LJS 106: Mapping Out a Jazz Standard for Improv Success

Welcome to episode 106 of the LJS Podcast where today we are moving forward in Jazz Standards Month to talk about mapping out a tune you are learning. We'll explore mapping out the guide tones and chord tones to build a strong foundation for your improvisation. Listen in!
Listen to episode 106







In today's episode, we are continuing on through Jazz Standards Month. This time around I discuss how to "map out" a jazz standard you are learning so that you can get started on the right foot.
I think it's important, no matter what level you are at, to go back to the basics. How do you spell out a chord, what are the defining notes in that chord, and ultimately, how can you use that information to inform your improvisation?
I talk about defining the guide tones (the 3rds and 7ths), how to voice lead them, and how to utilize chord tones effectively. I believe that if we go back to these foundational elements we can set ourselves up for success on the bandstand.
Here's what I talk about today:
1. The basic elements of mapping.
2. Defining the different qualities of 7th chords.
3. Defining guide tones and how to voice lead them.
4. Guide tones over "All of Me."
5. A helpful exercise for practicing chord tones over "All of Me."
Here are some of the musical examples I refer to in this episode:
Guide tones over a ii-V-I


All of Me Guide Tones

All of Me Chord Tone Exercise

Important Links
The Jazz Standards Playbook







Read the Transcript
Brent: All right. What's up everybody? My name is Brent. I am the jazz musician behind the website LearnJazzStandards.com, which is a blog and a podcast and videos, all geared towards helping you become a better jazz musician. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out today, and wow, I just to say first of all, a big thank you to everybody who participated in our podcast raffle back in February. Man, that was super-awesome, and we just got a lot of reviews on iTunes, I got a lot of suggestions from you from future episodes. So I just want to thank everybody publicly first, just for participating in that and just helping out. I really appreciate it, and I just sent out emails to 17 lucky winners of our raffle.
I'm not going to name all of you, because you know who you are, I've sent you an email, but I want to publicly thank our number one winner, who won both of our jazz courses, our ear training course, "How To Play What You Hear", and our practicing course, "30 Days to Better Jazz Playing", as well as our entire library of jazz standard play-alongs, Megan Campbell from Seattle, Washington. So thank you so much, Megan, and congratulations. I really appreciate you being a listener, and I appreciate everybody who participated in our competition.
Now, last week on the podcast we started jazz standards month. Sometimes we do themes on this podcast where we hone in on one specific topic for an entire month and just really try to get inside of that topic. So for the month of March we are doing jazz standards month. I'm excited about this, and last week we talked about analyzing jazz standards with Roman numerals, and how by doing this we can really unlock the song that we're learning. We can understand it better, we can understand the harmony, and it's going to set us up for success in the long run when it comes to playing and performing this particular tune.
Today we're going to talk about step number two, which is all about mapping out the song. We're going to be discovering what chord tones we can use in that song and what are the important notes that we need to hone in on to really get those chord changes to come out. And by doing this,