Nashville Number System Lesson

Lady Bird Turnaround

Difficulty: advanced

By: Nate Dean

Take Quiz

In this great clip from the "You'll Hear It" podcast (Open Studio Jazz), Adam and Peter talk about slick turnarounds and start with "Lady Bird," written by Tadd Dameron in 1939.

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Here's the two-bar turnaround as found in my copy of the Real Book.

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This is a number chart for the turnaround

Let's take a look at two different ways to play this chord progression as notated above. In the first progression, we'll keep the chords shapes close together, and not worry about including the melody note in each shape.

Cmaj7

4231R

1

Now let's take a look at some different, and more complex, shapes to keep the melody note present within the chords.

Cmaj7

14231R

This Cmaj7 shape puts the G melody note on top