“Knowing” your tunes · Learning Jazz Violin

“Knowing” your tunes

Trying to work on really “knowing” the tunes in my repertoire at the moment.

Iv picked up so many tunes over the years of gigging, learning tunes on the gig, in real time.

Many old tunes seem simple in their form, melody and structure. Meaning you can easily get the bare bones of them quickly.

However most tunes have intricacies that get missed when learning quickly.

I’m trying to right this wrong, in my own repertoire right now.

Embraceable You is one of those tunes that I have never fully put together.

I find a nice way to do this is to learn it from a few different records in different keys so I really have to think about the chords

I find a written version to check what the composer first wrote for the melody and then try out a few versions by my favourite musicians. Making sure to check out the vocal version if there is one as many of these melodies make more sense when you can hear the lyrics.

I then use the tune as a little basis for working on double stops and try to create a little solo version of it.

Here is what I worked on briefly today. Warts and all!

1:18

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“Knowing” your tunes