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You are here: Home / Fiddling / Free Fiddle Lessons / Lady Be Good – Free Fiddle Lesson

January 15, 2019

Lady Be Good – Free Fiddle Lesson

Hi I’m Vi Wickam and here’s a swing tine fiddle lesson for myTalentForge.com!

This is one my favorite, old, swing tunes. It’s one called Lady Be Good, or Lady Be Good To Me.

When I perform it, I generally will sing it, as well as fiddling it. I’ll put the words in there- maybe I’ll sing, who knows!

I do it in the key of G. I’ll go ahead and play the melody for you because that’s the key- you have to know the melody!

This is a tune that you will commonly improvise on. I’ll make up some sort of solo for you on the spot, and you can take it or leave it, you can do your own thing!

This is more of a swing tune than a fiddle tune, so you have a little more leeway with how you improvise. You can stretch it out further than you could with a fiddle tune.

[…]

That was the melody first, followed by some goofing around from me. I’ll try and break down the melody for you first, and then I’ll make up some sort of stuff on you to improvise on.

I hope you’re enjoying this, I hope you’re having fun learning this tune! It’s a fun one- I like it!

So we start out with first finger on the A string…

[…1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 1, 0]

Let’s try that again…

[1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 1, 0]

So the melody would be… “Oh sweet and lovely, lady be good. Oh, lady be good. To me. I’m just so awfully misunderstood. Oh lady be good, to me.”

And that’s our A part.

[…] You’ll hear a slide. [3, 2, 0, 0, 1, 3].

And then you can do a little time-passing, because there’s a turn around there. You can hang on the last note… […].

That’s our chord change, it’s 1, 6, 2, 5. And then […], same pattern [1, 3, 1, 0…4, 1, 3, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 3…].

Now that’s just walking into the B part […] [4,3,2, C natural, 4,3,] “Please have some pity…”

That’s a nice little riff you can throw in. [I’m all alone in this city”…]

And then we’re back to the A part. So it’s A, A, B, A is the form of this song.

[…]

So, we repeated the A part and we added a little bit of riff and variation.

I’m just going to make up a little slow solo that’s kind of like what I played like before, but it will probably be a little bit different.

[…]

There’s another slower time through- with a solo on it. And that gives you some ideas to play with.

This is Lady Be Good! I hope you’ve enjoyed this tune.

I’ll go ahead and sing it out for you and give you the melody all the way through because the words of the melody are really important in these tunes. Because if you don’t know the melody, you have no business playing the song!

Lyrics to Lady Be Good

Oh sweet and lovely, lady be good
Oh lady be good
To me

I’m just so awfully misunderstood
Oh lady be good
To me

Please have some pity
I’m all alone in this big city
I’m just so awfully misunderstood
Lady be good to me

Well, wasn’t perfect there on the chords, but you get the idea.

I hope you’ve had a great day, I hope you’ve enjoyed this tune. Take some time to learn it.

We have the sheet music to it available on myTalentForge.com.

Have an awesome day! See you next time!

Article by Vi Wickam / Free Fiddle Lessons, Videos / fiddle, free fiddle lesson, intermediate +/advanced fiddle lesson, key of G, lady be good, swing tune, vi wickam Leave a Comment

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