Ending A Tune

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

A lot of musical train wrecks could be avoided if bands rehearsed endings more, or at least discussed them before starting to play. But the reality is, you do not always have the opportunity to rehearse together before a gig, and working out endings on the bandstand interrupts the flow from one tune to the next. So jazz musicians have a set of stock endings that can be applied to almost any tune, and if everyone in the band is familiar with them, it is usually easy enough for the leader to simply start playing one of the endings and have everyone else follow along. At worst, a short vocal or visual cue should be sufficient.

Of course, many arrangements come with their own endings, in which case you need only read what is written:

[EXAMPLE]

In some compositions, you can simply play the tune as you would normally, and cut off short on the last note:

[EXAMPLE]

Or, you can stop and hold the last note:

[EXAMPLE]

Often, this ending is preceded by a ritard:

[EXAMPLE]

On ballads especially, an unaccompanied solo called a cadenza may be inserted between the second to last and last notes:

[EXAMPLE]

An ending may also be prolonged by using the bII chord to harmonize the last note of the melody, before resolving to the tonic:

[EXAMPLE]

Sometimes, the short and long note approaches are combined to create a "stutter" ending. The last note is played short, and then a long note is added a few beats later. The long note is often the seventh or ninth of the chord:

[EXAMPLE]

A tritone may be used as well:

[EXAMPLE]

Instead of adding a single long note, one common cliche is to use the following phrase, which I always associate with Miles Davis' performances of "Four":

[EXAMPLE]

Or, one or more players may play a short fill over the last note:

[EXAMPLE]

A cliched ending phrase that is often used on medium tempo swing tunes is the Duke Ellington or "Take The 'A' Train" ending:

[EXAMPLE]

Often, the last four bars will be repeated two or three times before applying any of the other techniques. This particular device is most commonly used on tunes that end with a ii-V-I progression, in which case a VI chord is often inserted as a turnaround to the repeat, and a iii chord is substituted for the I chord:

[EXAMPLE]

The iii chord is often played as an altered dominant chord, as the melody note is normally the tonic, which is the raised fifth of the III chord:

[EXAMPLE]

A tritone substitution may be performed on this chord, yielding bVII:

[EXAMPLE]

A variation is to repeat only the ii-V portion of the progression:

[EXAMPLE]

Often, the melody over the V chord is prolonged to two or four measures on the final phrase:

[EXAMPLE]

A common way to extend the ending indefinitely is to go into a iii-VI-ii-V vamp, allowing one or more players to solo or trade fours for a while. Actually, the vamp is normally seen as starting on the ii chord, yielding ii-V-iii-VI as the form for trading fours:

[EXAMPLE]

At some point, the vamp is terminated using any of the ending techniques discussed previously. This is often preceded by frantic waving of hands to make sure everyone ends together:

[EXAMPLE]

The last ending I will demonstrate is not as well known as the ones discussed thus far, but it is highly effective when used sparingly. In this ending, the final I chord is replaced with a half-diminished #iv chord, which then leads into a series of chords that descend chromatically or cycle around the circle of fifths:

[EXAMPLE]

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Ending A Tune