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Topic: I think I'm over-complicating things... (Read 2518 times)

smithy818

PS Silver Member
Newbie
Posts: 1

I think I'm over-complicating things...

on: October 04, 2013, 09:17:47 PM

I am new to learning jazz and improvisation piano. I have a midi file for jazzy version of somewhere over the rainbow that I want to learn how to play. I've been trying to learn it from the sheet music that I converted in Garageband but they way it printed doesn't really line up... Anyway I think that there are probably some main patterns in the song that I could follow rather than memorizing note by note. Is there someone out there that would be willing to help me break it down?

I attached the midi file to this posting.

somewhere.mid (23.23 kB - downloaded 27 times.)

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pianoyutube

PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 45

Re: I think I'm over-complicating things...

Reply #1 on: October 14, 2013, 03:02:13 PM

I think that you can use the MIDI only as a source of ideas.
If you want to improvise Jazz, you should use the Real Book or similar, where you can find printed the melody and the chords.
I strongly recommend you the Gary Burton's free course at coursera.org. It's free, it's great, and you'll learn a lot as I did. It starts today, you can find it in: https://www.coursera.org/course/improvisation