jazz standard

Welcome to this guitar lesson, where we’ll explore a chord melody arrangement of the classic jazz standard Take The "A" Train by Billy Strayhorn.

This tune, famously associated with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, offers a perfect blend of swing rhythm and rich harmony—ideal for showcasing the beauty of chord melody on guitar.

We’ll break down the melody, harmonize it using jazz voicings, and focus on smooth voice leading to bring the tune to life as a solo guitar piece.

Here are two easy guitar chord studies to apply over the jazz tune Solar by Miles Davis. The first one implies 3-Note chords while the second implies 4-note chords. Free PDF and YouTube Short video available.

This video with tab and diagrams is a chord melody arrangement for jazz guitar of the famous Duke Ellington's jazz tune "In A Sentimental Mood". The aim being to mix the melody and the chords together as a piano player would do.

This lesson provides a chord melody arrangement for guitar of the famous song "Days of Wine and Roses" written by Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the movie film of the same name. 

Satin Doll by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, witten in 1953, is one of the most famous jazz tune. It has been recorded by many jazz musicians as Wes Montgomery, Ella Fitzgerald, Mc Coy Tyner, Oscar Peterson and of course Duke Ellington himself. It has become a classic jazz standard, a must-hear, very popular at jam sessions.

This guitar lesson with chord shapes and scale charts explains how to play easy jazz chords and what basic scales to choose for improvising over Satin Doll.

Check out the latest video from the YouTube channel. This is a chord melody arrangement for guitar of Duke Ellington's jazz standard "Satin Doll".

This free lesson with tabs is intended for intermediate players who want to practice some drop 2, drop 3 voicings, walking bass lines, chords inversions and substitutions over one of the most popular jazz tune.

Tangerine is a song written by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer, published in 1941. This is one of the most popular jazz standard. This lesson provides an arangement for jazz guitarists inspired by Stan Getz version.

After You've Gone is a pop song composed in 1918 by Turner Layton. This blog post provides an easy walking bass lines and chords arrangement with tabs for guitar.

A new video is available on the YouTube channel. This is a chord melody arrangement with synced shapes for jazz guitar of the standard All of Me by Simons & Marks.

Focusing on jazz standards is surely the best way to accelerate the learning process of jazz guitar, making sure to choose easy songs with a few numbers of chords and melodies that can be easy to hear, play and memorize. When learning jazz guitar, it's very important to spend time learning famous jazz songs, it is an essential part of being a jazz musician. Many guitar students are able to play a ton of chords, arpeggios and scales but they can't play a jazz tune mixing both the melody and the chords.

Here are 5 easy chord-melody arrangements of popular jazz songs for beginning jazz guitarists. Each lesson is available for free as a YouTube video with guitar chord diagrams overlayed in real time. 

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• Beautiful love (Wayne King, Victor Young and Egbert Van Alstyne)
• Misty (Errol Garner)
• Moon river (Henry Mancini)
• Stella by startlight (Victor Young)
• Autumn Leaves (Joseph Kosma)

Autumn leaves is one of the most popular non-American jazz standards on pick-up gigs and records. It is a must-know tune for any jazz guitarist and a great choice when you want to play both chords and melody on guitar. This guitar lesson provides an easy chord melody arrangement to play this famous jazz tune.

Giant Steps is one of those tunes in jazz that sends a bolt of fear through a lot of young or even experienced jazz musicians.

It certainly does that to me anyway! The fast harmonic rhythm and the seemingly distant relationships between the chords means it is a very daunting challenge.

However, there is a very cool and simple way of practicing navigating through these changes and it involves using 3 different pentatonic scales.

"There Will Never Be Another You" is a popular song by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (lyrics).

It is one of the most known jazz standards and an indispensable study for any jazz guitarist.

This jazz guitar lesson provides you different chord voicings (drop 2, inverted, rootless and extended chords) on the top four strings of the guitar to comp over this jazz tune.