Easy jazz melodies to learn?

[cire113]

I'm having problems figuring out what a melody is in a tune..

Like the basic melody. do you guys please give me list of jazz tunes with easy beginners to learn melody's from ..?

Thanks the more the better!!

[Marton]

Autumn Leaves
All of Me
Blue Monk

[Ed Fuqua]

A nice resource.

[hdiddy]

Birk's Work is also another great easy blues. I'd focus on blues tunes first.

[Shakin-Slim]

Yeah Blue Monk is good. I've recently learnt Summertime, Softly as in A Morning Sunrise and Solar in my lessons. Solar is a little more difficult, but the other two are pretty simple.

[jtlownds]

Woody Herman's "Woodchopper's Ball", easiest jazz melody in the world.

[powerbass]

try ballads like Misty, When Sunny Gets Blue, In a Sentimental Mood, or Autumn Leaves, Body and Soul, Stella by Starlight

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by cire113

I'm having problems figuring out what a melody is in a tune..

In common usage, these two terms are interchangeable - if you say to people "can you hum/sing that tune" then it will be the melody that they hum or sing.

Do you really mean the structure of the tune -and the form? The melody can help you understand this - in which case the book that Ed recommended will help as it will give you a chance to see how these melodies fit across bars and how they repeat as AABA etc.

[cire113]

i guess my problem is alot of tunes ive been listened to it seems there is alot of "embellishment of the melody" so much that i cant recognize the original melody..

but thanks for the suggestions; I understand structure and form I'm just trying to really learn some basic melody's'..

I heard melody is king and lately ive been practicing with backing tracks which are bad in a way because i just realized they dont have the melody!!

thx guys more suggestions welcome

[hdiddy]

If having too many embellishments on your records, look for older stuff or stuff with singers. IIRC, there's a list of reference recordings on the back of Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book if you have that. The Real Books also sometimes list the recordings the lead sheet was taken from too.

[Febs]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

If having too many embellishments on your records, look for older stuff or stuff with singers. IIRC, there's a list of reference recordings on the back of Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book if you have that. The Real Books also sometimes list the recordings the lead sheet was taken from too.

Ella's Songbook Series is a great place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Com...ald_Song_Books