Advanced Jazz Standards 1

Learn the Erroll Garner classic, “Misty”. This three-step (Standards in 3) series will teach you how to re-harmonize the lead sheet, how to play the arrangement and put in fills and runs.

I've been wanting to do this song for a while! Take 5 was written by Paul Desmond and performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on their 1959 album Time Out. In this lesson I'll break down the arrangement but we will also cover a bunch of improvisation and reharmonization ideas to make the song "your own."

In this lesson, we will work on the standard “The Days of Wine and Roses” and arrange various phrases of the song with some pro techniques. In the end, you’ll have a fully scored (and explained) arrangement of this tune. Concepts discussed include: chromatic approach, inserting a ii-V-I, using dominant sus4 resolutions, tritone substitutions, quartal voicings, modulation, drop-2 voicings, and reharmonization.

Part 2 of the lesson “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

In this multi-part series, we will use the song Unforgettable to dive deeper into a multitude of concepts. This first part focuses on the arrangement of the song along with techniques to create an arrangement that has motion in it. If you are a beginner, there is an important chapter for the beginner that has valuable tips. Future parts of this lesson will be released in weeks to come thus giving you time to master this lesson before starting the next.

After our Unforgettable Part 1 lesson, students were asking for more ways to fill out the accompaniment with improvisation, fills and runs. In this lesson we will cover different ways of creating fills and runs over a small section of the song. If you want to know how to fill the "dead air" between chords, this lesson will show you how to create your own fills and runs in both the right and left hands.

Watch me create a full. modern-sounding arrangement for this classic song in real time. You'll learn how to add more motion in your left hand while filling notes under the melody with your right.