Satin Doll – Beautiful Chord Melody For Jazz Beginners
Chord Melody Like Joe Pass
Did you know that there is an easy way to learn chord melody, even if you’re a jazz beginner? You’ve seen Joe Pass videos and thought “I could never do that”, but I created a step-by-step method that has helped 100s of my students turn songs into chord melodies. So in this video, I‘m going to show you that method, turning “Satin Doll” into a simple chord melody you can easily play even you’re new to jazz.
The Most Important
Before we get into exploring chord voicings, let me first point out one thing about chord melody: despite the name, it’s not about the chords first. It’s all about the melody.
Really knowing the melody will make everything 100x easier, especially if you are a Jazz beginener.
This will never work if you don’t find a way to play the melody that we can fit chords under, so the first thing to focus on is to play the melody on the top 2 strings. That way, it gets a lot easier to add chords under it.
In Satin Doll, I’ll start by playing the first two notes here on the E string
That takes care of the first two bars, and you’ll see the same melody repeats just two frets higher for the next part
From here, you can move further up and play the D and the C,
and then move back down a little for Bb and Ab resolving to G.
`And since Satin Doll uses an AABA form (which just means most of the tune repeats the A part that we just went over), you’ve actually got 75% of the melody down already.
Now I can show you a great shortcut for the chords.
Use These Chords
The Chords I am using are 3-note Shell voicings. Easy and simple to play but very powerful and flexible. They split the strings in 3 sets.
Here I am playing a Cmaj7, the root is on th 5th string and the chord tones, 3rd and 7th are on the middle string set, you have another version of this which is this Cmaj7.
Here, the root is on the chord tones, which are again on the middle string set.
Like this, it becomes easy to add a melody on top. Let me show you!
A II V Festival
If you’ve ever looked at jazz charts and felt overwhelmed by all those chord names, here’s some good news: There are a lot of repeating patterns in Jazz harmony, and the most common one is the II V progression. In the key of C major, that’s just Dm7 to G7.
We call them “II” and “V” because they’re the second and fifth chords in the C major scale—like this:
The II V sounds like this:
Satin Doll is basically a II V festival. Billy Strayhorn uses this progression as a repeating motif, shifting it around throughout the song. That might sound complicated, but it’s actually a huge shortcut: once you know a couple of II V shapes, you can play most of the song!
Let’s keep it simple for now. There are just two ways you need to play a II V, and they’ll cover almost everything. You already saw this one:
Root on the 5th string.
And here’s the other, starting with the root on the 6th string:
With just these simple II V shapes, you can add chords to the melody for the whole A-part. Let me show you how.
The Basic Chord Melody
Now that you’ve got the melody and the II V shapes, adding chords under the melody is actually pretty simple, and I’ll also show you 2 essential skills that you’ll develop along the way. Let’s start with the first two bars, up on the 5th fret. Here’s how you put the chords under the melody:
I’m just using the II V chords, but adjusting my fingers to catch the melody notes. That first Dm7 with the A on top might look fancy, but it’s easier than it seems
Notice I’m only playing the chords on beats 1 and 3, and letting the melody fill in the rest.
This keeps things simple, and it sounds full and clear.
Luckily, the next 2 bars are the exact same thing, just two frets higher:
Now, here comes a slightly trickier bit. The melody starts after beat one, so you can play the Am7 at the 12th fret, but be ready to grab the melody right after either by barring or moving your first finger.
For the D7, I use a simple bar shape, but notice that it is still just a way to play the shell voicing and the melody:
The Abm7 to Db7 bar is easier, and I play the Db7 twice for a smooth transition to Cmaj7:
To go back after resolving to Cmaj7, you add F7 and Em7 A7, just all shell voicings:
Two Bonus skills: Flexibility and Independence
Most of this is just using that first II V pattern that I showed you, but when you play this song you get a lot more flexible with what you can do with those chords. That flexibility will make it a lot easier to learn other chord melodies and help you when you are comping.
As you probably noticed, there are also a few places where you have to play the chord independently of the melody.
That might feel difficult at first, but it’s a super useful skill for jazz guitar—and you’ll use it in tons of other chord melody songs. Next up, let’s see how to add even more color and movement for the next A section before we get to the bridge!
Adding Color To The Chords
When it comes to spicing up a chord melody, it’s easy to get carried away with crazy, advanced chords. But,:i f you can’t play it, it’s not really useful! For Satin Doll, though, there are some super simple tweaks you can make that add a ton of color and a bit of rhythmic variation as well; without making things harder.
Let’s look at the first two bars. You could play them like this:
Here you can add a 9th, E, on to the Dm7.
And both cool and practical: that same note becomes a 13th on the G7.
Another small change: in bar 2, You can play the bass note on beat 1, then bring in the chord with the melody. That little shift adds a nice rhythmic twist.
You can easily move this to the Em7 A7 bars:
Another place where you can easily add fuller chords is on the Am7 D7:
Here, I add a 9th and 11th to the Am7
and when the melody moves up to the root on D7 I also add a 13th for extra color.
The big takeaway here is that adding a single note can do a lot, and splitting the chord like you did on Dm7 in bar 2, is also a great way to spice things up. Next, we’ll check out the bridge melody. First, let me show you another way to approach chord melody if you want to take things further.
Block Chords and Rootless Voicings
What I’ve shown you so far is based on shell voicings, which works perfectly for solo guitar. But there’s another style you can try—using rootless block chords. This approach is especially cool if you’re playing with a band, and you have a bunch of othe options with them. Satin Doll works great for this, and you’ll often see it done with what’s called “drop2 voicings”
If you want to dive into rootless block chords and see how they work in Satin Doll, I’ve made a video on that on my Patreon.
You can check out that lesson on Patreon here: Satin Doll Block Chords
Simple Riffs Rule!
One of the reasons the A-part of Satin Doll is so beginner-friendly is that the melody and the harmony repeat, in music we call them “motifs.” The bridge is just as approachable: it’s mostly built from the same repeating riffs, with just one tricky chord to watch out for.
Satin Doll is THE song for becoming flexible with II Vs. The bridge also leans into the II V structure and starts with an easy scale melody on a II V in F major, Gm7 C7:
For the first Gm7 chord, you can use this shape,
and the melody naturally leads you down to C7.
Notice how you’re still using those familiar II V voicings from the beginning of the video,
just adding melody notes on top.
Using the chords you just learned, plus an F chord I’ll break down in a second, the first phrase of the bridge could go like this:
Here, it is easier to play an F6/9 instead of an Fmaj7 with the C in the melody. As you probably already know, in jazz, Fmaj7 and F6 are interchangeable, so they both work.
The basic shell voicings would be this for Fmaj7, and then this for F6. In this case, it is easier to play the F6/9 than the Fmaj7 when the C is in the melody.
The 2nd half of the bridge starts with the same melody just moved up to Am7 D7, but now it moves to a 2-bar progression that takes you back to the A-part:
From here, the song moves first to Dm7 G7, and via a passing note in the bass, down to Em7 A7 that takes us back to the Dm7 in the last A.
If you want to check out how the whole thing might sound, I’ll link to a video of that in the description.
Autumn Leaves – The Next step.
Another song that is perfect as a beginner chord melody is Autumn Leaves. You will easily play this with the skills you have built here. Check out this video on that song where, again, you can use shell-voicings to create a beautiful-sounding chord melody plus some rhythm and reharmonization tricks that you can use on other songs as well. Check it out!
Learn Jazz Make Music
https://jenslarsen.nl/autumn-leaves-beautiful-chord-melody-for-jazz-beginners/
Get the PDF!
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
https://mailchi.mp/jenslarsen/an8kg2qc4n
Get the PDF and GuitarPro on Patreon:
You can get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/143395197
Get a free E-book
If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:
https://jenslarsen.nl/sign-up-for-my-newsletter/
Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group
Join 15000+ Other Jazz Guitarists Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics, then send me an email or leave a comment here or on the video. That ias the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
2 responses
Could it be any clearer? I don’t think so. There are very few people like Jens who take the time, patience, and clarity to do this. Hats off to him.
Thank you Fred!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.