Endings and Outros

I want to say a little bit about endings - endings in general, whether you’re playing with a rhythm section or not. Obviously the simplest thing to do is just to slow down and end. If we go from 4 bars from the end.

Of course, you might be playing with a rhythm section in which case it would be voiced.

Although, again, you can play in root position if you want to. Another thing that people typically do is repeat the last 4 bars 3 times with a rall. In fact, I did a gig a year or so back with an established British jazz musician and he said to the rhythm section before we played “Alright, on every tune just do the last 4 bars 3 times with a rall” - and we did. How does that go? I’ll play it in root position just to show you but, of course, with a rhythm section it would be in voiced position. Let’s go 6 bars from the end - this is the last time.

Or just the last 2 bars 3 times. Let’s go - same place.

One of the other things you can do, which I like doing a lot, is just to change the last chord. Instead of playing E flat major7, I like to play E major7 say, or D flat7. Let’s have an example.

Or D flat7.

Or go to E flat major7 and establish that as a final chord and then add something like C major7, like this.

There are lots of different ways of ending things. There’s a few ideas for you. The other thing is, as I’ve said, we’ve looked a little bit at intros playing the tune colla voce in whole or in part - you can just play part of it - and then pick up into time. The other thing is outros . Outros is finishing a piece with an improvised extension. There’s a lot one can say about outros. As I say, listen to Keith Jarrett, some of his wonderful outros. It takes us a bit beyond the scope of this course. Let me just give you one example.

I going to get through to the end and then I’m going to go down chromatically from say B flat

to A minor7 flat5 - I don’t really know what the chords I’m going to play are -

that’s an A flat diminished that’s a G minor 7 - I don’t know what that is - a sharpened fifth? That’s F sharp7 F minor7

E major7 home. So you go like this.

And then some flourishing, rolling ending is again quite typical. But outros - I think I’ll leave it there- and we’ll leave looking at playing in root position as well.