Now that the Cubs are done I have a bit more mando time. Plus we've had a couple raw, overcast or rainy days, chilly first days of fall. So naturally I played Nuages, that beautiful Django melody, title of which translates to Clouds...
And a funny thing happened. All these years I've been playing the first 8 notes as single notes, not falling into chord-melody until the Eb9 chord. This time that opening phrase came out as chord-melody! Probably a visit from Jethro. I got so excited about discovering something new to add, I thought I would share it with you:
Just two chord grips really. Grab 4-7-5 on the G-D-A strings, yielding the note stack B-A-D. I know what you're thinking, Donnie, that's that 6th chord you always play, D6th? Well yeah but in this case the shape functions as Gmaj9, since Nuages opens from the G chord. Our melody note(on top) is D, A is the 9th, B the 3rd. No root. OK so start there (4-7-5), back up a fret(3-6-4)and come back (4-7-5). I'm pretty sure these are the "and-two-and"notes in the pickup bar..
Now jump up the neck to 10-9-12 which makes a G9(a dominant chord, flat 7 on the bottom, then third, then the melody note on top of course and it's the ninth) F-B-A. Now we're just going to walk that shape back fret by fret until it hits Eb9! Rhythm here is the rest of that measure.."3+4+" The Eb9 is on the downbeat of the opening bar. So the entire opening phrase we might think of as Gmaj9-Gbmaj9-Gmaj9-G9-Gb9-F9-E9-Eb9 or again with the shapes:
4-7-5/3-6-4/4-7-5 10-9-12/9-8-11/8-7-10/7-6-9/ 6-5-8
You hear me always recommending grabbing these voicings with fingers 1-2-3 so as to keep the pinky available for cool pinky-dance stuff above the chords. Just now as I played this to check frets and all I found myself using 2-1-4 on the 9th chords starting up on 10-9-12. I attribute that to advancing age and the fact that it's early morning here as I write this. Habit-wise I think it still better to aspire to 2-1-3 up there on that shape, but if you grab those with 2-1-4 I guess that's ok too. I know Aaron Weinstein would.
Thanks for allowing me to share and Happy Chord Melodizing.
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