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I prepared this list of essential tunes for my students because they were asking which tunes they should be spending their time learning. This list is somewhat arbitrary, being only a list of the tunes that I have personally experienced players calling most frequently in the 25 years that I've been playing Jazz professionally.
It's a good idea make a list of the tunes that you know and take it to gigs with you. This way the other players on the gig will be able to pick tune to play that everyone knows. Until you know all of the tunes on this list by heart print them out in your key and put them in a binder.
There are many other tunes that I have not included that should be on this list, including many of my personal favorites. The list is just a rough starting point to help you make the most of your time as you are building your repertoire. You would be pretty well prepared for a Jazz career if you learn all the tunes on this list.
It's a good idea make a list of the tunes that you know and take it to gigs with you. This way the other players on the gig will be able to pick tune to play that everyone knows. Until you know all of the tunes on this list by heart print them out in your key and put them in a binder. There are many other tunes that I have not included that should be on this list, including many of my personal favorites. The list is just a rough starting point to help you make the most of your time as you are building your repertoire. You would be pretty well prepared for a Jazz career if you learn all the tunes on this list.
9 comments:
Thanks for this advice. Younger jazz players should learn these tunes. There is a high number of well known jazz songs in this list.
interesting list- particularly to see what your take on the most-called ones are. i am inclined to believe this sort of list is very region-specific. for example, at a quick glance, i was surprised to see "april in paris" as a 3rd-category tune, whereas here in montreal, it gets called a lot, and is probably a 1st-category tune.
Of course the list is a rough starting point.
My personal experience has been in the California Bay Area, Boston and New York City. I'm sure every city has unique tune preferences, and even clique of players.
Nice list, many thanks. Sure the jazz repertoire is very region-specific, that is what makes David's list even more interesting. For those of you who are interested in some social science, see Becker, Howard/Faulkner, Robert R. (2005): The Jazz Repertoire, in: Sociologie de l'art, nouvelle série, OPuS 8, pp. 15-24. You can also read that article on Howards website: http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/articles/grenoble.html
It would certainly be interesting to see more region-specific lists being posted!
Great article! Thanks anon.
If you found the article by Becker/Faulkner interesting, make sure you read another piece by them with the same title but a slightly different twist (http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/articles/montreal.html). If I recall correctly, there's also something on repertoires in Paul Berliner's »Thinking in Jazz«.
Tobias (who should rather build a repertoire than reading about how to build one:-))
A great list, and a good complement to those of Mark Levine and David Berkman. I'm sure there are others. Question: For Easy to Love, you don't want the Real Book changes. Do you have somebody else's changes in mind, or do you want to rewrite it?
Good point Fred. The Real Book changes to Easy to Love suck. There are better changes in the Cole Porter Aebersold and also in the Standards Real Book. Great, great tune.
Hal Crook has another nice tune list in his Ready, Aim, Improvise.
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