Happy Saint Patrick's Day. Here's I am working on "Danny Boy," and talking about the history of the song via my friend Jacob Garchik. If you haven't seen the George Benson version, check that out here. The video gets pretty long as I go into explanations of how I get the guitar voicings from the Percy Grainger arrangement. That arrangement is attached, and I'd encourage you to make your own arrangements of this lovely melody, which can be instructive about how to harmonize a diatonic melody without getting too fancy.

A deep dive into Melodic Minor from a recent member question. We cover uses of this sound as a tonic and dominant in improvisation, a brief look at Raag Charukeshi (a related Indian raga), and then some exercises for getting it under your fingers.

Today I look at a two part fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier. This one is especially well suited to the guitar. Two guitarists could play it together without any alterations of the sheet music (attached). I demonstrate this with an overdubbed recording.

Today's shape turns out to be All-Interval tetrachord 0137. In the video I go through what this means, and look at some of the sounds that we can get out of this shape in various transpositions and voicings. Sheet from 351 Shapes attached.

In this video I go through the fingerings that I've found for this somewhat tricky melody. I also talk about the language used in the lines, and how this relates to octatonic scales and expansions of the dominant chord developed by improvisors in the bebop era. My transcription for the tune is attached.

This is part 1 of two long videos about the bebop classic tune "Hot House," by Tadd Dameron. In this episode we don't actually get into the tune itself, but work on the background by taking a close look at the underlying harmony, which comes from "What is this thing called love" by Cole Porter. I go through the original piano sheet music for this tune (attached) and then a long discussion about what to do on the common chord progression known as a "minor ii-V" such as Gmi7b5 C7 Fmi. Readings from Dizzy Gillespie's autobiography reveal how he thought about it. The Emily Remler version that I talk about is here.

A look at a Bach chorale, with improvisation.

Random thoughts on the way to work