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Weekend Song Challenge Welcome to the weekend song challenge, glad you’re here! It probably seems like a huge challenge to make in such a short amount of time, but don’t panic, I’m here to help. In this PDF you find the melody, chords, and soloing material needed to quickly learn this song and play it in a jazz style. The main goal with this challenge is to play a full performance of the song by the end of the weekend. This means playing:

• Melody • Chords • Single Note Soloing • Melody

Four times through the tune with the melody played twice in a typical jazz style. To begin, dive into the melody and work that in your first practice session. Then, move on to chords in your second session, and then soloing in your third practice session. From there, you’ve got the entire song down and can play it over the backing tracks. Have fun with this challenge as you learn new material and build up a song performance this weekend!

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Challenge Part 1 – Melody The first step in preparing this tune for a performance in a short amount of time is to learn the melody. Here’s a single-note version of the melody to begin. If you learn this version and don’t go further, all good. At this point, learning the melody and then adding in some personal touches, like fills, a few chords, different rhythms, etc., is a great goal to have. Anything beyond that is a bonus. As well, if you learn the melody as written and can’t personalize it in a weekend, not a problem. Start with the single-note melody, add personalization or learn the CM if you have time, and go from there. As this is a full song to learn, it’s easy to get distracted going too deep into one element, like the melody, and not having enough time to learn the rest. Setting a time limit for this, or any exercise in this challenge, is recommended. For me, I would set Friday evening for the melody, Saturday for the chords, and Sunday for the soloing before putting it all together at the end of Sunday. Try that out or come up with your own schedule to be efficient and effective in the practice room with this challenge.

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If you learn the single-note melody and want to dive into something more challenging, here’s a chord melody arrangement to add to your performance. Start by learning the chord melody as written. Then, if you want to take things further, you can start to alter the chords, change the picking, add in some fills, etc. Goal 1 is to get this CM under your fingers, and then goal 2 would be to make it your own. Have fun with this chord melody if you dive into it this weekend. It looks tough at first, but because of the repetition you learn 8 bars and can play 16, so give it a try and see where it takes you.

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Challenge Part 2 – Chords After you have the melody under your fingers, you’re ready to explore chords over this tune in your studies. Start by working the Freddie Green style comping chords below as you build up your chord skills and get one step closer to playing this entire song. These chords are common jazz shapes and are played in a “Freddie Green” rhythm, where you use quarter notes in each bar. Start by playing each chord with the same volume. Then, if you want to add more swing to your comping, play the chords on beats 2 and 4 a bit louder than the other two chords in each bar. If you get through these chords and have more time this weekend, go ahead and jump down to the second chord examples and add them to your playing. And, if you stick to these Freddie Green chords, totally cool. Go at your own pace, and most importantly have fun!

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If you get through the first set of chords, or are a more experienced player, you can use the following rootless chords and inversions in your comping. These chords are written without any rhythms, so once you learn how to play these chords you need to experiment with the rhythm over the backing tracks. Start by learning a few chords at a time, get them smooth and clear on the guitar, then build up to playing the first four-bars together. From there, add the B section chords, and then combine them in your playing to cover the entire tune. When ready, alternate between the melody in these chords in your practicing to work on form and switching gears in your playing. This also prepares you to add the soloing to your playing and then you’ve got the entire song covered.

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Challenge Part 3 – Soloing You’re now ready to tackle the 3rd part of this weekend challenge, soloing. As you work on the scales below, keep in mind that it’s usually easy to get into your solo after comping, but it’s tougher to stop soloing and play the melody. So, work on playing one chorus of soloing and then one chorus of melody along with the backing tracks when ready. From there, play chords-soloing-melody, and then finally melody-chords-soloing-melody to perform the entire song. If you break down your practicing into these types of steps it speeds up the learning process and solidifies your sense of form at the same time.

Pentatonic Scale Soloing When soloing over this song, you need to use 3 different pentatonic scales. The Am pentatonic scale is used over most of the tune, then you use Fm over Fm7 and Em over Em7. If you find that switching between those 3 scales is to difficult to do at this point, use Am for everything except Fm7, there us the Fm pentatonic scale. Here’s a chord chart with the minor pentatonic scales written below each chord. Start by checking out this chart, map out your soloing approach, and then head to the scale fingerings below to add these sounds to your improvisations.

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Pentatonic Scale Fingerings Now that you know where to play these pentatonic scales in your solos, time to take them to the fretboard. Here are the fingerings for each pentatonic used in this song. To help you get started, here are tips on how to practice and solo with these shapes in your studies.

• Learn 1 pentatonic shape and memorize it. • Solo with only that 1 shape over the backing track. Leave other bars blank. • Repeat with each pentatonic scale. • Combine 2 and then all 3 scales when ready in your solos over the track. • Add in chords between your phrases to mix up the textures. • Add in pieces of the melody to your solos to expand your playing. • Sing along to get these sounds into your ears.

Now that you know how to practice these shapes, time to have fun getting them on the fretboard!

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Soloing With Arpeggios If you’re ready for the next step in your soloing, move on to learning and soloing with extended arpeggios. These arpeggio shapes are used one per chord. This means that for the Dm7 chord, you only solo with the Dm7 extended arpeggio. When the chord changes, your arpeggio changes. This is why arpeggios are more challenging to use in your solos compared to pentatonic/blues scales, for example, which can cover multiple chords. An extended arpeggio is one that contains every note in a mode stacked in 3rds. So, for Dm7 you use the Dorian mode as your starting point. 1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7 Then, you stack every second note to build the extended arpeggio. 1-b3-5-b7-9-11-13 Notice that when stacked above the octave, the 2-4-6 are written 9-11-13. To help with this theory, remember that 2-4-6 are used when writing scales, and 9-11-13 are used when writing arpeggios and chords. Start by learning one extended arpeggio at a time and adding that one shape into your solos. Build up from there until you can solo over the entire tune. Have fun exploring and soloing with these extended arpeggios as you complete this weekend song challenge!

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