Chord Melody for University Audition

[matt.guitarteacher]

I've got someone who's come to me for some help with CM for a college audition. I haven't specifically taught jazz students before this guy, but I had a lesson with him yesterday and it was great.

My question is what are they looking for him to do in this audition and what do I need to teach him? He's basically got a couple of month.?

I started him out with a harmonization of the basic chords from the real book (with a couple of basic subs). There were several voicings that I would consider pretty basic that he didn't have. He's basically got one or two voicings for any given chord.

I told him to get his head (and fingers) around that basic version and that next week we'd look at some basic reharmonization and chord embellish possibilities with that same tune.

The school he said he was auditioning with wasn't a big jazz school as far as I know. It's some school in Tennessee that I didn't recognize.

Do you think they mainly looking for technique? I don't want to just teach him a highly reharmonized version that he could get out of a book without any understanding of how to create his own CM arrangements, but it's only 2 months or so until his audition.

[jmstritt]

If you look on the schools website, most schools will have the audition materials on their website.

I know that their are people here that are more knowledgeable about the college audition process than I am (professors and such), but I have gone through it my self and prepped a few students. Here are the typical audition requirements I have seen.

-A CM arrangement of a jazz standard.

-Knowledge of Major, Minor, Harmonic, and Melodic Minor in all keys.

-Knowledge of Major 7, Dominant 7, Minor 7, and Minor 7b5 chords and arpeggios.

-Some basic sight reading. (Chord charts and maybe a simple single note etude).

[Atticus]

I'm guessing it's Belmont. I know a guy who got a guitar degree there- I think it's more classical than jazzy, but it's still a pretty good program. If I get a chance I'll ask him about it.

Is it wrong to suggest teaching him a single, really good chord-melody for the audition, and then working on chord melody construction with him in his remaining time before college starts? That's probably not helpful to his music education, but if he gets in and goes on to a degree, then I'd call it helpful.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Originally Posted by Atticus

I'm guessing it's Belmont. I know a guy who got a guitar degree there- I think it's more classical than jazzy, but it's still a pretty good program. If I get a chance I'll ask him about it.

Is it wrong to suggest teaching him a single, really good chord-melody for the audition, and then working on chord melody construction with him in his remaining time before college starts? That's probably not helpful to his music education, but if he gets in and goes on to a degree, then I'd call it helpful.

Your suggestion is a good one. The school isn't Belmont BTW. I'll have to message him and ask again what it is.

[jtizzle]

Don't teach him a chord melody song, teach him how to make it.
It would be the same problem with teachers who promise to teach kids songs, but the kids don't "know" how to play them, they just play them because they know it goes that way.

It will be way more valuable for him to teach him how to arrange his own chord solo and let him show you what he's working on, then give him small suggestions.

A great song to start with is All The Things You Are. If you teach him basic root position 7th chords, that will be enough for him to arrange his first CM, then you can start teaching him how to build his own voicings based on the melody or the chord he wants. This includes reharmonizing, restructurizing chords, and other techniques such as parallelism, walking basslines, ect.

This way, he'll be able to learn how to play the chord solo in more than one way, and then put it all together in one, so there's a lot of variety and it comes out great, he'll also start school with a great idea of how to do this, and he won't be the worst student there