Matador is the title track of a legendary session Grant Green recorded in 1964, though it wasn’t released until 1979 on the Japanese Blue Note label. It’s one of those albums that flew under the radar for a long time but holds some of Green’s strongest playing. The lineup on the record is great as […]
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Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue is one of the most iconic soul-jazz guitar standards ever recorded. Released in 1963 on Blue Note Records, the track is the title cut of Burrell’s classic album Midnight Blue, featuring Stanley Turrentine (tenor sax), Major Holley (bass), Billy Gene English (drums), and Ray Barretto (congas). If you’re into a smooth
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Charlie Chaplin, famous for making people laugh, was also good at making music. He composed “Smile” for his last silent movie “Modern Times” in 1936 with the help of composer David Raksin. The first phrase of the melody is identical to a phrase (Cavaradossi singing “Quale occhio al mondo può star di paro”) in the
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Alone Together was composed by Arthur Schwartz in 1932 and featured in the Broadway musical Flying Colors. In this lesson, you will learn how to play the melody mixed with chords. Alone Together has a bit of an unusual form because it has a length of 44 bars instead of 32 as is usual with
In a Sentimental Mood is a famous jazz standard composed and recorded by Duke Ellington in 1935. In this lesson, you will learn the melody of In a Sentimental Mood and a solo over its chord changes (with some Emily Remler vocabulary mixed in). The original recording and many other recorded versions are in F
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Make You Feel My Love was written by Bob Dylan for his album Time Out of Mind (1997). The song became a bit of a modern standard and was covered by more than 450 artists including Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, and Adele. Creating guitar instrumentals of pop songs is a good exercise in reharmonization, phrasing,
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Nature Boy was written by eden ahbez (his real name was George Alexander Aberle) in 1947 and recorded by Nat King Cole in 1948. Cole’s recording became a no 1 hit for eight weeks and sold over a million of copies. In this lesson, you will learn how to play the melody and chords of
Fly Me to the Moon is one of the most famous and recognizable jazz standards ever. In this lesson, you will learn how to play the chords and chord progression of this popular song. In the chord study below, you will mostly learn basic jazz guitar chords and voicings such as minor 7, major 7,
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In this lesson, you will learn how to play the chords of Blue Bossa and a bossa nova rhythm pattern. One of the most common non-swing rhythms that jazz guitarists often play is the bossa nova groove. but learning how to play an authentic bossa or samba groove on the guitar can be tricky. To
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Autumn Leaves is a timeless jazz standard recorded by numerous jazz legends, making it a must-know tune for any aspiring jazz guitar player. In this guitar lesson, you will learn a beginner-friendly chord arrangement of Autumn Leaves. This arrangement mainly uses drop 2 and drop 3 chords, two kinds of basic chord shapes that are
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Groovin’ High was written by Dizzy Gillespie in 1946. The standard is probably his most famous composition and one of the first famous bebop recordings. In this lesson, you will learn how to play the melody of Groovin’ High. Groovin’ High is based on the chord structure of a 1920s song called Whispering, which was
Billie’s Bounce, one of the most iconic jazz standards from the bebop era, was written by Charlie Parker in 1945 and is one of his most famous songs. The original recording featured Charlie Parker (alt sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Dizzy Gillespie (piano !), Curley Russell (bass), and Max Roach (drums). The story goes that Billie’s
One of the most common chord progressions in jazz is the blues progression. A “straight” 12-bar blues usually has three 7th chords (I IV V). In jazz, we add more chords to this progression, such as II V I progressions and a more complicated turnaround. Jazz blues also features a different kind of phrasing and
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What a Wonderful World was written by Bob Thiele/George David Weiss and recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967. It was a hit in the UK, but not in the US because Larry Newton (the president of ABC Records) didn’t promote the song on the grounds that he didn’t like it. In this lesson, you will
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Moon River was composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer for the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The song was written for Audrey Hepburn to sing (real) while she accompanies herself on the guitar (not real). In this lesson, you will learn an easy chord melody arrangement of Moon River. Mancini won the Grammy Awards
Georgia on my Mind was composed in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael, who also made the first recording of the song with his orchestra featuring Hoagy on vocals, Eddie Lang on guitar, and Bix Beiderbecke on cornet (his last recording session). In 1960, Ray Charles recorded his famous version, which was a number one hit all
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Lullaby Of Birdland was composed by George Shearing in 1952 and was intended as the theme song for the legendary jazz club Birdland (NY). It became one of the most popular jazz standards of all time. Lullaby of Birdland is one of my favorite jazz melodies, making it a perfect candidate for a chord melody
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Besame Mucho, one of the most popular songs of the 20th century, was written in 1940 by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez. The bolero is inspired by the Eusebius theme from the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor (opus 54). The most famous jazz guitar version of the song was recorded in
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Ronny Jordan’s acid-jazz cover of So What (composed by Miles Davis) was the first single of the late English jazz guitarist. It was released in 1992 on his debut album The Antidote and was a worldwide hit. In this lesson, you will learn how to play Ronny Jordan’s version of So What, including the melody
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Fly Me to the Moon was written by composer Bart Howard in 1954 and recorded by singer Kaye Ballard in the same year. The song was originally titled “In Other Words” until Peggy Lee, who made the song popular after her performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963, convinced Bart Howard to change it
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Learn how to play one of the most popular bossa nova songs ever, Blue Bossa.
In this lesson, you will learn the melody, the chords and how to improvise.
White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin in 1940, is one of the most popular Christmas songs. The title track of the featured movie “Holiday Inn”, starring Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby, has become a standard tune for Christmas. In this lesson, you will learn how to play a chord melody arrangement of this great song.
All of Me was written in 1931 by Seymour Simons and Gerald Marks and has since become a popular jazz standard, especially among gypsy jazz guitar players. The song is suitable for beginners because of its slow harmonic movement (most chords last two bars). In this lesson, you will analyze the chords of All of
Days of Wine and Roses was written by Henry Mancini in 1962 for the movie of the same name. The song has since become a jazz standard and popular among jazz guitarists with recordings from Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Lenny Breau, Bill Frisell, Jimmy Raney, John Abercrombie, Howard Roberts, and many more. The most famous
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In this Gypsy jazz guitar lesson, you will be looking at a couple of ways to end a jazz ballad. There is a special chord that throws the listener into limbo at the end of a II-V progression. This chord can lead you in different directions to create a free improvisation at the end of
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(Meet) The Flintstones is the theme of the ’60s television series The Flintstones (from season 3 on) and is one of the most recognizable theme songs ever. It was composed by Hoyt Curtin in 1961 and recorded with a big band and the Randy Van Horne Singers. In this lesson, you will learn how to
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PG Music’s Band in a Box is well known among jazz musicians as intelligent automatic accompaniment software that makes it easy to produce backing tracks on the fly. I have been using BIAB since the late ’90s and while the earliest versions only used MIDI, the modern version of the program uses recordings of real
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In this second installment of “Iconic Guitar Parts”, we’ll have a look at one of the most recognizable movie themes ever, the James Bond Theme, featuring the famous guitar riff played by Vic Flick. Written by Monty Norman and arranged by John Barry, the James Bond theme song was recorded in 1962 for the first
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Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise was composed by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1928 for an operetta (a kind of light opera) called The New Moon. Artie Shaw’s recording of Softly (1938) brought the song into the jazz world and made it into the popular jazz standard it is today. In this
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Take the “A” Train, composed by Billy Strayhorn in 1939 and first recorded in 1941, was the signature tune of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The title refers to the then recently opened A subway line that ran from Brooklyn to Northern Manhattan. The chord progression of Take the “A” Train is loosely based on another
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