How Do You Solo Over There Will Never Be Another You? Watch the Seesaw
To solo over There Will Never Be Another You, don't reach for a scale — read the tune's balance first. This standard works like a seesaw: when the chords are moving, the melody rests; when a chord sits still, the melody gets busy. Your solo should honor the same balance, and your target notes are still the 3rds of each chord. That's the framework-solo method Junewon Choi demonstrated in a recent VoiceLid Jazz Guitar live session, answering a viewer question — and it's the approach his online jazz guitar lessons build from the first lesson: melody and voice leading first, scales last.
What does the melody-harmony seesaw look like?
Open the tune in Eb. The first chord, EbMaj7, holds for two bars — and the melody moves busily across it. Then, just as the harmony starts walking (Dm7b5 arriving), the melody stops and holds. And look where it holds: on the 3rd of Dm7b5. Next phrase, the melody re-enters on the 3rd of Cm (a C9 tension color follows, then down to the 5th). Motion trades off: harmony walks while melody waits, melody runs while harmony sits. Composers balance tunes this way on purpose, and a solo that ignores the balance — sixteen notes over every bar — fights the song instead of playing it.
Where do the target notes come from?
Even in a tune that doesn't chase 3rds as constantly as All the Things You Are does in its A section, the skeleton line of your solo is still built on each chord's 3rd. Target the 3rd as every chord arrives and you can follow the melody and the sound of the changes without getting lost. Two practical details from the live demo:
Pick your register deliberately. If chasing targets drags you too low, shift position or restart the phrase higher — the line has to stay singable.
Keep hearing the melody while you play other notes. The original melody keeps running in your ear; your solo phrases lean on it the way a rhythm section leans on the form.
The full grammar of guide tones — why the 3rd anchors each change and how one moving voice declares the next chord — is mapped in the Bridge Series. For the general method behind skeleton lines, see how to build a jazz solo from a framework line.
How do a few notes become music? Rhythm.
Here's the part players miss: the framework line is only a handful of notes, and that's fine. Rhythm is what turns a few notes into a statement. In the demo, Junewon plays two- and three-note cells — the 3rd, the triad above it, the 7th voicing tone — but places them so the pull toward the next chord's 3rd never disappears. The feeling of heading somewhere is the phrase. A voice-led whisper lands harder than a scale sprint, because the listener hears the changes arrive exactly on time.
Can you borrow melody notes for your solo?
Yes — the melody is a note bank, not a museum piece. The first four bars of the tune hand you a working pool: use the EbMaj7 melody cells, connect Dm7b5 to G7 by moving one guide tone, then climb back into the Cm entrance the way the melody itself does. When the written melody starts on a chord's 3rd, your solo can start there too and branch somewhere new. This is also why guessing games disappear: every phrase is anchored either to what the composer wrote or to the voice moving underneath it. For more on letting the tune lead, see why the guide tones follow the melody.
What should you practice this week?
Take the first eight bars of There Will Never Be Another You and run this loop: play the melody once; play only the 3rd of each chord in time; play 3rd-to-3rd lines while singing the melody in your head; then improvise two choruses where busy phrases live on the static chords and held notes ride the moving chords. When the seesaw becomes instinct, every standard gets easier to read. And if you want this skill built systematically — tune structure, voice leading, and real jazz language in order — the Fundamentals Program is where that road is paved.
About the Author
Junewon Choi is a Berklee-trained jazz guitarist and the founder of VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, an online education platform teaching jazz harmony and improvisation through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA) — a chord-first method built on voice-leading rather than scale boxes.
Wes' Insight — Wes Montgomery's fretboard logic, in lesson form
Fundamental 1: Wes Diagonal System — the FDA from the ground up