Ted Greene Revisits “’Round Midnight” 07/05/2000 – Part 4

Welcome back to part four of my video-taped lesson on “’Round Midnight” with guitar legend, Ted Greene!

Here is “’Round Midnight”, Part 4, for this lesson's conclusion. I also added another “Grappling for…” edit screen to save you time when my brain starts ‘skipping frames’ and my rusty chops become unbearable. FYI, “grips” is a term for chords I borrowed from Ed Bickert.

This video opens with the question, Ted, how you would play “’Round Midnight” at a party? Great bass lines over a consistent triplet feel which lends itself to double-approach notes. He plays them at measure 4 of the “Real Book” lead sheet. Ex. | Bm7 E7 Bbm7 Eb7 |

“RULE NUMBER ONE of Jazz for harmony is what?” Chord enrichment! Add extended tones to your grips, in this case it’s the 13th. “Got to enrich every chord unless there is a good reason not to, otherwise it ain’t Jazz.” Ted goes on to mention the simplicity of his “Exodus” arrangement as an example.

Whoa! “I like that! Here is a nice line to transcribe @ 3:16. Afterwards, Ted launches into a sequence of chords he called “cycle of 4s”. Ted exclaims, “There’s something about cycled lines!” He continued on “with 3 voices”. He calls these “finger gymnastics to get warmed up”. Yes, another great exercise to research and possibly develop from this video!

At this point, I expressed my lament for spending way too much time with open/altered tunings. I had transcribed several books for various fingerstyle guitar artists that exclusively used open/altered tunings. Yes, my ears got good, but I did NOT learn the guitar fingerboard. Let me echo the words of Chet Atkins when he was asked if he had experimented with altered tunings, “I am still trying to learn the guitar in standard tuning!”

OMG! Kudos from Ted! “Level A kinesthetic powers”? I don’t get it! “Kinesthetic” was Ted’s new favorite word he used a couple times throughout this lesson. I remember I brought my Lowden guitar to one of my lessons and played Alex de Grassi’s “Causeway” for him. Ted had experimented with his own altered tunings as well. A list of those tunings can be downloaded at https://www.tedgreene.com/teaching/ot... . If you do visit, please express your love and appreciation for Ted to those who have worked hard and made these materials available to you, in the forums.

@ 5:22, Ted, “So we were on the Db7 …” which refers back to what Ted first played it @ 3:16, but now Ted breaks that down in detail. Then onward to a Db7b9 chord, or the Db11b9 sounds even better with Ted’s special fingering explained. An alternative fingering? The Chet [Atkins], Merle [Travis] way of wrapping that “naughty thumb” around the neck to fret the 6th string.

Ted plays a couple of scales over that D11b9 chord I am rehearsing which leads us right back to Joni Mitchell’s “Michael From Mountains” from the previous video. We expressed our mutual admiration for Joni, her early discography discussed, as well as her influence on other’s music. When Ted moves that ethereal chord up to the 7th fret, a B chord with a couple open strings, it reminded me of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard” which I used to play in high school. Ted plays “Both Sides Now” from her “Clouds” album here    • Ted Greene - Both Sides Now  (Beautif...  

This is where Wes Montgomery would play dominant chords up 2 half steps such as |Gb7 G7 Ab7| at measure 6 on the lead sheet. Then, measures 7 and 8, Ted plays |Cm7b5 B9 |Bb9|.

He continues by approaching the bridge several different ways. He doesn’t name the chords, so you will need to transcribe these by ear. But Ted, “what are the stock changes?” Ted “There are none!” I refer back to our first lesson on this from January 2000. Ted outlines his theory on why the “Real Book” is full of errors. I would be very curious to compare songs in the “New Real Book” with the older “Real Book” to see if some of the well known errors were corrected. A project for another time.

We are at the very end of the song. Ted said, “just cadence it!” That’s the whole tune, folks! Now for goal setting: After you have played “’Round Midnight” a few times in Eb minor, try to play it in A minor, a half an octave away where it’s more of your brain working out the changes and not so much muscle memory.

Bonus song! While searching for chords in the key of A minor, Ted starts playing a swinging version “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”. I NOW love this tune! I am so glad Ted left this snipet behind for me to work with. The song I mentioned was Dori Caymmi’s “Like A Lover”, a key Brazilian composer during the Bossa Nova era.

That’s a wrap for the final installment of my lessons with Ted on “’Round Midnight”. I hope you enjoyed it!