CHORDS 81: Build & Play with Joe Pass

This excerpt is taken from a transcription of Acoustic Blues by Joe Pass.

It provides us a window into his compositional work and opportunity to build & play some cool chords.

This is really designed to give people who do not work on Jazz, a little taste of the good stuff by one of the iconic players. It might only be two staves worth but if your hands and ears are not accustomed to these shapes and sounds then this will be more than enough for a good workout.

Here are the frets based on how I built them. Fingerings are provided in the video below:

A regular Blues player would be happy just grooving along with the D7 | G7 | D 7 | Em7 | D 7 | D 7 | G7 | G7 but Joe’s version has substitutions, extensions and chromatic notes to give it that trademark sophistication.

Search for Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass in Hanover to watch him perform and then look for the video An Evening With Joe Pass to watch a masterclass.

If you enjoyed this then search for ‘Joe Pass Plays The Blues’ published by Mel Bay or search for the scores of other Jazz standards to do some more.

The priors for this lesson are a decent command of Fingerpicking, Notation, Chord Scales and Chord building. All of these are covered in the archive.