Summertime - Chords and Melody for Guitar

This is a sample lesson from the Secret GuitarTeacher web site (see link above). It is for intermediate players, particularly those interested in blues and jazz. Here's the abridged transcript: Originally written by George Gershwin as an aria for the Opera Porgy and Bess, Summertime is featured by the UK's Independent Newspaper at number seven in the list of most-covered songs of all time. Now the version of the song we are going to start out with in this lesson is a fairly bluesy one with a 12/8 rhythm and a nice set of chords: This same movable shape is used for both Am6 and Bm6. Once we have that shape in place we can play it for two main beats. Next we slide the whole shape up the fret board two frets to play the Bm6 for the second half of the bar. Next line we switch to the Dm7 and Em7 pairing using the 'A' shaped barre chord. So far we could be playing just another 12 bar blues sequence, but in the 7th bar we find ourselves heading off to the 5th chord instead of back to the key chord as we would have expected in a 12-bar. And here we see the E7chord, which frequently crops up in jazz arrangements of blues - especially minor blues. This is paired up with the same shape moved up a fret to F7and back again to E7to effectively create a dramatic pause in the sequence Ok, so we're halfway through the sequence. Let's just recap and play what we have covered so far. Let's fast forward to the last bar in the third line where we find a descending chromatic run of...