Peter Bernstein’s Chord Melody Snippets
If you’re a jazz guitarist or aspiring to be one in this day and age, you’ve most likely heard of Peter Bernstein. If not, it’s time you check him out as he is one of the finest and most influential players of the day!
If you’re already familiar with his playing, and also happen to be a big Jim Hall fan like myself, I’m sure you’re aware of the great influence this legendary master had on Bernstein. And this is especially evident when you listen to his use of chords in general. So if you love those gorgeous jazz voicings, you are in for a treat!
In this lesson I teach you some awesome chord melody snippets by Peter Bernstein and show you how you can incorporate them in the context of hundreds of standards. And I am especially excited to show you how Bernstein reharmonizes “dominant to tonic” cadences with a concept called “planing” , a practice that was started during the impressionist harmony period, namely by Debussy and Ravel.
I admit a lot of what you are going to hear is considered advanced from a harmony standpoint. But if you understand what a II-V-I is, you will get the gist of it because I break everything I show you down to its most basic components. In addition most of the stuff is easy to play because it consists mostly of 1 or 2 finger chords!
PDF & AUDIO DOWNLOAD:
The “Peter Bernstein Chord Melody Snippets” lesson files, can be downloaded for $9.50. The download includes the following files: PDF with notation and TAB of the “I’ll Wait and Pray” Intro as well as the featured “Autumn Leaves” changes incorporating the concepts. Also included are 6 additional chord melody snippets by Peter Bernstein as well as MP3s of everything!
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Richie,
This presentation appears to be extremely well researched and beautifully presented. I assume that you developed the material contained in this lesson by transcribing by ear. Given the number of unusual chords that are involved, it would seem that this transcription process would have taken some intense listening, even for an accomplished musician like yourself. I could not have done this on my own.
I am not sure that I have any of Peter Bernstein’s recordings, but I certainly am interested in hearing more of his music.
I was still in grade school during the time in 1958 or 1959 when Miles must have recorded “So What”. I remember playing “So What” back in 1966 or 1967 with a saxophone player that I knew when I was studying mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. At that time I was playing mostly folk and rock, but my saxophonist friend was involving me in a tiny bit of jazz. On “So What”, I played melody lines and chords on the guitar–ba-da-de-da-da-de-dah (short rest) so what.. . My friend played the melody and / or improvised on his sax. Strangely, I do not remember the chords shapes I used, but I do distinctly remember the shape of the tune.
You are coming up with some really interesting chord-melody material!
Thank you,
Duncan