Open Position Melody: Jazz Guitar

Video Transcript

"CASEY CORMIER: Okay, so now that we understand how to figure our key signatures out, we can figure out how to start reading melodies, okay? A couple of things we want to know about this is when we're figuring a melody, we're going to try to stay in this first position of the guitar. We really can understand and count quickly from an open position because we know what are our strings are to find the next note. Later on, we'll transfer that up an octave or to another position to make things a little more interesting but at first this is how we want to read. So, let's take a look at a simple melody that's called "Excerpt of a Song.". This is a typical jazz type of song progression. We know because of the flat rule that the second to the last flat is our key signature so we are in the key of E flat. Any notes we see that are A flat, that are in A, D, or in E, are all going to be flats assumed unless there is a natural note in front of it. So, and anything else would be assumed in natural unless there is a different sign in front of it. So, we noticed here this first symbol right here, this is an eighth note rest if you understand your rhythm reading. This will be a "one" that we rest on and we end up playing on the "and." This rhythm will sound like one, two, three, four, dada-dada-da-da, okay, one more time, one, two, three, four, da-da, da-da, da, ra so papap-papa-pappa and we end up starting on the upbeat."