Round Midnight – Thelonious Monk
If you’re looking for the Round Midnight Lead Sheet, you’ve come to the right place. Round Midnight is one of those jazz standards that you’ve heard of, but aren’t 100% sure how the tune goes. It was composed and performed often by Thelonious Monk.
Throughout my music education, I didn’t play Round Midnight that often. Yes, I saw other small bands play it, but it was not my first choice of chart.
Songs like Giant Steps and Countdown, and Stella by Starlight were more some of my favorites. The Round Midnight Lead Sheet is also quite different looking from any other lead sheet.
What I also dislike about Monk’s music is the dissonance that was often portrayed in his playing when performing his own songs.
Granted, he was the composer, but for some reason, his playing and songs did not resonated as well with me, and did not have as bright as a bebop and jazz sound as let say some of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane’s compositions.
If you like the chart we’ve provided, we’d really love it if you would be so kind to take a moment and write a comment in the comment section down below, and rate the chart and Round Midnight Lead Sheet using the rating system down below.
We hope you use this chart and lead sheet well in either an educational setting or performance setting. The most fun I’ve had myself as a performing player was playing random jazz standards at jazz clubs in New York City and Boston, while having certain songs memorized and able to improvise over the changes whenever it was my turn.
Hearing other players improvise was so inspiring and I couldn’t get enough of it.
With that being said, whenever we introduce and or upload a brand new lead sheet, we always make sure to go over it so that we cover how and what is the best way to play and perform a solo over the chord changes of the song.
Mastering and Memorizing The Round Midnight Lead Sheet
The Round Midnight Lead Sheet is not an easy chart to memorize. It’s long, it’s slow and there are lots of chords.
The thing that may make the song a bit easier is that it is slow, however it will take some time to memorize all of the chords and harmony and melody.
The very cool part is that because of the fact that the song is a really slow song, we’ve been given the opportunity to perform really cool solos without worrying that the chord changes are going to change way too fast as in a lot of bebop jazz standards happen.
Approaching Soloing over The Round Midnight Lead Sheet.
So, with that being said, let’s approach it like we always do. Let’s establish the key, which is Eb minor, or Gb Major. I know this because of the amounts of flats at the beginning of the staff line, along with the fact that the very first chord is an Eb- chord. This shows me this song is more of a minor sounding song.
The next step is to analyze the harmony. Now considering that you have multiple chords per measure, and often times 2 5 progressions, it will be great to establish to tonal key centers of each two 5 an determine what scales and patterns you can play over each.
This is especially helpful because then you start to learn more about the harmony and where it takes you.
Often times though, whenever there are many chords involved in a song, I recommend to whoever is the performer to simplify the process and figure out if you could play one scale over multiple chords. Often times this is the case for the two 5 1s, however not if you want to use the altered scale, so definitely make sure to think really well before you analyze the song and determine what scales you’re going to play over what chords.
Also, it is very important note that when you’re dealing with this many chords, it will train you to feel comfortable dealing with this many chords.
Nothing has come easy, and so won’t becoming a great jazz musician, and while I am all for simplifying and solidifying things, sometimes there’s just no way around it besides putting in the hard work and making the connections between the chords in a good way that makes sense.
Final words
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Finally, there are a few more things I’d like to bring up.
If you are interested in learning more about jazz then that means that you would potentially also be more interested in video lessons and exercises through pdf files. We were wondering if you would be able to let us know what type of exercises and what type of things you would want to work on.
We realized that every time we end our page by explaining how to practice the lead sheet or song and how to approach soloing over it, that really there’s a find system to it, and that maybe people could benefit more from having access to a bunch of pdf files and exercises.
With that being said, I’ve already started compiling a list of exercises in jazz, scales list, arpeggio list, patterns and much much more.
The altered scale alone you could write a book on. Let alone learn 100 and one different patterns that you could incorporate with everything else that is going on such as pentatonic scale, hexatonic and more, you name it!
It is good to note though that at the end of the day, I’ve seen many performers try to get many tricks out of their trick bag, but if you’re conviction and confidence doesn’t shine in your instrument, you can play as many notes as you’d like, but most likely that won’t make up for a lack in emotion.
I’ve seen many many many players who know scales and arpeggios somewhat, but lack the attitude in their instrument to get the message across.
So, when you are practicing all of these scales, arpeggios and all of these things that we keep taking about in every post, it is important to note that none of those ideas are worth anything without a proper set of feelings and emotions
I hope you find the same joy of playing jazz music as I did when I performed a lot!
Thank you for visiting our website and have a wonderful rest of your day!