Tune Up – 3 Legendary Solos

By Forrest • Jazz Standards • Composition • PRO • Transcribing • Chet Baker • Miles Davis • Sonny Rollins

Tune Up is one of those classic up-tempo jazz standards that every player should work on. Composed by Eddie Vinson, It became super well known when legendary trumpeter player Miles Davis recorded it on his 1956 album Blue Haze. And over the years, it’s turned into a popular jam session tune that can be pretty difficult to get the hang of for aspiring jazz improvisers.

1. Introduction
2. Tune Up – Understanding the Chord Progression
3. Transcribed Solos on Tune Up
4. Miles Davis Plays Tune Up
5. Chet Baker Plays Tune Up
6. Sonny Rollins Plays Tune Up
7. Learning to Solo on Tune Up

Top Tunes This Lesson Applies To:

Tune Up

Recorded by not only Miles, but Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, Chet Baker, Wes Montgomery, J.J. Johnson and more, everyone playing jazz should learn how to play a great solo on Tune Up.

So today, we’re going to do just that…

We’ll start by looking at the chord changes and the simple theory behind them.

Then we’ll break down 3 transcribed solos on Tune Up by 3 legendary musicians:

Miles Davis
Chet Baker
Sonny Rollins

By the end of this lesson, you’ll have a bunch of tools to use and more than enough to get you started toward mastery of the jazz standard Tune Up.

Tune Up – Understanding The Chord Progression

Before we get into the chord changes, first have a listen to the tune from the Miles album Blue Haze…

Now the chord changes to Tune Up are fairly easy to understand because they consist of a series of simple ii V I progressions – the first 12 bars are all ii V I I in three different keys…

tune up changes 1

Each ii V7 I is located a whole step down from the previous…and each of the ii V Is moves to the next one by changing the quality of the I chord from major to minor – as in D major moves to D minor…

These are both very important concepts to understand about the changes…

tune up changes 2

Now, in some recordings like the Chet Baker recording we’ll get into later, the 1st ending and the 2nd ending are the same – they’re simply a ii V7 I in the key of D major, the equivalent to the second ending here.

However, in many recordings like both the Miles and Sonny recordings that we’ll study today, the 1st ending uses a slight variation.

Rather than a ii V7 I in D, they use a ii chord from D, but a V7 to I from Bb, followed by the V7 from D – It’s basically a mash up between the two keys, Bb & D.

tune up changes 4

So for the most part, playing over Tune Up is an exercise in how well you can play over the ii V7 I progression moving down in whole steps at a fast tempo, which certainly poses some serious challenges…

tune up changes 3

Now if all this talk of chords and chord function has you in a panic, make sure to give our Jazz Theory Course a look. It will give you a very deep understanding of how harmony works.

Jazz Theory Unlocked

Okay, so once you’ve got the changes in your head, go ahead and listen to the 3 famous recordings of Tune Up that we’re going to break down today…

3 Transcribed Solos on Tune Up

Today we’ll look at 3 different approaches from 3 different players on Tune Up that you can learn a ton from…

The first is the classic Miles Davis version from his album Blue Haze that we already listened to earlier…

Then the next one we’ll look at is from trumpeter Chet Baker and shows quite a different approach…

And then finally, we’ll get into the intricate bebop lines of Sonny Rollins…

Each of these 3 solos has more to talk about than a single lesson could possibly hold, so we’re not going to talk about everything they’re doing.

Instead we’ll highlight 3 tools from each of the 3 players.

Here we go…

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