“Moon River” – The C Section
Welcome to our 3rd lesson on the jazz standard “Moon River” for beginners. So far in this course we have covered the 1st 16 bars of the tune which is also known as the A and B sections.
In this lesson we will add the final section, the C section, we will deepen our understanding of these terms, and we will consolidate the overall structure and form of “Moon River”.
The Structure & Form Of Lead Sheets
Lead sheets from the Great American Songbook most commonly follow a 32-bar form and are divided into four sections. The tune “Moon River” can be broken down into 4 sections: the A section, the B section, the 2nd A section, & the C section.
We observe that bars 17-24 (2nd A section) are identical to the 1st 8 bars (1st A section) and this is a common feature of jazz standards. Understanding this repetition helps us to reduce the amount of information we need to memorise the song in its entirety.
C Section Chord Voicings
We apply chord voicings and arranging techniques to the C section of “Moon River” (bars 25-38). It’s important to understand that the C section for ‘Moon River’ is 14 bars long, unlike the previous sections which are all 8 bars long.
We focus on playing simple chord voicings and we examine the role of ‘slash chords’ which are commonly used to create smoother transitions between the chords.
We stress the importance of visualising the different sections to keep track of our position in the song. We finish by playing through the entire tune, indicating when we change sections to reinforce this understanding.
Related Lessons
In this lesson we are going to start learning the tune “Georgia On My Mind” using 3-note spread voicings on the A Section of the tune.
Lead sheets are a useful tool when starting out with jazz, but by learning tunes by memory, it will benefit your playing in a number of ways.
Slash chords contain 2 bits of info, the 1st letter indicates what chord should be played & the 2nd letter specifies the bass note of the chord.
Practice Tips
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Use the repetitive structure of jazz standards to your advantage in memorising the form and visualising the repeating sections. This greatly speeds up the memorisation process.
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Understand that slash chords such as A-7/G are most often used to imply a specific bass line movement, in this case connecting A-7 to F#-7b5 in bars 25 to 27.
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Make sure that you are comfortable with these basic spread voicings before moving onto the next module where we introduce lower bass notes, chord extensions, and melodic embellishment.
