Desafinado Backing Track Bossa Nova – Here the student will be able to improvise over the sophisticated harmony of this famous Brazilian music.

“Desafinado” is a song composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça. The song was released in 1958 by João Gilberto and was included on the album “Chega de Saudade” in 1959. The song is a response to those critics who said that bossa nova was “music for out-of-tune singers”, but this strangeness generated in the beginning was due to the lazy and syncopated rhythm, the sophistication of its melody and the unusual harmonic construction.

It’s a song very representative of the history of Brazilian music, since it is considered that Brazil took a huge leap forward in the early 60s entering modern life due to the new technological advances that the entire world was experiencing, “Desafinado” was one of the main soundtracks for these events.

The song is also known as “Slightly Out of Tune” and “Off Key”, titles given to the English language.

The lyrics in Portuguese of this song are as follows:

“If you say that I’m out of tune, love
Know that this causes me immense pain
Only the privileged have hearing like yours
I only have what God gave me

If you insist on classifying
My behavior as anti-musical
I myself must argue by lying
That this is Bossa Nova, that this is very natural
What you don’t know, or even feel
Is that out-of-tune singers also have a heart

I photographed you on my Roleiflex
Your enormous ingratitude was revealed
You just can’t talk about my love like that
He’s the greatest you can find

With your music, you forgot the main thing
That in the chest of the out-of-tune singers
Deep in the chest it beats silently
That in the chest of the out-of-tune singers
A heart also beats”

This song has been performed by many great artists, among them we can mention Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Charlie Byrd, Joe Diorio, Ron Carter, Scott Hamilton, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, George Michael, Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, Olmir Stocker, Nelson Faria and many others.

The song “Desafinado” is considered a jazz standard and can be found in the “Real Book vol.1” on page 112, in “The New Real Book vol.1” on page 65 and in “Songbook Bossa Nova – Almir Chediak vol.2” on page 60. It was from this last book that we took the sheet music to produce this backing track because it is an author with great authority on the subject of bossa nova.

This backing track consists of drums, double bass, piano and guitar. The tempo is 160 bpm. (or 80bpm in the typical 2/4 time signature of this style)

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I hope you like it, good luck studying!