Lesson

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 4

We've reached Week 4, the final lesson in our study of "Body and Soul"!

Over the past three weeks, we've developed two different sets of voicings and begun combining those ideas into a complete chord-melody arrangement.

Last week, we introduced what I called a "simple" chord melody, although there was certainly plenty of challenging material to work through!

Continuing my slow march through Tony's 15 week lessons - here's lesson 4.

"Talk about chord melody".  This is where you accompany yourself by playing some harmony behind your melody line.  It's a good skill for comping for yourself when soloing, for doing more interesting and melodic comping for others, and for solo vibes playing.  The assignment here calls for leaving out the roots (except on min 7 b5) which leaves room for some nice tensions.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 3

Over the past two weeks, we've been developing our approach to "Body and Soul" by exploring different four-mallet voicings throughout the entire form.

Week 1 focused on voicings that loosely followed the melody, while Week 2 introduced another set of options emphasizing closed voicings and practical comping underneath a soloist.

This week, we're taking those ideas and putting them together into something a little more involved:

Friedman 5 - better dynamics than the first 4. Weird aspect ratio because I had to edit the video so it wouldn't upload as a short. 

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 2

Last week, we began our study of "Body and Soul" by developing a practical set of voicings through the entire form in the traditional key of D♭ major.

Our focus was on finding good voicings that loosely followed the melody, while becoming comfortable with the tune's rich harmony and challenging modulations.

This week, we're continuing our work on voicings, but with a slightly different approach.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 1

Welcome to the next installment of Play A Great Standard In One Month!

After spending two full series exploring blues and rhythm changes, we've moved into a new phase of our studies: applying those concepts to some of the most important standards in the jazz repertoire.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Stella – Week 4

Last week, we worked through a full chorus of "Stella By Starlight" using clear, relatively simple melodic ideas. The goal was to hear the harmony through basic scale and chord tones without feeling like every phrase needed to be a complicated bebop line.

This week, we're taking that same basic framework and adding another layer:

👉 Chromaticism.

A solo that Tony played that I comped under (or over, I guess)

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Stella – Week 3

Over the past two weeks, we've been developing our approach to "Stella By Starlight" through voicings and chord melody.

Week 1 established our harmonic foundation, while Week 2 explored how to combine those voicings with the melody to create a complete arrangement.

This week, we're shifting our attention to improvisation.

👉 Finding clear melodic lines.