Someone to Watch Over Me - final · Marc's Jazz Guitar Academy

Someone to Watch Over Me - final

After showing the work leading up to this, here is the chord melody followed by an improv. I also did a version where I comped and played the head, but it was too long - so I just end after the improv. Elements of what I played are definitely in the various previous etudes for scales, guide tones, and arpeggios. I did practice the various steps daily and eventually things began to fall into the improv.

The only real plan I had for the improv, was that I wanted to start going down the scale - since the melody goes up and I wanted a contrast. I also targeted the "out" notes in the various diminished chords in the song. So I land on the Ab against the F dim, the F# against the C diminished, and C# on the E diminished - even though those notes are not diatonic to the key of the song (C). This is also different than the melody of the song which is 99% diatonic to C (except for a single G# at the end). To me, I heard those notes in the chordal movement and it felt very natural to play them.

17 comments

Someone to Watch Over Me - final