50 Tunes List

paulmcevoy75

Hello all

I have been messing with AI stuff a lot lately which tbh I don't feel good about at all but it's permitting me to do some stuff that's very interesting to me (more to come, audio processing stuff).

Anyway I worked with Claude to put together a list of 50 tunes to teach you how to play every sort of jazz there is. Sort of kind of anyway.

It's a little bit uneven but I stand by it. Claude wrote a bit about each tune at the end, sounds like a crackhead.

There's some modern tunes at the end I don't have sheets on and don't really know but they are examples of blowing over odd time signatures.

Perhaps someone here will dig it.

Improvisation Repertoire - 50 Tunes.pdf

It's a work in progress...

spatzo

Hi Paul! That's very interesting and of course that's the logical "intelligent" answer to reach the Graal. This work has already been done analytically by the french jazz pianist and writter Philippe Baudoin (already famous for his book "1558 Jazz Chords Changes"). The work is contained in the chapter 10 of his book "JAZZ MODE D'EMPLOI Vol 1".

He indicates that's the main harmonic progressions found in tonal Jazz can all be found in 57 tunes (40 main structures and 17 variants). He analyses the progressions, the most representative tune and the known associated ones. That's a great work that helps visualize easier the real structure of a tune.

He shows also by the way the thematic connections and possible melodic interchange among themes: for exemple when playing on a I-VI-II-V progression on "The Way You Look Tonight" you could play the theme of "More" or the one from "My Foolish Heart",... etc...

Baudoin also gives names to the progressions:

[I ][VI][II][V ] is an ANATOLE on 4 bars => C Am7 Dm7 G7 (in C major)

[I ][I7][IV][IVm] is a CHRISTOPHE on 4 bars => C C7 F Fm (in C Major)

Those progressions can obviously be also condensed in two bars structures [I VI][II V] and [I I7][IV IVm] (same names)

So if you want to memorize easily the chords of, let's say, "Ain't Misbehaving" you can memorize them as a succession of 2 bars structures like this

AIN'T MISBEHAVING (PART A) is ANATOLE + CHRISTOPHE + ANATOLE + TURNAROUND

and I GOT RHYTHM ? (PART A) is ANATOLE + ANATOLE + CHRISTOPHE + TURNAROUND...

Well in a way that's pure french cartesianism

musekatcher

Are Baudoin's books available in English, looking but not finding.

BillDaCostaWilliams

During Django a Montmartre 2023, Philippe Baudoin guided us on a terrific walking tour of Django's Montmartre pointing out locations of legendary QHCF gigs and Django's one-time apartment.

He has been working on a book on Django's music for some years - anyone have details on a publication date?

spatzo

I think they are only available in french but it's easy to understand you have the charts and the names of the tunes

The book on Django's music should be ready to be published now so probably 2027

Buco

Wasn't there a post within last year or so that posted a list of songs Christian VH put together that cover a majority of situations you might find yourself in as an improviser?

spatzo

I think the big problem is to define first what in "how to play every sort of jazz there is" exactly we consider that jazz is...

As Baudoin did concentrating his analysis on tonal jazz maybe we can let free jazz and modal jazz apart from that study at first. He choosed to keep the study of Jazz on all the music played between Scott Joplin to John Coltrane...

spatzo

This analysis completed by Baudoin is only the visible part of the iceberg then we dive into the true work and in fact 92 work sequences have been defined from this analysis for a total of 1104 sequences as it is better to be fluent in the 12 tonalities.

It might be the other way to end at Camarillo for a long stay, BUT IF YOU GO THROUGH IT => YOU ARE THE ONE!!!

billyshakes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvLDz-UQWmc

Yes, let's get there relaxed! ❤️

paulmcevoy75

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/126278#Comment_126278

That's interesting. Seems maybe like a different ideal than what I was thinking, I wasn't trying to get every sort of chord progression ever but just a list of tunes that if I could play them all in an authentic way, I'd be pretty set to do whatever I wanted to do. Or at least a lot of it.

With anything like this, it might take 2 hours to come up with the list and then 3 years of practice so it can be useless if you don't actually do it, but it was valuable for me to think of what "my" 50 would be. I might make it 60 or 80 though...

spatzo

Yes the idea is very good and analysing Jazz Harmony is certainly at least interesting or shall we better say really exiting. But maybe it might inspire more the desire to compose interesting chord charts than strictly to learn improvisation.