Nature Boy has a beautiful melody and really suited to the nylon guitar. In this arrangement I have shifted the key up to E minor which suits the guitar well. It also allows me to add some open string harmonics and utilise some classical style textures to fill in the gaps of the harmony. […]
Here is my arrangement of Luis Miguel’s famous Bolero – Became Mucho. My version has a Bossa Nova feel. The tutorial is coming out this week but members have access to the sheet music and play along track below:
Available for members: Full score/TAB and interactive sheet music you can print
In video we will explore the scales the you can use over The Girl From Ipanema. Improvising blends your knowledge of harmony, scales, voice leading and technique. The scales that I use here are only one option but I think they work well in a Latin Jazz context. I have included a backing track for […]
Armando’s Rhumba is considered a jazz standard, it was written in 1976 and appears on the Chick Corea album My Spanish Heart. The original key is C minor but I have transposed it to A minor for guitar, you can also use a capo on 3 to get the original key sound. I have also […]
I have arranged Tom Jobim’s Chega De Saudade for this week’s lesson. In this arrangement, I have opted for a more arpeggio approach as there are long gaps between the melodic notes, you can also shape the chordal accompaniment with interesting dynamics to create compelling phrasing. I have put accents on the melodic notes so […]
Besame Mucho is regarded as one of the most famous Latin songs. Written by Mexican songwriter and concert pianist Consuelo Velasquez, the melody was inspired by the start of a Granados piano piece. The song style is a Bolero which, unlike the Spanish Bolero, is a popular Latin song form that originated in Cuba. It […]
In this video we will look at what the Latin jazz chords are in a major key. We will also look at how these chords are constructed and give a few examples of common jazz progressions. For this example, we’ll explore the chords in the key of C major. We derive the chords in a […]
We’re going to look at the start of Manha De Carneval and use chord tones to do get you thinking about improvising. Chord tones will give you a starting vocabulary of notes you case to improvise with. This lesson will help to famillarise you with where along the fretboard you can find certain chords […]