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Miles Davis' album Kind of Blue and his song "So What" are often a gateway into jazz for many musicians with a rock, pop and blues background.
Miles Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue and his song "So What" often represent a gateway into jazz for many musicians with rock, pop or blues backgrounds.
But while some of us are drawn to the opening chords of "So What" and learn them on the guitar where they fit nicely on the fretboard, we might stop there rather than dig into making single-note shapes out of these same chords.
In today’s lesson, you’ll learn how to take the classic "So What" chord shapes and turn them into single-note soloing ideas in your improvised lines and phrases, bringing a bit of Davis and Bill Evans onto the fretboard at the same time.
The "So What" Chords
As a review, here are the opening chords played by pianist Evans on the classic recording of "So What." The chords are built by stacking 4th intervals until you hit the top two strings, where there is a 3rd between those last two notes.
Also, there are two different chords going on here under the written Dm7—an Em7 and Dm7 shape that, when combined, outline the intervals written in the last two bars of the example.
Before going on to the next part of this lesson, one thing to take away from the "So What" chords is that when you see Dm7 on a lead sheet, you can move between Dm7 and Em7 in your comping ideas in order to play on the given chord, as well as add color by outlining the R-9-11-5-13 when playing the Em7 chord.
After you’ve reviewed (or learned, if they are new) these shapes in your practicing, it’s time to move