Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Wes Montgomery - Four On Six

I love Wes Montgomery, and Four On Six is one of those songs that I need to know how to play. For now, I'm starting just with the bass line and the melody. I'll worry about the improvising later, since it will be great practice. The bass line is simple:

Root - 5 - 4 - Octave

and do that for G, G, G, G, C, Bb, A, Eb

As in the notes: G-D-C-G (four times), C-G-F-C, Bb-F-Eb-Bb, etc...

The melody was taken straight from the Real Book (and the last 4 measures of the first ending I listened to the recording). Those five chords you hear at the end of the second ending are Bbmaj7, Gm7, G#m7, Am7, D7#9. I played these the following way:

Bbmaj7 - Root position
Gm7 - First Inversion, with a 9
G#m7 - First inv., with 9
Am7 - First inv, with 9
D7#9 - Third inversion, #9 obviously

I'd be happy to explain what this means/tab/transcribe this if anyone asked, but for now I'm just putting it there as reference. Actually, I'm pretty sure I played the D7#9 wrong in the recording. Can you spot it?

The improvisation section will be interesting, I hope to get started on that soon. I'd love to hear any suggestions about that, or questions about what I did.

Four On Six - Wes Montgomery (bass and melody only)

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