As some of you may know from my blog, I did a jazz workshop a couple of years ago that I struggled with. It pointed out that I'm somewhat lacking in many areas, but in a good way. To help me out with this I looked around for online lessons concentrating on learning jazz standards.
What I found was the website and Facebook group from Matt Warnock. He has paid lessons, but also a massive amount of free material online as well as a Facebook group PlayJazzGuitar. This group has a "Tune of the Month" where Matt walks thought a Jazz standard with weekly live sessions looking at the chords, structure, melody, chord melody and soloing options for the song. Members post private videos of them playing the tune and get feedback from both Matt and the rest of the community. I found the group very supportive and Matt was very involved not putting up with any negativity.
"So What" by Miles Davis was one of the songs that I did with this group.
"So What" is the first track on the 1959 album Kind of Blue by American trumpeter Miles Davis which I really only know this because Wikipedia told me.
While I enjoy jazz I'm no expert by any means, however "So What" is just one of those songs that is a classic and most people would have heard of it from somewhere. I believe this was unusual at the time it was released because of how the song is constructed. It is considered a modal song. Again, from what I understand this is different because the chord changes are not taken from a major scale, but the whole song/vamp moves up a semi-tone and then back in the 'B' section. I struggle to "play though the changes" of a song, but this is a bit easier where when soloing and the tune moves up a semi-tone, your solo can just move up as well, and this sounds kinda cool.
Hope you all enjoy it!
Stay safe.