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: Whitney Smith's Jazz Singing Tip #4 (Aug. 10)

The Practice of Learning Songs

Exercise 1: Hearing the roadmap

Jazz musicians go on short little trips when they take solos and improvise melodies. These little trips are made over the ‘chord changes’ of a song. The chord changes of a song is the specific series of chords that support the melody, from the first note to the last note of that melody.

Eventually you will be able to hear the chord changes of each song, and be able to recognize what chords support each phrase of the melody.

For now though, you will learn to identify different sections of a song. Here’s how you do it.

Take a recording of the song “Honeysuckle Rose” and listen to the first few bars of the melody. Your task is to listen for when the first part of the melody repeats. This first section goes for about 10-12 seconds. Write down the words that start the repeated section. (The answer, #1, is below).

Once you’ve done that, play these two sections, the second being a repeat of the first, over again to get a sense of how they relate to each other, and how they are the first building blocks of the song. These two sections are called the A sections: A1 and A2.

Next, write the words that start and end the next section (answer below: #2). Is this section the same or different than the first two sections? If so, call it A3; if not, call it the B section.

Finally, play the section that comes immediately after this section above. Again, is this section the same or different than the earlier sections we’ve just looked at? Write the first words of this last section out (see below, #3) and then give it a letter. Is it A, B, C or D? And, our goal in this exercise, what is the name of the sections that make up the song from beginning to end (answer below).

Apply this exercise to other songs so that you learn how the song is put together with different sections. Many songs use an A, A, B, A form, but others use an A, B, A, C form, or A, B, or A, A, B, A, C, A, etc. These are forms, or 'roadmaps'. There are many songs forms, though these are the main ones.

TIP: If you have two sections that sound the same except for the last part of the melody, then that does not mean it’s a different section. Often the last few notes of an A2 are different than the last few notes of an A1 section.

ANSWER: 1. “When you’re passing by . . .” 2. “Well, don't buy sugar . . . when you stir it up.” #3. “When I'm takin' sips . . . Goodness knows, Honeysuckle rose.” #4, A, A, B, A.

Resource book: “How to Learn Tunes: A Jazz Musicians Survival Guide” by David Baker, Jamey Aebersold Jazz, Vol. 76. (www.jazzbooks.com)

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