Guitar Charts - Big Band Arrangements

WillH · July 15

This may not be the right place for this, but here goes.

I'm trying to find an affordable source for accurate big band guitar charts. By that I mean recording-accurate charts for Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Dorsey Brothers, Count Basie, etc.

There are sites out there that sell the full arrangements for songs (from about $75 up to several hundred dollars), but that's both overkill (I don't need the other instrument parts) and beyond my budget.

Does anyone know if such a resource exists? I've done quite a bit of googling and have found a few PDFs that seem accurate, but the list of tunes is very limited.

Thanks,

Will

Russell Letson · July 16

That kind of specialist info might be available over on the Jazz Guitar Online forum (easily Googled or DuckDuckGo'd), which has a number of members with BB experience.

I suspect that such documents are hard to find because they would have been proprietary. Then there's the possibility that in some cases the guitarist just adapted the pianist's chart.

JasonS · July 16

Probably not. Those arrangements would still fall under copyright and selling/renting them to high schools and universities is a pretty big business. That's why the price is so high, they aren't intending to sell to individuals.

You can occasionally find that sort of thing on Musecore but the selections are pretty limited. Example: https://musescore.com/user/3191116/scores/4488746

WillH · July 16

Thanks, guys. I appreciate your time and insights.

It's a tough one. I live in a very rural area, so there are no big bands here looking for a rhythm guitarist. I play swing rhythm in several small-formation bands, but they don't play from the sorts of arrangements I'm interested in. Those gigs are all in the Count Basie head arrangement vein of performance.

I'll keep looking and collect the bits I find as I find them. Thanks, Jason, for the MuseScore link. I should have thought to look their.

Have a good week, everyone.

spatzo · July 24

I think a good idea should be to contact Big Band guitarists playing in the style of Freddie Greene such as Nick Rossi or James Chirillo. I'm pretty sure they have the answer as being specialists of the style.

Here's for exemple Chirillo playing one chorus of I Got Ryhthm in Bb in the style of Freddie Green (with one note chords!!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7i6S4_vi3g&t=401s