Sussex Jazz Guitar School prep for the up coming class will need you to;
1. Memorize the chords to the classic jazz standard “Fly me to the moon” in the key of C major (see chord chart below).
2. Learn the melody. Either from notation, but much better to learn it by ear. That’s how me (and most jazz musicians) learn tunes. Jazz is very much an aural tradition where musicians learnt tunes by hearing. If you want even more of a challenge, don’t look at the chord chart above and try to work out the chords by ear as well!
Choose one of the 5 scale positions (review these in my prep blog for the June class, in fact I’ll include the video below Frank for you) and play the melody in this position, then try some of the other positions. Here’s Frank Sinatra singing it so you can work it out. He sings fairly clearly and close to the written melody of a jazz tune as does Chet Baker. When I need to learn an old jazz standard, these two will be the first I listen to in order to transcribe the melody. If you go for some one like Miles Davis, he’ll play it beautifully but stray away from the melody so far, you won’t be transcribing the original melody. So give this a go…
3. Review the chords (root, 3rd, 7th voicings) and substutions we have ben looking at in recent classes. We will be using these in the class on chord melody.
Best of luck, just do what is manageable for you. Remember that even if you think some things are beyond your grasp, just by tackling these things in class will all add up to you improving your guitar skills and jazz knowledge more and more. At the moment, I’m working on some far out concepts for modern jazz guitar and even though I haven’t achieved the final goal of what the concepts are about, I am discovering things on the way just by having a go at these things. This is what many of my students tell me, that they are always discovering new things by working through given material. Anyway, see you October 26th!!!
