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Guitar Arrangement Lesson (Misty)

June 14, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

I’m currently working an arrangement of the song Misty. It was written in 1954 by the pianist Errol Garner, originally as an instrumental. However, it’s always good to get familiar with a vocal version of a song before starting an arrangement and I particularly like the version by Ella Fitzgerald in the songbook pages. As for a guitar instrumental version, Joe Pass’s version on his album Vituoso #2 in the songbook is great.

When working through the chords of the tune I decided to use the key of E rather than the most common key of Eb as it seemed to fit well with the melody and give me plenty of sustaining open strings. The first three notes of the melody for Misty are particularly recognisable, the first two forming a minor third. In fact I always use these two starting notes of this tune as a way of remembering the sound of the minor 3rd interval descending.

Image of notation exert from Misty

In the chord progression extensive use is made of the II-V movement

‘                Emaj7         Bm7            E7                     Amaj7

Walk my way, and a thousand violins begin to play

In the above example the Bm7 to E7 is a II-V movement. Once you’re familiar with this type of chord movement you’ll start to hear it in lots of different parts of the songs you play and listen to.

I’ll be covering this in more detail in the forthcoming guitar lessons. Sign up to the mailer on the right hand side of the screen to receive further information.

I’ll post my arrangement of Misty up shortly…..watch this space!!

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