“The Girl From Ipanema” - A Tribute by Bossa Merchants

This is a very special project for me. This humble Jobim masterpiece is credited with launching the Bossa Nova revolution in the US in the mid 1960s, a jazz sub-genre I love for its traditionally unplugged arrangements, creative chord movements, entrancing syncopation, and sensual vocals. This flagship Bossa song has particularly unusual changes, and a melody line that references voices not present even in those chords, making it confusing to understand melodically and even more challenging to sing. And yet, the result is so delightful. You can listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5QfXjsoNe4

Lyrically, the song evokes the all-too-familiar experience of unrequited love, a theme that has also endeared me to Schulz’ “Peanuts” strips from an early age. And it lends itself to a video story.

Trying to play this song proved harder than I thought. Most of the popular transcriptions are simply wrong. For example, most start and end the song with a maj7 chord, which sounds sweet, and authentic enough. But the guitar is actually playing a 6/9 chord, with the 5th in the bass. The maj7th voice is nowhere to be found, except as a passing singing note.

Also special in the guitar work (which holds down the rhythm for the entire song), is movement between generally 3 different patterns of plucking. It starts with what I call a single-measure “sustain rhythm” pattern, where strings are allowed to ring. Then it shifts to an “anticipatory rhythm”, a 2-measure pattern with a syncopated note connecting them. Later, it picks up a more iconic “Bossa” pattern. How it moves between these different patterns seems somewhat odd, not unlike many other details in this song; and yet, those pattern changes are part of what makes this tune so enjoyable and intriguing.

The piano work, being the one instrument the composer actually played on the original recording, is fairly well buried in that mix, and it wasn’t until I excavated some hard-to-find notation that I realized how spectacularly tasteful that track is. Unlike almost all other music genres, the piano work here is neither rhythm nor melody. It’s simply accent work, done purely sporadically, never repeating itself, always surprising, and makes a point of emphasizing tonal harmonies that are not otherwise featured in guitar, melody, or bass. It truly is a masterpiece of creativity, and unlike anything you will find anywhere else. As you can imagine, we feature the piano work more prominently in our recording than in the original. Of course, the original piano solo is fairly prominent; but even there Jobim thrills the listener by enriching the two-hand voicings with as many extensions as he can find fingers to play, including 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, 13ths, minor 2nd intervals, and sometimes inverting the 13th so that it sits dissonantly next to the dominant 7th. It’s very lush, and a joy to the ears.

Another departure from popular modern covers is that the bass sticks almost strictly to even 1/4 notes, not syncopating as is tempting to do on a Bossa tune. The bass acts like the metronome of the song.

Noteworthy is that there are no “drums” to be heard, further reinforcing the unplugged pleasantry of this arrangement. We hear something like a shaker, snare brushes, and of course a ride cymbal, introduced in that order, with the cymbal only present during the sax solo.

Speaking of sax, that part is perhaps the most easily heard, and it shares with the piano a very creative solo and also a sprinkling of responses to the singer throughout the song, almost like a backup singer.

And then, of course, the aforementioned melody line for the singer is particularly challenging in the bridges. The first verse in this (better!) extended version is sung in Portuguese, and the balance of the tune is in English, the combo being sung by husband-wife team of João (who also played guitar) and Astrud Gilberto. (Brazilian native Astrud passed away just last year, and we were surprised to find she was living right here in my backyard, in Philadelphia.)

Note, too, that while most charts (and recordings?) in the US have this song in the key of F, this recording is in Db. Notwithstanding introducing a key signature with 5 flats, the difference in register two whole steps down simply sounds and feels different - somehow better.

So in this recording, we’ve made an effort to first discover and then recreate as many of these details as possible, interspersing the video with as many glimpses into these performance details as possible to help you hear — perhaps for the first time — nuances you never noticed in the original. It’s not meant be a perfect replica; it’s our take on it. But we love the original and wanted to both pay tribute to as many of the details as possible, and also to feel the joy of embodying this beautiful song ourselves.

The audio was captured and mixed primarily in Logic Pro. Video was captured on an iPhone 13 Pro and edited in Final Cut Pro.