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06-23-2024 03:28 PM
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Ok guys, rather than start a new thread with a poll please select one of the below for our next tune.
Darn that dream
In a Sentimental Mood
When Sunny Gets Blue
But Beautiful
The Nearness of You
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^ All beautiful tunes.
Alright guys, since I didn't have much time to internalize the tune I did a rubato version for you. I'm best at melody but since this is a chord melody study group I didn't try to dick around with it in a way that is easiest for me, I worked it in chord melody. I worked it in BH.. But I changed the fundamental rule. Mick see if you can hear what I did. About 6-16 seconds.
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When Sunny Gets Blue would be my choice, and I think it's one of the less difficult arrangements.
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Well I had like 4 days so I did my best without the book. I learned the basic structure from you guys's recordings and I inserted some BH. But it's anti-BH.
Anyways, I'm gonna make a thread about it cuz I'm quite happy with it. You don't need to waste too much time on it. I don't think I need to patent my discovery because I doubt anyone will listen to me and go off and use it. It's gonna be my thing mofo!
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That's very nice. Listening and watching I realized I've handled a few of the chords more according to my own past experience and not according to what Arnold wrote. Listening to play it I realize I like the sound so I'm double-checking how accurately I've played it.
There is a lot of value in trying to get an arrangement like this exactly right. It challenges me to play unfamiliar things and incorporate new fingerings, new shifts of position, etc. into my playing. I tend to be lazy and fall into the same fingerings all the time.
Also nice tone as well!
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I agree with your sentiment, i.e., play it as written at first, you may learn something. I have been doing that, however, I will change chord voicings that are both awkward and mediocre, that is, if something is awkward but sounds good, I'll keep it. However, there are often alternative ways to finger a voicing so that it will be less awkward - perhaps just playing it in a different position or on a different set of strings.
I think it could be helpful to everyone in the group if those of us who make changes in an arrangement explain exactly what we changed and why. Then we could discuss the merits or weaknesses of said changes.
I mentioned previously that I changed parts of the Arnold arrangements we've played for the reasons I just expressed: (1) better or less awkward fingerings, (2) voicings on lower strings that sounded muddy and/or will sound better in a different position, (3) poor voice leading (like the minor 9th jump from the bass note F in a Fm6 chord down to an open E string bass note, which makes no sense because there's an E note just a semitone away), etc. I did not write down my arrangement for Time After Time (except for some chord diagrams) but I did write down all of my Here's That Rainy Day arrangement, mostly because I was learning how to use Guitar Pro music notation software, which I like a lot.
Lastly, my end goal here is to be able to spontaneously improvise chord melodies. This requires that I build an inventory or vocabulary of chord voicings and playing techniques that I can "plug and play" into different chord progressions. This is what masters such as Joe Pass and Barney Kessel did. They did not play dozens of different types of chords, they had a relatively small number of "swiss army knife" type chord grips they could add extensions to or modify slightly. So if at possible I won't be using any voicing for the sake of a single arrangement, if it is not a plug and play type voicing that I can transpose and recycle, it does not interest me.
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I will roll the dice after this mornings school run.
The Nearness of You 1, 3, 5
When Sunny Gets Blue 2, 4, 6
New thread coming soon
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I would not change a chord just because it was "awkward." that could be another word for "my skills need improvement" so I go ahead and try to master the "awkward" move. I also haven't seen anything in this arrangement I'd call "mediocre." The more I've played it the more impressed I've become with it. I've been playing chord-melody and working on improvisation in that vein for many years now and some of the string skips and such you've criticized are things I've seen many of the masters doing from time to time. I've grown especially fond of that last section of the arrangement as I've thought my way through it and struggled a bit to make the changes.
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To me "mediocre" may just mean not meeting the criteria I listed in my previous post.
Other than the change to Em7 in the Coda I mentioned, the only change I made was to revise some of his voicings - play them in a different position or different set of strings. He has a habit that I don't like of playing chords on the bass strings, which is fine for rhythm guitar playing a la Freddie Green, but not for chord melodies - it works on occasion but he overuses it. There is a section in Here's That Rainy Day where those bass voicings work well, which I think he swiped from Barry Galbraith (Barry's arrangement has the very same phrase).
Some examples of his 3 note lower string chords that I am likely to revise - the Am7, Gm, C9, etc. There are better sounding alternatives.
However, my main point was that if any of us decide to change something in one of these arrangements, it would be good to share it so we can mull it over.
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