Well I'm sure some of you in the mature ages have heard of this song that has been covered by many artists.
Here is a video of my favorite version from Rickie Lee Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud177vP8rf8&feature=related
So I have the music for this, and I can play the melody, and chords, but what I do is sing it and do accompaniment with the chords.
So lets say I found me a singer and we could arrange it up similar to Rickie Lee Jones', or Ella fitzgerald's ( or Barbra Streisand for that matter ) version.
Those singers usually take liberties with the melody and start/stop as they wish O_O, how do the musicians know how to play the chords if the singer is stopping and starting and extending notes ?
Anyways this song is beautiful if you have never heard it, listen to it now ^^.
I wanna be that guy that you wish you were ! ( i wish I were that guy)
You gotta set your sights high to get high!
Everyone is a teacher when you are looking to learn.
( wise stuff man! )
Its Kirby....
If you have the music for this, you should see that the chord changes occur at specific beats; chord changes are not tied to specific words in the lyrics unless the musicians involved (and the vocalist is a musician) decide to arrange it that way. This is why the backing musicians have to be solid in terms of rhythm.
Now, you can play around with it a bit, but it's your job as the rhythm section to hit the chords changes at the correct beat and let the singer do what he or she does. Nick's got some videos up on YouTube (and I'll try to find some links for you) that demonstrate this pretty well. A singer can come in a little before or after the beat in order to make the music more interesting and dynamic, but a lot of that interest comes from the interplay between the singer being slightly off and the band being dead on.
And, as mentioned, you can also arrange for places where everyone comes in "off" together. But you truly want to work that out ahead of time.
Hope this helps.
Peace
the feel's loose, but they're on the beat.
