The Guitar Diaries #11

Last week we looked at a jazz standard called "(Up A) Lazy Rizer" by Hoagy Carmichael. It's a lovely tune with some really interesting "chromaticisms" (in particular, the flat 9 over the opening G major chord). We worked on a basic comping rhythm using the 3-note "freddie green" chords from the previous week.

We also got into improvising over the changes. This is pretty hairy due to flat 9 mentioned above, and requires basically focussing on a new mode for each chord. (e.g. over the G major, play C harmonic minor, as this gives the G major with flat 9; over the C7 play C mixolydian; over the F play F lydian and then at one point E diminished.)

I found this improvisation fairly tough and, to be honest, it seems a little premature. I am working on getting my scale fingerings down -- and it's coming along, albeit slowly -- but it seems a bit soon to be leaping into improvising within the diminished scale! And it's pretty hard to get a feel for improvising when you've only got 4 beats before you need to leap into a new scale/mode. But I guess it's good to get some idea for "where it's going" -- even if I currently can't improvise worth a damn, at least I'll have a vague notion for how the scale patterns I'm learning are going to come in useful..