Some traditional Scottish melodies to ease you into the New Year, kicking off with Ae Fond Kiss…

A Disney double. When You Wish upon a Star and as long as There’s Christmas. Brings back fond memories of the children when they were younger watching Disney movies at Christmas Time.

We were invited up to a friend’s cottage recently near Aviemore in Scotland. The cottage has been in their family since the 1960’s so I thought it worthy of a tune. I wrote “Knock Cottage” while thinking of family, friendship, Scottish Mountains and flowing Scottish rivers.

The first thing I do when starting an arrangement is to learn the melody and pick a good key to play it on the guitar. I’m going along with Joe Pass’s chosen key of D. Below is the first 8 measures of When You Wish Upon A Star

I’ve started working on an arrangement of the classic song “When You Wish Upon A Star”. Trawling through youtube for some inspiration, I came across this beautiful version by Joe Pass

Something to help you chill…..The Nearness of You

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Carrying on from measures 1-4, measure 5-8 follow a similar pattern. Go to The Nearness of You guitar chords measures 1-4. Notice in the 5th measure that the F#m7 chord moves to F7. The most obvious chord movement would be to B7. The substitution of B7 with F7 gives a  nice root movement. This type of chord substitution is used extensively by Jazz musicians.

Just came across this great Donna Hightower version of the classic song “The Nearness of You”. When I’m learning a song, as I am with The Nearness of You, I always like to listen to different versions for inspiration. Listening to different versions also gives you a strong sense of the melody which is all important. You can check out some of my other recomended listening for this song along with some background info in my Nearness of You you guitar Song Lesson page

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Below is an analysis of the chord movement in the first 4 measures of the classic tune The Nearness of You. Arranged here in the key of D, the  chord in measure 1 is D major. Moving into measure 2 an Am7 and then D7 resolves us to G in the 3rd measure. Try out some of the chord voicings I’ve suggested below. These types of movement are standard to many songs of the era so if you can start to put the standard movements to  memory you’ll begin to find other places to use them. Go to The Nearness of You Guitar chords measures 5-8

Some footage of Joe Pass and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson playing I can’t get started. This is a great version of this classic standard. Check out my previous blog on the I can’t get started melody where I look at the first 4 measures of the melody and give some pointers as to what is happening.