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I am trying to learn a transcription of "Just a Gigolo" as played by Thelonious Monk to see what he does. Can anybody offer any insight as to what he is doing as far as harmony and chord changes. I'm trying to make sense of it instead of just learning to play it but do not see any patterns that I recognize. I see he goes from the root to a sharpened fifth then to the fifth. Is this common? Any input is appreciated.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&a...oYXllbG11c2ljfGd4OjRjYjczMDk2Y2M0ODRhYmM

Yes. for Monk it is common, he does that a lot.

Monk's playing uses a lot of substitutions as well as chromaticism, not the easiest to explain without a black-board.
It's well worth the effort to analyse the chords, start with the I (one) and work your way through.

Yeah, it's a nice piece to learn from. I'm really enjoying these voicings. Any particular type of substitutions being used here? The only type I'm familiar with are tritone substitutions, but would like to learn more.

Question to anyone who can answer it.

I'm noticing throughout this song that left hand root and fifth are often played a half step below what the chord changes say. Is this Monk's way of hiding the chords or is the notation wrong?

I know Monk uses a lot of dissonance, making it seem like something he would do.

Any thoughts?

What bars are you refering to? The only time when the chords doesn't correspond exactly is bar 9 when the minor third is in the bass.

For instance in bar 4, where the chord is an Eb7. The notation says Eb for the root but it is in the key of Ab, which would make the flattened E really a D natural, because the E is already flattened in the key of Ab. Same thing with the fifth on that same chord.

The extra accidentials are there to clearify that they're flattened again since the previous bar they were all naturals. It's not necessary to include this and grammatically speaking it might even be wrong, but it's not uncommon in jazz charts.

Ah thanks, it makes sense now. Even in bar 2, I was playing the Bb thinking that this notation is wrong because I knew the real note played.

I'll have to keep an eye out for that when learning from jazz charts.

no problem, the type of substitutions he's using are called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone_substitution
very common in jazz