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Summertime is going to be tons easier to arrange!
Why don't you listen to some Billie Holiday on your down time? It's a nice way to learn a lot of tunes. Ella and Sarah Vaughan are great, too.
I'm doing Yesterdays now, nice and easy tune.
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10,

Getting to sound really nice. I like the crossing of the hands (or whatever that's called). Very fancy, you don't see that in jazz quite enough. Maybe Mehldau.

Here are a couple things I would say.
- You choose to play this with a pulse, which is a fine choice. In that case, you kind of have the keep the tempo steady. You could also decide to play it freely, which is very common for playing many ballads, and tends to carry more "emotion / feelings" (whatever that means).
- You could try to spice up many of these chords. For example on those high points with a lot of tension, you can play those "grown up chords" like you call them. That makes the arrangement a heck of a lot more difficult to memorize and play. Depends how good of a reader you are I guess. So you just do what you can.
- When you play those left hand patterns, almost stride, it's nice to throw in a few syncopations. Not playing the LH on 1 and 3 all the time. Sometimes, instead of playing 1 & 2 & 3 & 4, you can simply skip the first and play & 2 &3 ... Or generally play some notes on the &. That provides simply rhythmic interest.

Again, I think it's great to go back and listen to some of the great arrangements and see if you can pick up a nugget or 2. I know things go fast with Peterson, Tatum or KJ, but still, you can pick up a few things. Actually, you did pick up a few from KJ, didn't you?

Nice arrangement. Learn it and post in in the piano bar or something.

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OK, next time I have free time.



Oh, I do, only I find it goes in one ear and out the other. Something about tunes from that era.



There's a good example. I've made a real effort to get to know that song. Ask me to sing it, I have no idea. I look forward to hearing your arrangement. Who knows when it'll sink in?

Thanks!



Yes, will try both ways. this is all work in progress.



I'm open to suggestion. That's as grown up as I know how. I'm playing the A section 3 times, so there's room for variation. mostly I put in as many 7ths and 9ths as I felt it could take, so if you see places could be further tweaked, let me know.



Good idea, I'll see where that can go. There's some latin stride for the second run through the A section. I'll see what else can be made more interesting. I did want to leave some long notes, though, just to pause on them and pay attention to the harmony without necessarily rushing the next note in.



I have Oscar playing this on my mp3 player, but didn't specifically listen for this, I just arranged. There's no keith, I haven't listened to him in ages.



Thanks, I will do that. Thanks for making the time to listen and make comments. I'm finding doing some arranging is a good way to keep me out of trouble with my RH. I figure I need to stay away from rh quavers till at least next week.

It's hard to know what to aim for with an arrangement. For example, I sometimes notice, here I go putting the root note in the LH again on beat 1. But, it sounds good. I try a few other things that don't sound so good. And revert back to root note, bass, beat 1.

>>There's a good example. I've made a real effort to get to know that song. Ask me to sing it, I have no idea. I look forward to hearing your arrangement. Who knows when it'll sink in?

Well I never said I'd record it. I might just throw in a couple of "grown up" chords that I'm trying to learn and then move on to another "lots of 2-5s" tune.

>>Oh, I do, only I find it goes in one ear and out the other. Something about tunes from that era.
Billie Holiday is the best. I once knew a record store owner in the Paris flea market ("les puces de St Ouen."). A lady came in to purchase a complete Billie Holiday set. And the guy said : "Sorry, can't sell this to a woman". I'm serious.

!! I suppose I could say something inflammatory here, but perhaps I'd best not!

Yeah, Billie is an amazing musician. One of my favourite compositions of hers is God Bless The Child.
Sonny Rollins' solo is the best.

10
I really like your intro to Over the Rainbow, how did you go about it ?
And I liked the couple of instances where you used your LH for the melodic lines.
Bill Evans is a master arranger, for an example of the "grown up" chords, study Dave's masterclass.

Hello !
This is my long line improv at 80 bpm of the F maj progression in 3 scales.

http://www.box.net/shared/c9blhuebcpezq56z9lac

Cheers
cus

Sounds good Cus, you're really stretching the lines.
How many keys have you done?

Oh, I do like that song too.

It's been really frustrating me lately that I just don't know these types of songs. By 'know' I just mean, if someone says 'Jingle bells' I can immediately sing jingle bells. I don't necessarily mean I deeply understand the chords, just to basically be able to hum the tune.

Today I made a real effort with Yesterdays. I spent about half an hour on you tube listening to different renditions, and at no point did anything make any kind of musical sense to me. I couldn't just repeat a phrase, even one I'd just heard. Couldn't grasp anything of a tune, and then listen to the next recording and say, yes, that's the same tune. One thing I've realised, I don't really like Billie Holiday that much. It's the slow, mournful songs of that era, all the dramatic violins, and the gushing emotion, it's just not my taste. And so many of these standards, no-one's done recent recordings. No one sings them any more, they just solo over them.

So, I've got an action plan. I wrote a list of 10 standards that seem really popular with jazzers, they seem to be there in the Bible between Matthew and Mark, tunes I don't know. They are in my fakebook and I'm going to play them, just simple tune and chords. I'll not do anything fancy, if I want to arrange them later I can.

I've realised anything I assign myself to do, I can. I have learned some tunes (the ones I've focussed on), I think I'll just focus on it a little more.

what's in the list?

custard, that sounds fantastic!

yesterdays
my foolish heart
my funny valentine
just friends
i should care
stella
it could happen to you
everything I love
my romance
body and soul

Thanks. How did I go about it? Not sure really. I had something in mind first. Probably something grander and more flowing than what is there now. Trouble is, when I went to the piano the grand flowing thing dissolved. But I did think I wanted a bar just before the tune with 4 chords leading nicely into the start, so i tried going backwards through the cycle of 5ths, and that worked, so that stayed. Then I thought for the first bar, don't start on chord I, start somewhere else and get there. Then I played around with a few rh ideas. First the rh was doing simpler chord notes only, then I figured it could take a bit of colour.



I must go back to that, thanks for the tip.

I added some parallel 6ths in the rh today, but so far nothing else has cried out and asked to be changed. When I've written something, it gives me a real motivation to play it well.

So do you mean that the song is in Eb so you tried something in Bb and Ab ?

Thanks 10 and Knots for listening to my improv.
For these 3 scale progressions ("I can't believe that you're in love with me"), I've only done 2 keys C maj and F maj.
I take one and a half weeks to do each key, I need to familiarise myself with the tonality before I can even begin try thinking melodically. Also I push myself to go up a notch on the met each time.

I'm in your situation. I think it depends on your upbringing. We're not from the era where we watch the old films in which most of these songs featured. Plus I didn't have jazz parents.

Like you I want to play from the American songbook and trawl through you-tube. I usually can find a version without the dated strings sound. I've just started singing Clifford Brown's beautiful ballad "It might just as well be spring" and I've found the Sarah Vaughan one with a very cool Miles Davis in support.

Has everyone heard this composition on The Joy of C?

Wailing In The Joy Of C

wow ! Thanks for posting this. Actually this must be one of the few songs of Dave that I don't have. The improv BURNS.