Here I show you the theme and the chords of the song " Smile " by Charlie Chaplin. At the end I give some tips for the improvisation.

Here you can download the files associated to this tutorial :

HP, I'm glad you included the pdf for this song. It forces me to "read" the music. Tabs are ok but reading the standard notation is the way to go!! Tks
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HP, So what are you thinking when improving this song? Are you thinking Major, Minor, Dorian, etc.? Or is just something natural after playing all of the scales for the chord changes?

Tks

Richie

11 hours ago, Richiie said:

HP, So what are you thinking when improving this song? Are you thinking Major, Minor, Dorian, etc.? Or is just something natural after playing all of the scales for the chord changes?

Tks

Richie

As mentioned in the tutorial - on the first part with 5 bars of Fmaj - I do the movement from F to Fmaj7 to F6 with arpeggio's - on the Abdim I would do a diminished arpeggio. On G-7 you use dorian, D7 phrygian nat. 3 on Bb-7 Eb7 we change the key for 2 bars to Ab but you treat those 2 chords as a II V - I will talk about this in future tutorials. When you do an analyis for the improvisation you always search for the II V progressions and therefore you have licks which you use for II V progressions. We have a 2nd one at the end of the tune with Ab-7 Db7 - here another key change to Gb.

To make it easier - follow the melody and play around the melody in your improv. and when those " out of key " moments come just follow the melody as well.