Arranging a Standard

I'd like to build on some of the techniques of harmonization from my previous post where I demonstrated a simple way to harmonize a melody using 3 or 4 notes. This technique obviously lends itself well to the piano but it is also a departure point for writing for other instruments. The following is an arrangement of the Jerome Kern standard "I'm Old Fashioned" in which I used 3 and 4 note piano voicings to get outside of the original harmony and create an arrangement for 3 horns.

First let me say that this kind of writing must come from an understanding of traditional jazz voice leading. I say this because it is essentially an "ears first" approach to adding harmony to a standard and the danger is for it to sound so arbitrary that the original tune is completely lost. It is difficult to replace tonal chord progressions with chromatic or modal harmony without an ingrained sense of the "purpose" or "direction" of the original tonal harmony. By this I mean that a cadence such as II-V7-I has a purpose in that it leads the harmony in a specific direction. In replacing the original tonal harmony I believe that one needs to try to keep the feeling of the original harmony (here "feeling" is pretty broad and probably entails an infinite number of possibilities). If the arrangement is so far flung from the original tune that one can't get the sense that the arranger is "playing" with that tune, (stretching it, morphing it, playing with our expectations) then it begs the question why arrange this tune? Why not just compose something new?


One rule of thumb is to keep the melody intact and only change the rhythm or phrasing of it. For me this always suggests interesting directions for the harmony to take. Even if the harmony changes quite a bit as it does here I try not to over power the melody so that a sense of the original tune can still come through.

Also in this arrangement I used a common devise called a "tag". Basically that is extra bars at the end of the tune which kind of stretches it out a bit and takes it in a different direction briefly. In this case it modernizes the tune by introducing the feeling of a vamp. A tag also needs to have a natural connection to the standard so it's best to build it out of something in the body of the arrangement. I took the idea for the tag from measures 17-18 when I was working on the A section. These chords sounded like they stood on their own (they certainly stand OUT from the tune) and they quickly inspired me to build a vamp out of them. Unusual about the vamp however is the 3 bar phrases.

In addition to triads and seventh chord voicings there are also quartal voicings. Quartal refers to the interval of a 4th so that can include also the augmented 4th and diminished 5th in combination with a perfect 4th. Notice how the quartal voicings are especially interesting when the melody repeats the same note (mm 29-32) as the original melody does at the beginning of the bridge. The voices however are free to move under the melody and create some interesting dissonances which are completely chromatic and not tonal. This is often referred to as oblique motion.

Here is a version from a recording I made with 3 horns.

Work HARD not LONG

"Hurry....hurry....hurry harrrrrrrrrrd"

Anyone watch curling?

One of the themes of my blog XY...Jazz is information versus knowledge. In the context of being an improvising musician this means what comes out in one's soloing is what one has learned, what one currently knows.  Where I have been critical in the past of institutionalized jazz education is in its emphasis on the dissemination of information to the detriment of acquiring the skills which make that information become knowledge. It's actually not just jazz education I have a beef with.  For example can you remember what you crammed into your head back in high school for your exams? Probably a little but what you do remember is most likely still in use in your current day to day existence. That's not to say that there aren't great teachers who understand that this is an important issue when it comes to the nuances of language play in jazz improvisation. It's just that the way the system is set up a university or college wants to see just how much one can stuff into their heads in 3 or 4 years because that is testable. It is far more difficult to test a student's ability to improvise with depth and facility.

Or is it? What if, for example, instead of learning 15 tunes in one semester for a jury a student was expected to learn 3 new tunes and that's all. Ok so that's just not as fun but let's continue this thought experiment anyway. Suppose students were expected to become masters on 3 really important tunes before they went on to develop their repertoire. Say, for example, they had to learn the Blues, Rhythm changes, and Body & Soul by listening and memorizing great recordings and solos of these tunes. They would need to learn alternate chord changes, how to comp through the tunes on the piano. Horns players would write out solos, and pianists/guitarist would write out voicings and comping patterns. Etc... I think you get the point. When I was 18 I for sure would have found it unpleasant to stick to 3 tunes for such a long time.

But let me ask this: how much fun is it for a first year jazz university student to play "rhythm changes" or "Body and Soul"? Or even a major Blues (I love how some people say "just a blues" as if playing the blues is like falling off a pick-up truck) In my experience it isn't very fun for them. In fact as their juries begin to loom somewhere around February the fun stops and they get pretty stressed out by these tunes. What’s worse is that the cursory, half-assed work they get done on the tunes kind of taints them and leaves a bad impression of the music. Once a student remarked to me that the transition out of the bridge on Body & Soul sounded cheesy. I had to agree with him because what he was playing there did sound cheesy!

Or perhaps how about applying this idea to licks as a way of building vocabulary. I always found it odd as a student myself that the licks I learned out of a book and practiced as bits of jazz "information" wouldn't come out naturally in my soloing whereas the licks which would come out were usually material that I hadn't even transcribed or thought about that much but had somehow internalized from listening to albums.  The un-transcribed and not practiced licks were also shorter and simpler than the hip 4 bar II-V-I "information" lines that I tried to learn from a text book. They were instead 4 or 5 notes that would simply express, say, a dominant sound the way that Wynton Kelly did. These shorter licks felt better rhythmically and also seemed to connect with my other ideas more naturally. They weren't complex or impressive but somehow I owned them because they were simple enough to be entirely deconstructed in my mind and I could easily play with them when I was improvising.

The 3 tunes I mentioned above (insert the word "just" wherever you like) are HARD!!!! Why do we still listen to Coleman Hawkins blowing lines on Body and Soul from way back in 1939? Because this song is deep and presents an infinite education on harmony and melody. These songs are both simple and sophisticated and negotiating one's way through the changes requires a lot of study to sound convincing on them. Why not spend all of one's practice in first year on these 3 tunes if they represent a clear and comprehensive basis for jazz harmony, voice-leading, melodic construction and phrasing? Every jazz musician returns time and again to this repertoire throughout their lives as a way to touch base with the foundational aspects of making jazz music. It is a sign of musical maturity when a jazz musician can eventually speak with their own voice using this repertoire.

So when I say practice hard what I mean is practice the fundamentals. It isn’t realistic to expect a young player to really get themselves stuck on 3 tunes for a semester but it is a formative time when learning the skills of mastery can really leave a lasting impression. Sometimes the hardest things are often the simplest ones and understanding them can be one of the most rewarding things about playing music.