Im posting this on behalf of Robert Vetter. Multi instrumentalist and fantastic trumpet player. He has played with Bob Smith for many years at open mics at many venues in the Washington DC area. I seen this article before and think its worthwhile forwarding it on to singers. Hope you all enjoy it. Friends, Some of you may be familiar with my essay on picking the best key for your voice to sing a particular song in (available at bobsmithmusic...or, it you ask me to, I will Email you a copy). In it, I tried to give some basic theory in laymans terms and offer some advice on how to choose your best key. I know many of you decided that this was too hard a course to pursue. Fortunately, there is now an app available for Apple and Android phones, tablets or computers called iReal Pro which is a beautiful tool for this task. It costs $12.99. As it happens, Titles and chord changes of a song are not copy write-able. This app. gives you access to chord charts for volumes 1 through 4 of the Real Book. This is the most comprehensive and best known compilation of jazz standards currently available. It contains over 1,600 tunes. The cool thing about this app. is that it will play an audible but not particularly musical (because its computer generated) version of a piano, bass and drum trio playing these chords. Even better, you can adjust both the pitch and the tempo. Try singing the song (along with the admittedly robotic accompaniment) in its standard key (the default setting), then adjust up or down until you find the key youre most comfortable in. Its a piece of cake. I havent yet tried printing these chord charts out, but I presume its possible. This way you can give your accompanist a chart with the changes printed in your best key. This will help them a lot. Its not as good as a lead sheet, but its a lot better than nothing They wont have the melody (which IS copy write-able) but they will have the chord changes. The screens on tablets and phones are too small to be of much use for reading music, but they ARE adequate for reading these chord charts . Many musicians have noted that the changes published in the Real Books are not 100 % reliable and this is true, however, most of them are close enough to be serviceable. Anyway, its $12.99. It doesnt have every song, but it does have 1,600 jazz standards. I think it a great resource. Robert
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:56:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015