This lesson focuses on developing a comprehensive understanding of a single tune, "Back Home In Indiana", as a model for learning and understanding jazz standards in general.
You'll learn:

• The Melody
• Keeping Time in Melody Playing
• The Chord Progression: Developing Free Will
• Understanding and Implementing a Bass Line
• Combining Bass Movement and Chord Structures for Comping
• Developing Complex Chord Voicings
• Chord Melody Arranging
• Improvising Melodically
• Improvising Fingerstyle
• Moving to a Different Key

94 minutes - Level 2/3 - Tab/Music material is on the DVD as PDF files

Click here to download updated PDF files

Review: Owning a Jazz Standard comes with its share of responsibilities, all of which Rolly Brown walks you through with the natural ease of a Joe Pass solo. But before you go all Grant Green on the strings, know this: Getting there entails more than improvisation (certainly one of the many how-to components taught here). Groundwork must first get established. Chords, chord progressions and bass lines must be dynamically intermingled. Strategies for their sophisticated motion and texturing need be tailored. Then those soloing lessons (also given here) can be acted upon. Serving as the model for all this abracadabra is "(Back Home Again in) Indiana," a workhorse piece so enticing that cats as deep as Lester Young, Charlie Parker (most often disguising it as "Donna Lee"), Art Tatum and Chet Atkins all just had to own it too. And for the acid funksters out there: Yeah—even Jimmy Smith and "Groove" Holmes bit on this one. So you're in the "in" crowd. That goes for plectrum swingers and fingerstyle sculptors, since Brown's got you both covered—just one of the myriad personal choices he covers. Ultimately, though, the overarching goal of these 94 crash-course minutes goes far beyond deputizing you as an "Indiana" expert, as a one-trick jazz pony—with one definitely impressive trick, nonetheless. But to transfer the skill set and, just as vitally, the mindset on how to approach songs, apply technique, and independently feed that oh-so-cool inner Django. Or Wes. - Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag