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Great site for learning standard jazz tunes (and about them)

matthewbrown

matthewbrown

Jan 7, 2003
2,263
2,444
Harwich, MA, USA
matthewbrownmusic.com
#1
I have always struggled with memorizing jazz standards, as I've spent years playing other types of music rather than jazz gigs. So, I kind of envy the bassists who know all the jazz standards, and I've decided to spend more time learning them thoroughly, and working through them in different keys. I found this site: Jazz Standard Repertoire, which I highly recommend. It's obviously a labor of love for David Miller, the chap who created it. (I say chap cuz he's based in London). I plan to use it in the coming months to master more tunes. I invite you to have a look at it if you arent' familiar with it. This and IRealBook are great learning tools, I think.
 
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#2
matthewbrown said:
I have always struggled with memorizing jazz standards, as I've spent years playing other types of music rather than jazz gigs. So, I kind of envy the bassists who know all the jazz standards, and I've decided to spend more time learning them thoroughly, and working through them in different keys. I found this site: Jazz Standard Repertoire, which I highly recommend. It's obviously a labor of love for David Miller, the chap who created it. (I say chap cuz he's based in London). I plan to use it in the coming months to master more tunes. I invite you to have a look at it if you arent' familiar with it. This and IRealBook are great learning tools, I think.
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“Memorizing” songs is much easier and natural if you learn to play the instrument.
Sure, playing songs is a fun experience and helps keep a student’s interest, but having a good teacher that understands the musical aspect of the bass goes a long way.
 
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#3
I agree. I know how to play bass guitar. I majored in it at the U. of Miami for two years and I've played professionally since I was in my teens. The memorization of these songs is more a matter of musical memory, though. Being able to hear harmonic progressions, melodies, and forms and to accompany others and solo creatively on them is what I mean by memorization in this context. When I play solo classical guitar, much of what I play is motor memory. When I'm improvising on a jazz tune in a small ensemble, it's a very different thing.
 
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#4
matthewbrown said:
I have always struggled with memorizing jazz standards, as I've spent years playing other types of music rather than jazz gigs. So, I kind of envy the bassists who know all the jazz standards, and I've decided to spend more time learning them thoroughly, and working through them in different keys. I found this site: Jazz Standard Repertoire, which I highly recommend. It's obviously a labor of love for David Miller, the chap who created it. (I say chap cuz he's based in London). I plan to use it in the coming months to master more tunes. I invite you to have a look at it if you arent' familiar with it. This and IRealBook are great learning tools, I think.
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What a great site! Thankyou for this … its exactly what I’d been searching for but hadn’t been able to find. Much indebted to you sir 👍🏼
 
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#6
BassChap said:
Wonderful site. Thanks for sharing.

Also recommended to check out is learnjazzstandards.com. Brent Vaartstra has collected a great mix of free and membership-based material. Among the free material is a Podcast, a YouTube channel and analysis of several standards. Membership to the "Inner Circle" adds a lot more and is absolutely worth the fee.
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Yes, I like that site, especially because it includes playalongs. What I'm trying to do now is consolidate my understanding of the standards by listening to different versions, learning the melody (by ear and on the bass) and then playing walking lines in different keys. Playalongs can be very helpful! I especially like that IRealBook includes a feature that will move the key up a given interval automatically, so that you're constantly changing keys as you play through the tune. Using a cheat sheet of Roman numerals indicating the progression can help with more complicated tunes, I think.
 
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#7
This is great! There’s a piano bar in town that hosts jam nights for jazz fairly regularly. I’ve had intentions on trying my hand at it, but I honestly have next to zero jazz repertoire despite being quite versed in blues, rock, pop, etc. I’m hoping this can give me a foundation to build from :)
 
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#9
Me too regarding iRealPro. I’m having good success creating walking bass lines with it, especially because it already gives you a line that you can start with and use/modify as you desire. My lines always end up very different to it but it’s kinda nice to have that safety net if you’re stuck for ideas. I put the bass voice to “Tuba” to hear more clearly what the built-in bass line is.
 
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#15
The real plus of this website is the lyrics and Spotify playlist! The chord progressions you could easily find them anywhere. But I often find it hard to find a lot of different versions of jazz standards, Spotify search engine is useless for that
 
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#16
oren said:
It seems to me what that site misses, as does IReal, is the extremely important aspect of learning the melody of tunes - I think of the melody as the “why”, the changes are the “how”. There’s a great post from Ed Fuqua on how to learn tunes: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/really-learning-a-tune.304843/
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The IRealBook feature that moves the playback through a series of keys can be pretty helpful once I've learned the melody and have started getting a handle on the changes in the standard key.
 
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#17
I'm going to add a comment based on my years as a psychology teacher: The difficulty level for memorizing standards is high! You have to learn the form of the tune along with the melody, and you will be called upon to play the tune in any number of contexts, with different tempos, time feels, keys, etc. This is much harder from a cognitive point of view than simply playing a part that you've memorized. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread (especially for the links to Ed Fuqua's post, which is a gem, and Brent Vaartstra's site). Happy improvising! :)
 
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#18
matthewbrown said:
I'm going to add a comment based on my years as a psychology teacher: The difficulty level for memorizing standards is high! You have to learn the form of the tune along with the melody, and you will be called upon to play the tune in any number of contexts, with different tempos, time feels, keys, etc. This is much harder from a cognitive point of view than simply playing a part that you've memorized. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread (especially for the links to Ed Fuqua's post, which is a gem, and Brent Vaartstra's site). Happy improvising! :)
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A timely reminder, thankyou. We only have so much life left in the tank …. use it wisely!
 
#19
The lists (including top 10 and top 25) are interesting. Probably every player who took their most recent 2000 tune calls would produce a different list. And in my own experience, jam sessions and gigs would produce two different lists as well. But that's OK. What might be the most useful is just providing an idea of "where to begin," amid the vast and growing list of fake book tunes that everybody carries around in their pocket.

@Chris Fitzgerald has a similar list:
Jam sessions tend to feature the tunes that have been chosen as the "learning" tunes, like the progression of tunes in the Suzuki violin books. It's not surprising that you want to call tunes that more than one participant has a chance of playing.

I come from a cello background, so most of my playing was melodic before I began to learn bass. I've found that learning melodies is the best thing for me. Between knowing the melody, and taking contextual cues from the other players on stage, I can usually make my way through the changes. Learning melodies at home gave me a use for the fake books, made it interesting, and has gradually improved my treble clef reading chops.

I also think that working on melodies embeds melodic knowledge and thinking into our ears and brains and could improve the quality of our soloing.
 
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#20
fdeck said:
The lists (including top 10 and top 25) are interesting. Probably every player who took their most recent 2000 tune calls would produce a different list. And in my own experience, jam sessions and gigs would produce two different lists as well. But that's OK. What might be the most useful is just providing an idea of "where to begin," amid the vast and growing list of fake book tunes that everybody carries around in their pocket.

@Chris Fitzgerald has a similar list:
Jam sessions tend to feature the tunes that have been chosen as the "learning" tunes, like the progression of tunes in the Suzuki violin books. It's not surprising that you want to call tunes that more than one participant has a chance of playing.

I come from a cello background, so most of my playing was melodic before I began to learn bass. I've found that learning melodies is the best thing for me. Between knowing the melody, and taking contextual cues from the other players on stage, I can usually make my way through the changes. Learning melodies at home gave me a use for the fake books, made it interesting, and has gradually improved my treble clef reading chops.

I also think that working on melodies embeds melodic knowledge and thinking into our ears and brains and could improve the quality of our soloing.
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I agree with you about melodies, especially tunes that have melodies that hint at the changes. I've taken a different and more effective approach this time around. Listening to, and playing along with lots of different versions in different keys, then practicing them with a backing track, again in different keys, at different tempos and with different feels, making sure that I can sing the melody to it as I play.

I learned some jazz tunes pretty well in college that no one ever calls around here: Spain, Recorda Me, Windows, Falling Grace. Since I'm the bass player, no one ever expects me to call a tune at a session, and if I called Falling Grace...well it would be awkward. The standards that are familiar to most folks around here I never had to learn, I just faked them with lead sheets in a wedding band that had a huge book. Much of the work (and sessions calls, too) here is backing singers in pickup bands, and that is new to me. So I have a lot of new tunes to learn!
 
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