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I've often found that the attention one gets from an indifferent audience for playing a 'recognizable" tune is fleeting at best. They might perk up for a moment, but that's it.With jazz groups, I've had better luck keeping an audience engaged by crafting a set with a variety of keys, grooves, tempos, intros, endings, harmonic densities, dynamics, solo order, backgrounds, shout choruses, and any other orchestration you can put together.
For solo guitar, check out Taylor Roberts and Jake Reichbart, they do good renditions of current pop songs. I think that's the way to go if you want to play recognizable tunes. I don't know if you get much more traction with As Time Goes By than Slow Boat To China with an audience of 'civilians'
PK
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06-03-2019 03:02 PM
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Tea for Two
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Actually thinking about it, the tune that people always go for in a big way is All of Me, Hep’s favourite....
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Great recommendations everybody, thank you so much!
Now that I think about it, another Sinatra hit that people may recognize would be Strangers in the Night.
Also, Strike Up The Band was the tune for the intro sequence of Warner Bros or some other movie studio, wasn't it?
...and yes, what is a jazz tune, anyway? One imagines there exists this Platonic form of the Great American Songbook in the sky, held by Ella Fitzgerald. But which tunes are in that book, therein lies the rub...
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Interesting. For background gigs, my approach is always: If the song swings, people are going to dig it to the extent they notice at all. I've gotten good responses with groove tunes that people may have heard but couldn't name: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy/Watermelon Man/Song for My Father/Sugar or even Moanin'. If management tells me to cool it, I'll give 'em "Girl Talk" or "Manha de Carnival" because they're both quietly soulful and highlight the guitar well.
I guess if i were to play a hospice/retirement home, which I probably should volunteer to do soon, I'd lean on Jerome Kern because his compositions are so wonderful, and if someone recognizes one or two as a "Sinatra" tune that'd be a bonus.
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Peg O' My Heart
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Originally Posted by Howzabopping
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Any jazz tune I can rocknrollize is fine. Stomping At The Savoy, Dinah, Exactly Like You- great, and people love it.
OTOH you can sarcastically say my 'favourite' is Inner Urge. If you wanna kill the civilians it works.
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Originally Posted by dickbanks
But I do believe that when playing for civilians (non-musicians), it is best to focus on melody, repetition, tension \ release and not playing too-many notes.
I observed this when seeing Tal Farlow, Barney Kessell, Mundell Lowe, etc... back in the 80s: The first set would be more towards civilians. By the third set, it was much more like a jam with burning solos over bop \ riff based type tunes. Once at Donte's in Hollywood CA, Lowe was about to start the 3rd set. There were only about 5 tables with customers and on three of the tables (one being mine), the gal with the guy was asleep! Lowe said something like 'you're all guitar players,,, right,,,', and we all said YEA! So he asked us what we wanted to hear. I asked for his song Far From Vanilla; He laugh and said, Ok.
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Everybody knows Stardust.
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Originally Posted by sgosnell
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Is it time for some ' musicians-only ' standards jokes ???
I was looking for PB's joke about the guy who couldn't remember the bridge to 'Over the Rainbow', but found this instead :
Enjoy !
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Originally Posted by gtrplrfla
Same with Nearness of You. One of my missions in life is to turn people on to Hoagy Carmichael - his music, his work in film, his recordings etc....
Elias Prinz -- young talent from Munich
Yesterday, 10:24 PM in The Players