Hi !
I'd like to experiment jazz songs but I really don't know what to play!
Does anyone have suggestions on jazz songs I could play ?
Until then,
Have a good day ! :wink:
Here are some jazz tunes that I really like:
Footprint by ?? I can't remember right now
a bunch of Wes montgomery tunes..
More blues than jazz, but it has a tinge of jazz: Riviera paradise by SRV...
Stairway to Freebird!
Jazz is a very very broad musical category. Swing to bop to avant garde to funk . . .
If you're looking for just straight classical jazz standards, pick up a good fake book and you'll have hundreds and hundreds of jazz tunes everyone knows at your finger tips.
The best way to get starting in Jazz, imho, is to find an artist you really admire, and look to see what standards that person plays. Then go listen to about a dozen other versions of that same standard. Pick out what you like, discard the rest and then make your version you're own.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
Here's a site I found awhile back that you might find interesting:
http://www.jazzguitar.be/
I've also found alot of Jazz books, CD's, and DVD's at my local library.
And btw, welcome to GN! :D
"The only way I know that guarantees no mistakes is not to play and that's simply not an option". David Hodge
I second the standards... the essence of jazz is improvising with others, so you'll want to learn the 'heads' (basic melody and chord progression) of tunes they play. With one group, that might be things like "Straight, No Chaser" or "In Walked Bud" - another group might do stuff like "Scrapple from the Apple" and "Ornithology". The first group will be a whole lot easier to play with :)
A few things that will help in jazz:
- learn to read standard notation. You'll be able to pick up the basic melodies from fake books.
- learn chord simplifications. The Berklee Method book 1 has a nice chart of how you can simplify chords... when you're starting out, it's hard to deal with C13b5b9 or A11+5 chords.
- start with blues tunes. Plenty of jazz is based on blues, and tunes like "C-Jam Blues" will make you feel right at home while you start to experiment.
- get used to the ii-V-I progression, and its cousin II-V-I. The first is a standard in jazz; the second is really a key change (II-V-I in C is D-G-C - the D-G part is V-I in the key of G, and G-C is V-I in the key of C)
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Joe Pass is a great jazz guitarist. Many of his songs are just him on guitar, and it sounds great, so you don't really NEED a band to sound good with his stuff. Some of the songs to check out:
A Foggy Day
Misty
Paco de Lucia
Blues for Basie
Pasta Blues
I dig 'em all!
I have been working through some of the songs in "The Real Book"
It is a large collection of mostly 60s and 70s jazz.
As I understand it this book was illegal for awhile and was hard to find (copyrite issues) but it is now available at some music stores.(published by Hal Leonard)
These tunes are only in notation so you need to be able to read music.
Sort of.
The first "Real Books" were basically the jazz equivilant of a collection of tabs -- musicians takes on the songs. They did violate copyright (as tabs do today), and the song book publishers were really pissed about the whole thing.
The Hal Leonard version of the Real Book has a few differences in song selection, and the lead sheets are artist/studio approved versions of the songs.
If you can find an old, printed, bound REAL BOOK, it's a real collectors item for old jazz players who remember them.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
