Summertime is one of the most popular jazz tunes at jam sessions and on pick-up gigs. It’s also one of the most fun jazz tunes to play on guitar. Because of this, Summertime is an essential tune to have under your fingers. While is a popular and fun jazz standard, it’s often hard to know where to start. To help you get your hands and ears around Summertime, here’s the melody and a few soloing concepts to explore.
These concepts will help you navigate the chord changes of Summertime with confidence. Learning the melody ensures you always know where you are in the tune and enables you to quote the melody in your solos when inspiration strikes.
Summertime is a fun song, but it’s harder to play than it looks, so studying this material builds your confidence and skill set to navigate this jazz standard.
Summertime Easy Sheet Music
Here are the tabs and notation for this easy arrangement of the Summertime theme, where I combine the melody with simple jazz chord voicings.
There are 2 guitar scales that can be used over the entire chord changes of Summertime, the A natural minor scale and the A minor blues scale.
The first is the A natural minor scale (aka A Aeolian scale). This scale has the same notes as the C major scale.
Summertime Chords & Tabs
You can get by using only these 2 scales in your improvisation, but your solos will sound repetitive and not very interesting. One way to spice things up a bit is to add some other scales, especially over the dominant chords…
The harmonic minor scale can also be played over the ii Vs in A minor, but here we have to use the A harmonic minor scale:
Another way to add interest to your solos is using arpeggios. While explaining how arpeggios work is beyond the scope of this lesson, here’s one example you can use over the ii V in D minor in the 4th bar.
Summertime Tab By George Gershwin (guitar Pro)
When playing over minor chords, play a maj7 arpeggio starting on the 3rd of that minor chord to get a 9 sound.
Bar 40: here I play the E altered scale, with a chromatic note in between (click here to learn how to use the altered scale).
When playing over minor chords, play a maj7 arpeggio starting on the 3rd of that minor chord to get a 9 sound.
Bar 40: here I play the E altered scale, with a chromatic note in between (click here to learn how to use the altered scale).
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