If there's an area that you'd like to see improve, you have first to pin it down and to know what it is. And you have to know that I'm weak at carping, playing chords and I would like to be better when I play chords behind a sax player. Well, here you go. From that point, you can decide on what materials and what topics you will try to practice in order to get this thing better.
On the other hand, it could go by experience, but I doubt that by just going through the motions again and comping for a sax player all the time that you'll get better, you're most likely to repeat the same mistakes. So you need focus and you need planning, planning ahead, what you're about to do. And you need to, you know what your weaknesses are.
Welcome to jazz guitar lessons where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy a French accent, make sure to subscribe. Here we go. So today I wanted to discuss a little bit about practicing really a quickie one, and I wanted to see if we could analyze The Shadow of Your Smile, the great tune by Johnny Mandel.
So let's start off by talking about practicing. In fact, I just want to discuss a problem a lot of people have. It's either to get discouraged or to say, I do this and it's it's not giving me anything in return. You know, I spend time or when I do spend time, I don't know what I'm doing and I just pick up the guitar and play the same old things.
So I wrote an article on the website called Five Ways to Create Practice Time. So you should really seek that. That's if you don't know, have enough time to practice yourself or if you think you should, you could prop up your schedule a little bit to have more time. But in the case that you have time to practice, in the case that you would like to do, see what you could do more.
The main advice I can give you is make sure you are focused and before you even pick up the instruments in your hands, make sure that you know what you're about to do. Basically, you should have, even if it's for 15 minutes, you know, I'll do 10 minutes of this and 5 minutes of this. The other thing and 5 minutes of playing freely.
This is the most magical advice you can get if you get the next time you pick up your instrument and you sit down and you you're not in the habit of knowing what you're about to do. And suddenly now you know what you're about to do. You'll see almost magical improvements. Also, there's a lot of, you know, resources on the Web that can show you how to schedule and how to create a routine.
And I'm sorry to say, but this all relates to your weaknesses. If there's an area that you'd like to see improve, you have to first to pin it down and to know what it is. Right? And you have to know, okay, I'm weak at comping, playing chords, and I would like to be better when I play chords behind a sax player.
Well, here you go. From that point, you can decide on what materials and what topics you will try to practice in order to get this thing better. On the other hand, it could go by experience, but I doubt that by just going through the motions again and comping for a sax player all the time that you'll get better, you're most likely to repeat the same mistakes.
So you need focus and you need planning, planning ahead, what you're about to do, and you need to know what your weaknesses are. Sometimes it can hurt to hear the truth, but you need to know what time it is in regards to your playing. So that's it for practicing. Always let me know if you have a question. I just wanted to say a few words and answer the second part of this short podcast.
I wanted to look at the shadow of your smile, which is a tune was recently posted on the website and it's a great song. It's often played as a slow bossa, right? And melody goes like this, right? It's beautiful. It's like sentimental and moody. It's a strange feeling or Latin, but I wanted to do a harmonic analysis. The first thing you have to do is identify the structure of the song.
If you don't have the chart at hand, you can pass this podcast and go on jazz guitar lessons on that slash shadow of your smile and you'll find a chart there. And first thing you want to do is be aware of the structure, right? So the structure of the song is eight bars, eight bars in bars, eight box is simply 32, just good old, you know, standard form.
The way the sections are laid down, though, it's A, B, a, C, and both A sections have the same chords and the same structure at. So that's the first thing you want to start by seeing the big picture, seeing the forest before you see the trees actually. So you look at that. So let's start by analyzing the first a rights water bottle.
So the four chords and the first four bars are really only 2 to 5. So if you play them in Shell voicings right after minor, seven b7 e minor 7a7 at the beginning, it sounds as if we're sort of going into e minor sort of feel because the tunes in E minor or G major major and you sort of feel like the F sharp minor could be a minor seven plus five, but that would really give it a really harmonic minor, really minor dark sound.
And I think that's why as soon as this tune is such a hook, you know, it's such a hit because you have not so much darkness at first. Okay. So in other words, first of all, bars are 2 to 5 progressions, a whole step apart. It's not going to the key of D major, as you could think of it as a3625 in D major, but it's not.
It's just independently f sharp minor b7 e minor A7, so we don't have yet to have that minor e minor dark or sound of a minor six and we don't even get it in the tune anyways. So now let's jump to the next fours, four bars of the eighth section. Hey guys, just a quick note. If you're enjoying this content and you're eager to boost your own jazz guitar playing, then connect with us.
We've transformed the jazz skills of thousands of guitarists. You can find a link in description or head directly over to jazz guitar lessons. Dot net to begin your journey. All right, let's dive back into the episode. A minor seven to D seven to G. So it's just 2514 in the key of G major, right? So played from the beginning.
You can play along with me It's f sharp minor first chord. Ready? One, two, three, four. You go into a minor g see? So this is pretty straightforward. You could be playing sort of a G major all the way through if you decide to improvise like this. Your problem spots, though, will be the C sharp notes. Read the very first note of the first letter, the melody.
This is not in g would be like G lady. And so it doesn't go same thing for your B7 for your aim seven. You need to know where you're going with that. But all in all, it's better to see them as separate two five first four bars, then next four bars. Whoa, we're just in G Major. It's quite nice.
Now let's do the analysis of the B section. So we're in bar nine. The first chord is F sharp, minor seven, flat five. So basically what we're seeing, there's F sharp, minor, seven flat five b7 some sort, flat nine alter going to E minor. So so now the E minor could be a seven if you decide to do so, especially because in the late in the late bar of bar and 910 11, 12 bar 12 you see a slash D so it could be eaten e minor over D two because we're leading to the C sharp.
Right. So two five in the key of E minor resolving to a kind of e minor seven. So right there, the next four bars of the B is C-sharp minor seven flat five F sharp seven, which is very, very minor. So here again, another two five in minor that's not really related to the key of the moment is simply implying we're going to be minor next two bars of the B section.
It's a subtle sound of a B, some sort of a like this. Then we're going to ab7 to go back to the top. So all in all, so far we've done a and B. A.S. Not so bad B.S. o two separate minor, two fives and some scored by the end. It's pretty straightforward. Now we're getting back to the juice.
The juice is really at the end. So after you're done. AB you go back to a note ordered at it, but that, that that's all good to do on that and I'll let the fun begin. That's the climax. So, so this is the last two bars of the second A.S. And we're going from B minus seven plot five or here to E seven.
So this whole thing, in fact is just an E minor to five B minus seven, five, five, seven altered of some sort going to a minor. And it's good because next court is a minor of course, so that the two that are a minor and then there's a little thing now we're starting to see the C section C section is the last eight bars a minor.
Okay. No problem with that. Then we're going up a minor third. See it like this? So you see it like another minor thing that you just go up a minor third and do the two five from there. So yeah, a minor C minor seven seven. And the next chord is once again chromatic. You just go down to B minor, seven, E seven, then A7, which is a two chord.
Remember, we're in the key of G major, right? So A7 is a two chord, were two dominant and then regular two five back to. So once again the whole last eight bars one, two, three, four A minor, seven C minor, 7f7 the minor seven the E seven. The two dominant A7 a minor 77 didn't. And the last chord, I mean, if you're going to wrap up at the beginning of the form, we could have a discussion about this.
You could be playing B7 the last bar or something like that in general, you could just sit on the G major for two bars and you should be fine right? So that's all for the analysis of Shadow of your Smile. Once more ABC be super careful about the C section Super important and it can be somewhat challenging, you know, to improvise on the last eight bars, but make sure you spend the time to identify what are the two fives.
Let's say a minor similar 7f7. You see that as a25, that's a minor third up and B minor seven E sevens in order to five and then A7, you know, organize your thoughts together instead of C seeing each chord one chord at a time or else. I mean, it will take you a year to learn the tune, right?
You need to see things and block, and so far in this analysis, which was done in C two chords at a time or two fives, one before depending. So I leave you to a little bit of improvization on shadow of your smile and I'll see you on JazzGuitarLessons.net Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher.
