Module 12: Standards and formLesson 2advanced⏱ 90 min, then one new tune per week

Learning tunes by ear and from memory

A seven-step method for learning a standard from a recording, analysing its key centres and bass motion, memorising it by Roman numerals and keeping it in a repertoire you can play for the rest of your life.

Why by ear, and why from memory

A tune you learned from a chart lives on the chart. A tune you learned from a record lives in your ear, and your ear is the only thing you take onto every bandstand. Players who learn by ear also learn the things a chart leaves out: the real tempo, the feel, the way the melody sits against the time, the bass player's choices at the turnaround, the places where the chart in the book is simply wrong. And they remember the tune, because to learn it by ear they had to sing it, find it, analyse it and play it, which is four kinds of memory instead of one.

This lesson gives you the method the repertoire page summarises, step by step, and then the two skills the method depends on: hearing bass motion and reducing a tune to Roman numerals so that it becomes one of a handful of patterns rather than thirty-two unrelated chords. The transcription lesson in Module 10 applies the same ear skills to solos; here the target is the tune.

The seven steps

1. Listen to three recordings and choose one as your reference. Three, because every recording changes something (key, tempo, a substitute chord, the intro, whether the bridge goes to the IV or the ii). Listening to three tells you what belongs to the tune and what belonged to one band. Choose the one whose key and tempo you want to learn first, usually the most "standard" version: for a 1930s show tune that is often a 1950s small-group recording; for a jazz composition it is the composer's own recording. Note the key, the tempo and the form before you touch the guitar.

2. Sing the melody with the record until you have it from memory. Not hum: sing, with the phrasing and the breaths of the recording. Sing it in the car, sing it away from the record, sing it starting from the bridge. You cannot play a melody you cannot sing, and you cannot keep a tune you cannot sing. This step takes longer than you want it to and it is the one that makes everything else fast.

3. Find the melody on the guitar in the recording's key. Start from any note of the melody you can locate, usually the first note or the highest note, and work by ear in short fragments, singing each one before you play it. Do not look for a chart yet. When you have it, play it with the record ten times, matching the articulation. Then play it alone, with a metronome on 2 and 4.

4. Work out the bass notes, then the chord qualities. This is the step people skip, and the one that makes you a musician rather than a chart-reader. The method is below. Only after you have your own version of the changes do you compare it with a published chart, and when they differ, listen again: sometimes the chart is simplified, sometimes the band on the record is playing a substitution, and sometimes you were wrong. All three are worth knowing.

5. Write the form on an index card. Form (AABA, ABAC, 12, 16), bar count per section, key centres, the first chord of the bridge, and the changes in Roman numerals with the key they belong to. One card per tune, no melody. The card is a memory aid, not a chart: by the time you have written it you should not need it.

6. Play it five ways with a metronome on 2 and 4. Melody alone. Chords alone, through the form, with a comping rhythm. Melody with the bass notes under it. Then improvise on the changes for several choruses. Then the melody again, from memory, in time, with the record. If any of the five breaks down, go back to the step that feeds it (usually singing).

7. A week later, play it in a second key, and add it to your list. A tune you can play in one key is half learned; in two keys it is understood, because the second key forces you to think in numerals. Then it goes on the repertoire list, which you review every day (see the end of this lesson).

Hearing bass motion

Most standards move their roots in one of three ways: down a fifth (the cycle: ii to V to I, vi to ii, III7 to vi), by step (I to ii, iii to IV, descending lines in minor), and by half step (chromatic approach chords, tritone substitutes, the #IV diminished). If you can hear which of the three a bass line is doing, you can predict the next root before it arrives, and the number of possibilities at each chord shrinks from twelve to two or three.

Train this on the most common pattern of all, the cycle of fifths, which Common progressions in standards analyses in full. Play only the roots below, sing each one before you play it, and listen for the "falling" quality of every move: every root is a fifth below the last one (or a fourth above; on the guitar the two look different but sound the same).

\tempo 80
.
\ts 4 4
:1 5.6{ch "Am7" txt "vi"} | 5.5{ch "Dm7" txt "ii"} | 3.6{ch "G7" txt "V"} | 3.5{ch "Cmaj7" txt "I"} | 1.6{ch "Fmaj7" txt "IV"} | 2.5{ch "Bm7b5" txt "vii"} | 0.6{ch "E7" txt "III7"} | 5.6{ch "Am7" txt "vi"} |

To take the bass line off a record:

1. Loop the first four bars. Listen only to the bass; ignore everything else. Sing the note the bass plays on beat 1 of each bar (walking lines pass through many notes, but beat 1 is nearly always the root, or occasionally the 5th or 3rd).
2. Find each beat-1 note on the guitar, low on the 6th and 5th strings where the bass sits. Write them down as letters.
3. Classify each move: fifth, step, half step, or "other". Anything "other" deserves a second listen.
4. Now the quality. With the root in hand there are only a few possibilities: major seventh or sixth, dominant, minor seventh, half-diminished, diminished. Listen for the 3rd first (major or minor), then the 7th. The ear trainer chord-quality drills prepare you for this. Where the bass plays a 5th or 3rd on beat 1 instead of the root, the quality test will fail and you will go back and find the real root.
5. Check your changes by playing shells with the record. Wrong chords announce themselves immediately.

Guide tones confirm the chords

Once you have roots and qualities, play the 3rds and 7ths through the tune with the record. If the guide-tone line sounds right the changes are right; if a 3rd clashes with the melody or the pianist, the quality is wrong. The loop below is the first eight bars of the chord sequence that Autumn Leaves is built on: a chain of fifths that passes through the relative major and settles in the minor. Learn to hear the two places where the quality tells you the key: the major-seventh chord of the relative major in bar 3, and the half-diminished chord in bar 5 that announces the minor key.

\tempo 100
.
\ts 4 4
:2 1.4{ch "Cm7" txt "3rd"} 3.3{txt "7th"} | 2.3{ch "F7"} 1.4 | 0.4{ch "Bbmaj7"} 2.3 | 0.3{ch "Ebmaj7"} 0.4 |
0.3{ch "Am7b5"} 1.2 | 4.4{ch "D7"} 1.2 | 3.3{ch "Gm7"} 3.4 | :1 3.3 |

Guide-tone lines taught you to write such lines; here they are a listening tool. A good habit: for every new tune, write the guide-tone line on the back of the index card.

Key-centre analysis

A standard is rarely in one key for thirty-two bars. It is in a home key with excursions, and each excursion is announced by a ii–V (or a iiø7–V7) that belongs to the new key. Key-centre analysis means finding those ii–Vs, grouping the chords around each one, and labelling each group with its key. The result is a tune with perhaps four key centres instead of thirty-two chords.

The procedure, on the index card:

1. Mark every ii–V (major) and every iiø7–V7 (minor). Bracket each one together with the chord it resolves to.
2. Label the bracket with its key: a ii–V–I is in the key of its I; a iiø7–V7–i is in the minor key of its i. The tables below give the chords you are looking for in every key.
3. Anything outside a bracket is either diatonic to the home key (label it with its numeral) or a passing device: a secondary dominant, a tritone sub, a diminished passing chord, a backdoor cadence. Name it.
4. Read the sequence of key labels as the tune's journey: "Bb major, then G minor, then Bb again" is the whole of the first sixteen bars of a famous tune.

When a tune goes to a new key, the new key is almost always one of a handful of relations to the home key: the relative minor or major (same key signature), the IV, the bIII or bVI (down a major third, or down a minor third: the "All the Things" family), or the key a half step or whole step away. If you know the key-signature relationships, you can predict where a tune is likely to go, which is the point of the table below.

Memorising by numerals

Thirty-two chords are hard to remember; six patterns are easy. Once the tune is analysed, memorise it as patterns with keys: "A section: I–vi–ii–V twice, then I to IV with a backdoor back to I; bridge: ii–V to the IV key, ii–V to the home key". That is how a professional stores a tune, and it is why a professional can play it in any key: the patterns are the same, only the key names change.

To make this work:

• Name the numerals aloud as you comp through the tune, every time, until the numerals come before the chord names.
• Transpose weekly. The second key (step 7) is where numeral memory is forged. Use the progression tables to check yourself.
• Group by key centre, not by bar. Remember "four bars in Eb" rather than "Fm7, Bb7, Ebmaj7, Ebmaj7".
• Attach the melody to the numerals. A tune is a melody over a pattern; singing the melody while thinking the numerals binds the two memories.

Finding a melody by ear: a drill

The melody steps use the same procedure every time: sing a fragment, find its first note, find the rest by interval, play it with the record. Practise the procedure on original phrases first, so that the method is automatic before you use it on a tune. Have a friend play the phrase below (or record it yourself and listen a day later), and learn it by ear without looking at the notation: sing it, find the first note, find the rest by interval, then check. The phrase is built from chord tones over a ii–V–I in C, which is exactly what most standard melodies do on strong beats.

\tempo 110
.
\ts 4 4
:8 5.5{ch "Dm7"} 7.4 5.3 7.3 :4 6.2 5.1 | :8 6.2{ch "G7"} 3.2 4.3 7.3 :2 5.4 | :4 5.3{ch "Cmaj7"} 4.3 :2 5.2 | :4 r 8.2 :2 5.3 |

When you move on to real tunes, apply the same drill to four bars at a time, and sing before every attempt. Singing first is not optional: it is what makes the difference between finding the note and hunting for it.

Keeping a repertoire list

Tunes you do not play, you lose. A working list keeps them. Make a spreadsheet or a card box with one row per tune: title, composer, key(s) you play it in, form, tempo and feel, first chord of the bridge, reference recording, date learned, date last reviewed. Then:

• Review two old tunes every practice day, from the top of the "last reviewed" column: melody from memory, chords from memory, one chorus of solo. Ten minutes. Update the date.
• Add one tune per week while you are building the repertoire, slower afterwards. Fifty tunes known this well is a working repertoire; a hundred is a professional one.
• Mark the shaky ones. A tune you had to think about during review gets a flag and comes back the next day.
• Record yourself playing the tune every few months. The recording is the honest version of your memory.

The progress page can hold the list if you prefer to keep it in the course; the format matters less than the daily review.

Exercises

1. Bass tracking. Take the first eight bars of three recordings from the repertoire list. Write down the beat-1 bass note of each bar by ear, classify each move (fifth, step, half step, other), then check against a chart.
2. Quality by ear. For the same eight bars, decide the quality of each chord from the record before you look at anything. Score yourself; use the ear trainer on the qualities you missed.
3. Guide-tone check. Play the guide-tone example with a recording of a tune built on that loop and listen for the chords where your 3rd or 7th disagrees with the band.
4. Key-centre cards. Analyse three tunes you already know into key centres and numerals on index cards. Then play each one in a new key from the card alone.
5. The full method. Learn one new tune by the seven steps this week, in the key of the recording. Write the card, play it five ways, and schedule the second key for next week.
6. Start the list. Enter every tune you currently know; be honest about which ones meet the definition on the repertoire page (melody, changes, form, from memory, in the original key).

Quiz