Rhythm Changes - Bridge Comping?

Marc -

I just watched your Oleo video. Nice. I love playing that melody. However I loved your comping over the bridge. I would love to know what you were doing there. Can you drop me hint or perhaps give a comping lesson for Changes.

Thanks

Rich

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Rhythm Changes - Bridge Comping?

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Nov 15, 2011

Answer
by: Marc-Andre Seguin (admin)

Hello Rich,

Nice question and thanks for the compliment. I indeed would need to build a complete lesson on comping for "Rhythm Changes"... (-:

(Sounds like fun and hard work to have a complete section of the website dedicated to this song form, same as when I created the jazz-blues section in the winter of 2011... you know what's bound to happen when visitors get me started!)

Ok, so, to come back to your question : all I was *thinking* of really were the actual chords, two bars each : D7, G7, C7, F7.

I watched the video again. At certain tempos I'm also improvising a bit. Same deal : I'm thinking only of the basic chords (scales + arpeggios).

Then, there's of course all the inherent substitutions and tricks and that can go in there :

-II-V Interpolation (playing Am7-D7 instead of D7)
-Tritone/Minor 3rd subs
-Passing Diminished
-"Walking chords" style (ala Blue Monk)

... and basically, just good rhythms will make anything quite decent sound very good. If it's well placed in time, there's no doubt it will vibrate with the listener.

I hope it answers your question a bit,

Thanks for the inspiration. I may start working on a whole new 5-10 page section on the website (with videos and TABS, etc) strictly about "I Got Rhythm"... Yay!

Marc-Andre Seguin
JazzGuitarLessons.net
MarcAndreSeguin.com

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