Stormy Weather Taught by Pat Donohue Part 3/3

Stormy Weather Taught by Pat Donohue Part 3/3 Well now we have an arrangement to play the tune, I’d like to talk a little bit about some concepts you can use for improvising your own choruses on this tune which is essentially the interest of jazz’s being able to improvise. I found that if you take the basic chord structure of the song and distil it to its lowest common denominator, just the basic chords. You can use that as a point of departure. For instance, really throughout most of the whole A part of the song, I'm suing just four chords. A—F# minor—B minor 7—E7— But I'm using that as a point of departure because there are all kinds of ways to substitute for those four chords. For instance on the E— That’s what we have already done but you might want to try an A up here because you have all of these notes now that you can use that will maybe sound good in an improve— [Demonstration] And now, instead of going to this A# diminished, that A# diminished is really substituting for our basic F# minor chord that's there— this is all be played— [Demonstration] See? And same thing with the B minor 7 and E7. So, what I do is try and find different ways to play all of those four chords and then try and keep the melody of the song in my mind and create some sort of a caricature of the melody if you will by using those chord forms in different finger picking patterns. So, I'll pick four different ways of playing those four chords and find and improve within them. I'll play the A here and then the A# diminished, instead of playing it here, I'll play it here— [Demonstration] This is another way to play that chord. You might be interested in this. It's a very useful chord form but my index finger is borrowing here at the fifth fret over the D-G and B strings at the fifth fret. Then my ring finger is at the sixth fret of the G string and then my middle finger reaches over here and catches the sixth fret of the sixth string. It's just those four strings; the sixth, the fourth, third and second makes an A# diminished because this is A# on the bottom— [Demonstration] So we've got A— A# diminished. I'll play the B minor 7 instead of like this, I'll play it like this. It might be even a little bit more familiar, B minor 7 chord form. I'll play the E7 like this. What I found that each different way of playing any chord has its own pros and cons. There are notes that are easy to hit in that position. There are notes that are not. So, I'll try and take advantage of the ones that are easily under the fingers on those four chords. So these—the pinky on the A chord can—things like these— on the A# diminished, the pinky also can be at work here. But as you may already know, on any diminished chord, even these new types of chord forms we might be running, you can play that three frets up or down just like you can with this diminished chord form and it's the same chord. So you can use that to your advantage by going— splitting the bar between half of it here and half of it, three frets away for instance. So that would connect nicely with this B minor 7 chord— [Demonstration] When we get to this B minor 7 chord, there are all kinds of things your pinky can do with it. So improvise within that, I think that turns out to be like a pentatonic scale on this E7 here, it's really E now. It's easy enough to add the 7— the 6. I'll try and do a little improve to demonstrate the concept behind this— [Demonstration] So, you saw kind of what I was doing there, just using those different chord forms of the same basic chords. I'll try one more just to kind of give you another idea playing the A for instance up here— [Demonstration] This is an A major which is like D major here but we play it way up here at the 9th and 10th frets and you play an A bass with it, that’s A major. So, you can use that instead of this first chord— seventh fret. And then we’ll go to this A# diminished which is probably more familiar and then to the B minor 7, we’ll play— [Demonstration] This one right here which is more in the vicinity of where we’re working that’s another thing with improvisations. It's nice to stay in the general area of the fret board where you are. So you're not doing a lot of this, you know going back and forth from the top of the neck to the bottom. [Demonstration] Here is our first chord. Here is the second chord. Here is B minor 7, third chord snd then E7 played like this— [Demonstration] If I was going to improvise those chords using those chord forms, I'll play something like this. Again, moving it up three frets instead of down three frets—I'm just looking for the notes that fall easily under the fingers and that sounds good by the way. That’s really the ultimate issue isn’t it?— [Demonstration] You can also take the second chord and make an F# minor or an F#7 will do. This is a fairly forgiving song for this sort of thing as long as it has some sort of F# chord or a substitute there of it will work. If I use a F#7, that’s my second chord. I could go and do a chromatic run, for instance from A down to F#7, however you might be used to playing it. There are a lot of different ways, again, advantages to playing it in different ways. But for instance this way, I can just take the A7 top start off with and take it down chromatically which means one fret at a time or half fret at a time down to the F#- and then go to the B minor 7 and then say an E9 up here or an E9 down here. Or better yet, maybe try and split the bar again between two E9 chords, this one— So I come up with something like this— I forgot which B minor. I should have told you I was going to play it. But I'll play this one. And there, I split the bar between E9 so it's like this, E7 only I'm adding the 9 here with my ring finger at the second fret of the first string and my pinky is on the third fret of the second string—a pretty sounding E9— This E9 up here is played in this manner. Then this finger, I call it a flap chord because if you play two strings as normally and then this ring finger flaps over all three of the last three strings. What's nice about it is, this key is that when you play an E9 like that, you’ve got this rich open E sort of bass put against it. And if you put them together—and maybe even find some notes in between so start connecting it. [Demonstration] All of it has a bit of simplistic approach to improvising over a tune like this. But this is basically how I think about it when I do it. And the possibilities are endless. If you know enough easy of playing A and F minor 7 and B minor 7 and E7 and there are endless combinations. Each combination will have its own improvisational value and come up with some pretty music.