Simpedia

Neil Moore

Ok, here’s my response:

Neil’s Video Answer

Robin T., Australia

It is basically the Fly Me To The Moon progression and I just can’t help but hear Am7 for the first 3 beats and play the A7 on the 4th. A combination of descending 3rds and 7ths works very comfortably to play this type of progression DF GF CE FE BD ED AC. For the last chord Root and 5th in LH and 3rd & 7th in RH

Mark M., New York

Agreed it sounds pretty vanilla/tedious to play the same thing four times in that measure, and that’s true in both JC1 (where we don’t yet have other choices) as well as JC2. But with JC2, we do have that other choice: JC1. Can’t give good “rules” here for why to do what I’m about to say, but taking JC1 and JC2 as our elements to choose from, a nice arrangement that echoes the building-harmonic-tension intended in the original would be: JC1 JC1 JC2 JC2.

Independent of any of this, it can also be very legit/understandable/sensible to decide: hey, we just don’t need this much tedious “A” in this measure, and end up treating it like the other measures, playing just two chords, counts 1 & 3. Doing this, even sticking with the textbook JC2 isn’t so bad at all. But we can just as easily combine these two solutions and play just JC1 on count 1 and then just JC2 on count 2.

These, to me, are the easiest solutions and have the advantage over any others of remaining consistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the Curriculum content itself.

Robin T. Am7 and A7 are manifested identically with JC2, so it doesn’t change the performance to imagine a re-arrangement of the chords in that way.

Laurie Richards, Nebraska

Here’s what I do… it’s simple and much more interesting than playing strictly as written. First, LH 1 & 7 only on beats 1 and 3. RH I add a 3rd below each melody note (A-B-C#-C# respectively) and have them actually pencil it into their score. For the last chord it’s delicious to add the Bb (the -9) in the RH as well.

Just a quick comment that Neil’s video answer is exactly what I mentioned by adding a 3rd below each RH melody note. The only one I didn’t add was the 9th (B) on the 3rd chord, which is nice! I will add that going forward.

So now you have a playing-based and a reading-based approach for that solution!