Jazz Guitar Lessons

Bill Farrish Lesson: ‘My Funny Valentine’ Arrangement

Published

3 years ago

July 14, 2020

Jazz Guitar Today contributor Bill Farrish shares his arrangement of the Rogers & Hart classic “My Funny Valentine”.

If you’ve been following my lessons in JGT we’ve been covering a good amount of voicings. In the next few lessons, we’ll put some of them to use. So, by the request of Bob Bakert, here’s my arrangement of the Rogers & Hart classic “My Funny Valentine”, inspired by the Jim Hall, Bill Evans recording on the album “Undercurrent”.

Typically I play this song at a good clip. It was so well written that it sounds great as a ballad and swings hard as hell when played quickly. You’ll find this chord melody also works well at any tempo. Take your time getting used to some of the stretches in the voicings and work on getting all of them clean with a good swing feel. This chart was transcribed from a video I posted a couple of years back. A link to the video is posted along with the lesson to help with fingerings and also so you can get an idea of how it sounds. 99% of the time I play chord melodies fingerstyle. However, you might be able to play this one by carefully using a pick or some form of hybrid picking. Have fun!

Note: I’ve placed all of the chord symbols over the beat where they are actually sounded to help you to better see the syncopations instead of squaring them up. Remember, stylistically, the ‘and’ of beat 4 belongs to the next measure.