How Many Notes Are In Extended Chords
Unlike the traditional chord with three notes, extended chords typically have four or more notes, with the additional notes stacked on top of the original chord triad.
For example, an F major seventh chord would consist of notes F A C E with E as the added major 7th tone.
Extended chords are instrumental in helping you make great music. From jazz to pop music, these chord flourishes are well-loved across any genre. Enjoy making your own sound with these added tone chords!
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Fly Me To The Moon Chord Changes
After covering chord voicings and a few very useful comping rhythms, youre ready to take on the full tune.
Once youre comfortable playing the chords using whole notes, work on playing each of the three comping patterns previously covered in the lesson over the entire tune.
- Freddie Green Rhythm
- Charleston Rhythm
- Bass-chord Rhythm
The tune is relatively long, so make it a part of daily practice to memorize the complete chord changes.
Here are a few tips for memorizing the chord changes to a tune:
- Take it 4 Bars at a Time Youll memorize the tune a lot faster if you dont try to learn it all in one go.
- In Writing Practice rewriting the chord changes on paper.
- Singing the Bass Notes Singing the lowest note in the chord, for example A for Am7, will help you to memorize the changes using the musical part of your brain.
- Use all 3 Comping Patterns Varying the way you play through the tune will allow your hands to memorize the location of the chords faster.
As a review, and to reiterate some of the harmonic tendenciesmentioned earlier in this lesson, heres a follow-up analysis of the harmony in Fly me to the Moon:
The C6 Chord Appears in Both Endings 6 chords often appear at the very end of a jazz tune because of their consonant sound.
Maj7 Chords Often Appear After 7th Chords Maj7 chords often show up after a 7 chord to provide the release created by the tension in the 7th chord. Maj7 chords are often the I in the ii V I progression.
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Jazz Swing Piano Accompaniment: Inverted Guide Tones
When moving between chords, you want to have as minimal movement as possible. The way to accomplish this is to use inversions of your chords. This way, your chords are close together.
Now, when you are playing a song like Fly Me to the Moon, this tune uses a Cycle of 5ths Progression. There is a very neat trick you can use on a Cycle of 5ths Progression to find your next chord, and its called the Drop Guide Tone approach.
What is the Drop Guide Tone Trick?
The Drop Guide Tone trick is where you drop the top note of your guide tone to find the next chord. Then you drop the bottom note to find the next chord.
Heres exactly how to do this on the Fly Me to the Moon chord progression:
Pretty amazing, huh? This Drop Guide Tone trick works on other Cycle of 5ths tunes like Fly Me to the Moon and All the Things You are. Try it on our Autumn Trees course. And for a deep dive on the Cycle of 5ths chord progression, checkout the Cycle of 5ths in 3 Jazz Styles.
I also recommend playing these Guide Tones with the included backing track, which can be downloaded on this page after logging into your membership.
Now that you understand the Drop Guide Tone Approach, its time to lay down some sweet bass lines! In the next section, youll learn 3 stock bass lines. These are bass lines that work on almost any chord progression.
Fly Me To The Moon Jazz Piano

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Do you want to learn how to play one of the most famous jazz songs of all time, Fly Me to the Moon, on piano? This tune has been recorded thousands of times by many famous artists, but the best known version is by Frank Sinatra. In this approach, you will learn how to play this great song in 4 easy steps:
Lets start by learning the melody from the lead sheet!
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Fly Me To The Moon Piano Lead Sheet
The first step to learning any song is to start with the melody. The melody is the part of the song you sing, and is what makes every song unique and easy to identify. We will be learning the first phrase of this song in todays lesson:
Practice this melody hands separately. Try to resist the urge to play the same rhythm with both hands at the same time. Theres nothing wrong with playing jazz this way, but if you can do different things with each hand you will sound much more polished.
If you find yourself always playing the same rhythm with both hands, try an independence exercise to train your hands to play apart. Play the melody with your right hand like you normally would, but instead of playing the same rhythm with your left hand, play whole note chords underneath.
It might be hard at first. Take it slow and stick with it until you feel comfortable with this exercise. Youll be glad you did! Next, lets learn how to play the chords using drop guide tones.
Jazz Swing Piano Accompaniment: 3 Stock Bass Lines
If you want to create a jazz piano accompaniment on swing tunes, then you must have a walking bass line! The walking bass line is the driving force behind swing music and it gives swing music its characteristic sound.
Today you will learn 3 stock bass lines that you can use on Fly Me to the Moon as well as almost any other swing tune. Well start with the bass line for beginner jazz pianists. If you have experience playing jazz, you can jump ahead to the late beginner and intermediate approaches.
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Swinging The Fly Me To The Moon Melody
Its important to recognize that jazz is an aural art form. Even though the melody appears mostly in quarter notes, think of this as a broad, catch all representation of the melody as performed by various performers. The question is, how should you perform it? The best piece of advice is to listen to how other have performed it. Here are a few versions for you to check out:
Anticipating the Downbeat
One common stylistic convention of the jazz swing style is to anticipate the downbeat. For example, performers will commonly shift a quarter note occurring on beat 1 to the and of 4 of the previous measure.
Dotted Quarter Note + Eighth Note Rhythm
The dotted quarter note + eight note rhythm is a staple rhythm of the swing era. James P. Johnsons 1920s swing mega hit The Charleston prominently features this rhythm. Consequently, this rhythm is often called The Charleston Groove or TheCharleston Rhythm. Sometimes, the eighth note is tied to a longer duration as in the second measure below.
There are many opportunities to apply the dotted quarter note + eighth note Charleston Rhythm to the repetitive quarter note melody of Fly Me to the Moon shown on the lead sheet. For example, in the excerpt below, the dotted quarter + eighth note rhythm is applied to the downbeat of measure two in conjunction with the anticipation previously described in measure 1. Additionally, the Charleston Rhythm appears again in measure 3 and the whole note of measure 4 features an anticipation.
Improvise A Piano Solo Over Fly Me To The Moon
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Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the idea of soloing? Do jazz improvisations seem to be filled with dozens of complex chords, voicings, and scales that seem too hard for you to get a hold of? However, it doesnt have to be that way. What if I told you that you can create some great solos using just 2 easy scales over one of the most common chord progressions in jazz? Doing just that, in this tutorial you will learn how to improvise a great piano solo over the famous Fly Me To The Moon.
Fly Me To The Moon is a wildly popular jazz tune. It is known by most people whether jazz fans or not, and is highly requested on jazz gigs! Interestingly, it was originally titled In Other Words, and was written in 1954 by Bart Howard. However, it is most famously recorded by Frank Sinatra. It is a great example of the Cycle of 5ths chord progression, which we will be using to craft our piano chords and solos.
In this lesson, youll learn:
- How to play the cycle of 5ths chord progression
- Playing chord shells in the left-hand piano
- The 2 scales to improvise jazz piano solos with
- Essential tips and techniques to easily improvise a piano solo on fly me to the moon
- Rhythm exercises for effective soloing
Excited? Lets dive in!
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Fly Me To The Moon Tutorial
Fly Me To The Moon is a famous tune and even the casual jazz listener would recognise the distinctive melody. Over the years its been covered by many well known vocalists Frank Sinatra perhaps being the most famous.
Its a great cocktail tune and can be played both as a ballad and at a medium swing. We will start of by creating a ballad arrangement and add in some interesting reharmonisations and passing chords. The second time through we will then up the tempo and play the tune with a swing feel.
Throughout both lessons we will be applying block chord harmony using the 4 way close. Block chords are particularly useful for harmonising step wise melody lines. If you take a look through the form you can see the majority of the melody moves in steps which makes it a fantastic tune for applying this theory.
We will be using a mixture of root based and rootless voicings for the up tempo version and I would always recommend playing through a jazz standard with just the left hand voicings first so that you are familiar with the voicing shapes and sounds.
Getting Ready: The Cycle Of 5ths Progression
Fly Me To The Moon uses a very common and powerful chord progression called the cycle of 5ths. Sometimes it is called the circle of 5ths, or a circle progression.
What is the cycle of 5ths chord progression? It is a progression where every time we are going to a new chord, it goes down by the interval of a 5th. Take a look at what it looks like below in the key of C where all the chords are in root position:
This progression is exactly the first 8 bars of Fly Me To The Moon. Learn and memorize all of these chords. They are the basis and framework for our improvisations!
If you havent learned all your 7th chords, then check out the Intermediate Piano Learning Track, Part 1.
Once you learn the chords and the order of chords, you can then learn how to play these chords in shell form to accompany your solo.
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Getting Started The Chords
Before you begin comping through jazz standards, its important to scan through the leadsheet in order to make sure you have the right chords for the job under your fingers.
- To play Fly me to the Moon, youll need to know m7, 7, maj7, min7b5, and 6 chord qualities.
- When comping, moving economically from chord to chord is a must, which is called voice leading.
- To ensure that you dont leap the length of the guitar to find the next chord voicing, youll learn chords with the root on both the E and A-string, using Drop 3 chord voicings.
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Minor 7 chords contain 4 notes:
b7 |
In order to play all 4 notes in the m7 chord, youll reorder them on the guitar to fit the Drop 3 voicing style. In a Drop 3 m7 chord, the notes are voiced from lowest to highest as:
5 |
The reason you reorder the notes in the m7 chord from Root, b3, 5, b7 to Root, b7, b3, 5 is to make the chord easier to play on the fretboard.
As youll be using Drop 3 chords for the entire lesson, the maj7, 7, 6, and m7b5 chords will be reordered in the same way.
m7 chords are featured heavily in Fly me to the Moon, as they can function as iim7, iiim7 and vim7 chords, all of which youll see in this tune.
The example below is the first chord in Fly me to the Moon, Am7.
Quick Tip:
As you progress through to the full tune, youll play through a number of examples that require shifting m7 chord shapes to new root notes, so work on this skill if its new to you at this point.
b7 |
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Understanding Lead Sheet Notation

So why isnt the melody written with swing rhythms in the first place? This is a great question! The answer is that lead sheet notation serves a different purpose than the grand staff piano notation so common to classical piano literature. In classical piano literature, the score represents the composers intentions which the performer must faithfully present. Generally speaking, the performer will perform the piece in the same way for every performance and take few liberties beyond those indicated in the score. In a sense, grand staff notation is like riding on a train and the score is the train tracks.
On the other hand, lead sheet notation is much more like a map. Maps represents the terrain of a city, but the user must interpret the map based on their travel needs. The same map can be used again and again to navigate to multiple destinations. The lead sheet only supplies the timeless essence of the tunethe melody and harmony. It is up to the performer to supply the stylistic interpretation.
As you grow as a pianist, you will interpret your lead sheets with more advanced chords and rhythms. As a beginner piano student, the way you play Fly Me to the Moon today is not the same as how you will play it a year from now. However, that doesnt mean you shouldnt get start now. Taking the first step to play the tune using beginner jazz piano techniques is essential to learning to read and interpret lead sheet notation.
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Identifying The Guide Tones Of 7th Chords
The 3rd and 7th of a 7th chord are called its guide tones. These are the most important notes that define the chord quality. They also guide the resolution by resolving in a predictable manner that is pleasing to the ear. Specifically, the 7th generally resolves downward, although there are plenty of exceptions to this principle.
Many players refer to the chords guide tones as its chord shell. However, a chord shell is best understood more broadly to mean a 2 or 3 note simple chord voicing. A 3-note chord shell includes the guide tones plus the root. A 2-note chord shell can use any combination of root, 3rd and 7th. However, the term guide tones always refers to the 3rd and 7th of the chord. The term inverted guide tones refers to a voicing in which the 3rd of the chord is place above the 7th as in measures 1 and 3 of the example below.
This excerpt from our course on Play Piano Lead Sheets with Shells and Guide Tones features the root and guide tones in the left hand. This example is based on Fly Me to the Moon, however the melody has been altered due to publishers restrictions.
This Is The Piano Chords Of Fly Me To The Moon By Frank Sinatra On Piano
Am Dm7 G7 Cmaj7Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars,F Dm E7 Am A7Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars,Dm7 G7 C AmIn other words, hold my hand!Dm7 G7 C EIn other words, baby kiss me!
Am Dm7 G7 Cmaj7Fill my heart with song, and let me sing forever moreF Dm E Am A7you are all I long for all I worship & adoreDm7 G7 C Am E7In other words, please be true!Dm7 G7 Fm CIn other words I love youAm Dm7 G7 Cmaj7 F Dm E Am Dm7 G7 Em A7 E7 Dm7 G7 C
Am Dm7 G7 Cmaj7Fill my heart with song, and let me sing forever moreF Dm E Am A7you are all I long for all I worship & adoreDm7 G7 C AmIn other words, please be true!Dm7 G7
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