I hope that you are now well familiar with the tune Teardrops. It is with this music that we shall start to open ourselves up to improvising. For the benefit of new readers the tune is reprinted below.

Assuming that we know the piece, and the fingering, we could now begin to put it into a Bossa Nova tempo. First of all, in your head, read the melody from the copy and supply, in your imagination, a rhythmic backing. If you find this too difficult then read on and, still in your head (that is, without the guitar) play the following rhythm score.

The top line represents the melody and the bottom line, the supporting accompaniment.

Next, taking the chord structures of the piece and playing them as block chords, "comp" out the rhythmic accompaniment in bass tempo.

For those of you who are not familiar with the chord symbol system, I would like to explain that the chord symbol name (e.g. the first symbol Dm7) identifies the basic tonality of the music over a particular period of time. In our case, the Dm7, which persists over the first 2 bars of the piece, is the fundamental tonality over those 2 bars and all the notes within those 2 bars are seen, heard and identified in terms of the note D and further, in terms of the minor aspect of the scale/chord sounding of that D. At bar 3, for the bars 3 and 4, the tonality changes to G and then back to D at bar 5. When you can follow these modulations through the piece and can feel the changes as they occur, you are then in a position to start to improvise on them.

We should now, therefore, take each chord symbol and relate all the notes that occur within the period of time covered by that symbol to that symbol. To clarify; the first 2 bars of Teardrops have the symbol Dm7 covering them. We then analyse all the notes within those 2 bars in terms of Dm7. At bar 3 we move to Gm7 and thereby analyse the notes in bars 3 and 4 in terms of Gm7. This continues to the end of the piece.

For those readers who are not accustomed to working on music in this way here is a sample analysis of the piece:-

Bars 1 & 2. Dm7. 

Notes of this chord are D F A C.

The Bb occurs very briefly and can be considered as a passing note.

Bars 3 & 4. Gm7.

Notes of this chord are G Bb D F.

The A in bar 4 can be seen as a passing note or as a 9th of the   basic chord of Gm7. 

Bars 5 & 6. Dm7. As above. 

Bar 7. Cm7.

Notes of this chord are C Eb G Bb. 

Bar 8.Eb7.

Notes of this chord are Eb G Bb Db.

Bar 9. Ab Major 7

Notes of this chord are Ab C Eb G.

The Bb can be considered as a passing note or as a 9th on the Ab7

Bar 10. Dm7b5.

The notes of this chord are D F Ab C

The Eb can be considered as a note passing into the next bar or as the 2nd step of the D half diminished scale.

Bar 11. Gm7. As above. 

Bar 12. Gb7

The notes of this chord are Gb Bb D Fb.

Bar 13. Fm7.

The notes of this chord are F Ab C Eb.

The D can be considered as a passing note or as a 13th on the Fm7 chord

Bar 14. E7+

The notes of this chord are E G# B# (or C) D.

Bar 15. Em7b5.

The notes of this chord are E G Bb D.

Bar 16. A7.

The notes of this chord are A C# E G.

We can now write out the chord sequence, in musical notation and with chord symbols, for you to play in tempo of Bossa Nova. The rhythm sequence is to serve as a guide. Play it as written first of all, until you can feel free enough to make up your own patterns. If you can sing the melody do so, as this will act as a 'feed' for the accompaniment. Next time we shall add on the melody and start to modify that as well.