaten note on the B string to make it a well-constructed Eb7(9,13).
You don’t have to do that, but in this case, it is an easy way to add an extension to the chord and you’ll see me do that then in the next example.
Know the Song & Understand The Harmony
What is happening in the song is pretty simple. You get a tonic chord, then a II V to IV and then it goes to IVm as a way to get when to the tonic.
This is very worldwide in Jazz standards so recognizing that, is very useful and will make a lot of songs easier to turn into chord melody arrangements. Knowing what is happening in the chord progression moreover gives you a lot increasingly options for what will work in terms of waffly the chords, so that you can add passing chords, and much more. Ill show you later in the video.
The first Abm7 is played as a bar chord, and then you could just play the shell-voicing and the melody, but subtracting the 5th is practical and moreover sounds great.
If you want to think well-nigh this in visual terms then I am seeing the melody and the shell-voicing, and I know that subtracting the 5th is moreover an option so I do that.
In general, this is well-nigh knowing how chords are constructed, and when you work on harmonizing a melody like this then you are really developing your flexibility and knowledge with Jazz chords.
Just reading an wattle and trying to play that is nowhere nearly as useful considering there you are not really getting largest at working with the chords and the melody and choosing how it should sound. You are just trying to read a piece of music and a harmonization that somebody else made which is like reading a transcription vs improvising your own solo. It is really something else.
But surpassing you start interpreting the harmony, it is useful to have a vital wattle similar to what I made on that summer day.
Don’t Limit Yourself To Chord Systems
The next part of the melody is emphasizing the 3rd of 4 chords in a row:
To return to my original take on this song: I hadn’t learned any systems for jazz chords, I just looked at the note I played on the guitar and tried to find a voicing that would fit. I once knew (Ebmaj7 and Cm7)
so that is what I used, and together with Shell voicings for the Fm7 and Bb7 then you have:
You can see how it is still very useful to only play the Fm7 on write-up 1 and then be self-ruling to skip lanugo and play the C, without having to add a well-constructed chord there. It would not be impossible, but this is a lot easier.
A Largest Turnaround
From here the Real typesetting suggested a Gm7 chord, and I don’t remember what I played exactly but instead you can moreover use a Db7 in the turnaround which sounds a lot better. (voice over ex 6)
or
With a bit increasingly verisimilitude on the other chords that is going to requite you:
You probably once noticed that the melody has quite a few long notes and moreover some places where notes are repeated, and that opens up for some interesting chords, which is of undertow way vastitude my original harmonization. So lets make it a bit increasingly exciting.
A Cure For Wearisome Chords
The first chord with the maj7 in the melody can hands be a bit wearisome considering it stands still, but it is a unconfined place to add some surprising sounds:
The original sounds like this:
but a worldwide version is to turn that into a wizened suspension with a #IV dim chord, so A diminished. In this specimen that unquestionably becomes a D major triad over an Eb toned note considering of the melody
You could moreover use a #5 as a tension that resolves later in the bar to alimony things moving.
Or plane this Lydian augmented chord with both a #11 and a #5
Another option is the Barry Harris 6th dim suspension and that would be this Ddim over Eb:
But coming from a Bb7, I dont find that super strong.
You can squint for tricks like this using both theory, and scales and plane moeover just experiment with moving notes in the voicing. If you start just waffly the chord then it can later be worthwhile to icon out what is unquestionably going on so that you can use it in other songs as well.
More Than One Melody
Another thing that you can start to explore is to decorate the chords with other melodies inside the chords. A very worldwide and trappy option is to use this line cliche:
Where the II V I scrutinizingly becomes a stairway to heaven quote.
If you split up the 3rd and 7th of the Abmaj7 and insert a 9th in there then you have this increasingly colorful voicing:
and that ways that you can add this nice move on that chord where the 9th and 7th move to the root and maj76th:
And you only find stuff like this if you are really making your own harmonizations and mess virtually with the chords when there is room for it.
Joe Was Good At Guitar, Be Like Joe
It can be useful to alimony in mind is that these arrangements should not be set in stone and never changed. Requite yourself the self-rule to mess with them when you play considering that is moreover what will help you discover a lot of things and not just play something like reading a classical composition.
And this moreover brings me when to Barney Kessel and Joe Pass, considering they both are pretty unshut and harmonize things on the fly when they play, and that sometimes ways making it simpler to alimony it flexible but it moreover really opens up for making the song increasingly your own.
The Easiest Passing Chords
Another way to add movement is to add uneaten chords to the progression so that there is increasingly happening. On a II V then walking up the scale in diatonic chords can work very well, and in bar 4 that gives you something like this:
Which is just filling in the chords between Abm7 and Db7.
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