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.
The chord study below focuses on basic jazz guitar chords and voicings like minor 7, major 7, dominant 7, and half-diminished 7.
You’ll also learn extended chord voicings, including minor 9, minor 11, dominant 9, dominant 7b9, dominant 7#9, suspended chords, 6/9 chords, and diminished chords over dominants.
The rhythm is kept simple, similar to a pop ballad, so you can focus on switching between chords smoothly and getting comfortable with the voicings.
The chord study finishes with a typical jazz ending at bar 31.
Instead of moving from the dominant (G7) to the tonic (Cmaj7), the progression goes to the bVI (Abmaj7), then the bII (Dbmaj7), and finally ends on the I (C6/9).
This technique is called modal interchange. The bVI chord is borrowed from the relative minor key (Aeolian), and the bII is taken from the Phrygian mode.
Related lesson: Fly Me To The Moon – Melody & Solo
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Guitar Tabs & Video
Form: ABAC (32 bars)
Key: C major
Listen & Play-Along
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Thanks for sharing.
Either fret typo or need to shift dot placements for the G7b9 in bar 3? (The one in bar 19 reads correctly)
This is a nice bit of tab for a great song, lovely chord progressions and just over all class. Good Job, keep up the good work.
Moose (Ireland)
Exelente;muy Bella progression armonica
Thanks Dirk
wonderfully useful!
thanks again for all you have given Dirk!
Thanks that was very Useful 😍😍😍
Ok. Wow.
Not only is the video with notation and tab super helpful in seeing the fingerings (including which fingers to place first so all the other fingers get to their positions properly) but the play along audio AND the Guitar Pro file too!
Awesome.
If I can convince my hands to do some of this…maybe there’s hope for this old timer learning Jazz guitar and giving your course a try.
Thank You for this!!!
Can I ask why on bar 12 the choice was to use the A in the bass from the sixth string 5th and barring over/muffling out the available open A string rather than just using that open A as the root and keeping the 4 active strings adjacent? It would be easier, yet I think it would also sound differently.
I’m guessing that the choice to do so was to use the tonality of the fatter fretted string sound (but that was not mentioned), which is a nice add and illustrates that sometimes it is as important tonally where a note is selected to be played vs where it CAN be played.
While I can’t speak for the player in the video, my two reasons are adjacency to neighbouring chords and note duration control.
The chord preceding and following it both offer an easy and common transition into this shape. As for the second reason, a fretted note is always muted when moving from it to a new one, and you can trivially mute it with just a slight release of pressure, finger in place. An open string will ring out unless you deliberately mute it.
Stopping your notes on time is nearly as important for rhythm as starting them on time. I wouldn’t place emphasis on timbre in this case – switching right hand picking distance from the bridge will get you further in that regard either way.
I send a very big thank you
Thanks my good Brother you are doing wonderful work you are open my mind ‘learning chord profession and very advance music of all time keep it up your good may God bless you uf you can please give me chord that start in the middle of guitar not so much near the neck of a guitar if you can thank you somuch my brother also with tabs and Score staff notation i would like to keep in touch with you to more advice from you iam 59 years but i still willing to learn
What can i say, thank you very very much !
Gracias por estas lecciones de verdad que son lecciones claras y sencillas.
És cuestión de practicar lo más seguido posible para amar la guitarra.
Tengo los dos libros y son un joya.
Estoy eternamente agradecido .
Gracias att. Jaime
Excelente secuencia armónica con los arpegios
Beautiful, love this version.
Thank you Dirk
thank you! great!
Thanks very much for these lessons. They are really giving finger stamina, strumming practice and learning new chords. I really appreciate the lessons. I hope I’ll get brave and try the course one day. In the meantime thank you sincerely.
Tom