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Notes in relation to G7:
G7-----G B D F------1 3 5 b7
Bb7---Bb D F Ab----#9 5 b7 b9
Db7---Db F Ab Cb---b5 b7 b9 3
E7-----E G# B D-----13 b9 3 5
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01-15-2013 11:56 AM
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bako: Just curious as to why you are spelling the Bb as #9. Thanks.
Originally Posted by bako
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The note Bb in relation to the note G is a m3rd.
The note Bb in relation to G7 is heard as a #9.
Generally when Ma3 and m3 are both present in a chord the m3 is heard as a #9 coloration on the Ma3.
Since the context I was working in is Bb7 in relation to G7 I left the spelling of Bb7 intact.
As you note the correct harmonic spelling for G7#9-----G B (D) F A#
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In my experience, Conti's Assembly Line and The Formula go together very well. As somebody else already mentioned, the chords learned in Assembly Line are used in The Formula. In Assembly Line, you learn a chrd vocabularly that lends itself very well to playing chord melody with really nice harmonies. You would then put together tune after tue after tune untl you can do it pretty much automatically. You now have the vocabulary and can put together a decent sounding chord melody with little trouble and do it very quickly. Then, you move on to The Formula and learn how to do it in such a way as to never have to play a tune the same way twice, always coming up with new harmonies. One book leads well into the other. Without solid facility in putting together a basic chord melody, especially if the chords Conti uses are unfamiliar, you will be using far too much mental bandwidth just dealing with that to really absorb The Formula in a pratical way. The Assembly Line gets you walking, and then with The Formula, you can run.
I would also suggest getting one or more of the books oof his chrd melody arrangements to get a real sense of how Conti uses what he teaches to play tunes. Conti is VERY consistent in what he teaches vs what he actually does as a musician. The chords he uses, the way he teaches The Formula, all of that is exaclty what his chord melody arrangements consist of. It is consistent. He doesn't teach what is convenient to get down in a book and then do something else entirely when on the bandstand.
It is really enjoyable to come home from a day at work and open a Real Book (I have the series of 4 from Hal Leonard as well as the original fifth edition Real Book) to any tune you care to play and just play it, experimenting with Conti's harmony ideas and the sounds I get - much more fun than memorizing somebody ese's arrangement and then forgetting it two days later. Especially when self-teachinig, we can get mired in all manner of theory and not ever get to really playing anything except scales and exercises. Conti's approach is very and immediately practical so yuo are playing songs right away, applying what you are learning to the songs you want to play. Instead of having to memorize a bunch of stuff, you get it into your hands by playing it always in the context of a song. He says you should learn your theory, but in the context of what you are playing, where it makes sense instead of separating theory from practice and then trying to make the leap from all that theory to being able to use it to play a tune. I taught myself theory and can rattle off a lot of stuf, but it wasn't until working through Assembly Line and The Formula that I began to actually play music. It is a lifelong process, to be sure, but it is a lot more enjoyable and motivating if you are playing music along the way.
One other comment I wanted to make here...there is another thread that mentions Barry Galbraith's handwritten chord melody arrangements. Somebody in it said something to the effect that the poster could not analyze what Galbraith was doing to come up with those harmonies, but they sure sounded good. I have that PDF as well as both books from Mel Bay. When you have gone through Conti's The Formula,you really can see that same process in Galbraith's arrangements. That was a real eye-opener when I discovered that. I am not saying that Galbraith's thought process was like that of Conti, but instead that what Conti teaches in The Formula is one way of accurately understanding how this sort of harmony works, regardless of whose arrangements you are analyzing. Everybody has their own way of approaching this stuff, but I have found that Conti's way is relatively easy to grasp and it works as well as any. It makes sense of Galbraith's arrangements. I think that learning some of Galbraith's arrangements is useful because you get a decent sense of how to get movement beyond a chord under every melody note and the typical chord melody note chord melody note style of chord melody playing. Conti gives you all the harmony ideas you will need, but leaves it to you to develop your own style for applying it. His chord melody books of arrangements are like that - a chord under every melody note, but he says in the beginning of each book that you should experiment with various ways of playing it. His focus is presenting you with a wealth of ideas for creating harmony. Galbraith provides a means of getting some of that style going. We can learn from all kinds of people, places, and materials, but I really think those I mentioned here go together exceptionallly well if chord melody is your primary interest.
My own enjoyment of chord melody is just sitting at home being able to play any tune I want, anyway I want from these Real Books without having to struggle to memorize somebody else's arrangement. I don't are to be a performer, make YouTube videos or anything like that. I just like playing tunes in a solo context on the guitar. For others with higher aspirations, These materials from Conti will take you there just as well. I think the main thing is staying motivated long enough to get to where you can play well enough to satisfy yourself. By learning in the context of playing tunes you want to play, how you want to play them, instead of having to find somebody else's arrangement and struggling through memorizing it and then keeping it in memory while trying to learn another, motivation is not a problem. Conti seems to have figured this out for his students and that is his approach to teaching. He says several times in his DVDs that the action is on the fretboard, not in some book. At least for the way I like to learn, he definitely got it right.
TonyLast edited by tbeltrans; 01-16-2013 at 11:10 PM.
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Tony, thanks for the insights. I think I need to investigate the Conti materials.
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I'm almost through the formula, ok, its all about cycle 4 progressions to fill in the bars.....and tritones subs of the cycle 4 progressions..so, for most guys, nothing new....but, enjoyable to work through as he does communicate very well, and thats important when working with books...I have not played the dvds yet, but, the book is clear enough that I don't think they are really nessasary....Oh, and he uses, the drop/2/3 cords like most guys.....so, again, if your just getting started, don't fool around,learn these forms....on all strings....It was the one thing I did right when I picked up the guitar after a 20 year hiatus.
I should ad, he covers the diminished cord also...half steps.....its all good stuff....Last edited by artcore; 01-17-2013 at 12:39 PM.
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tbeltrans. +1
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Just watched this....I swore I wasn't going to buy anything else this year.....but I'm pretty slow at work right now and needed to watch something....this thread got me interested in it....
It's probably the best logical presentation of reharm i've ever seen. All simple concepts that can expanded upon as much as you want...nothing really new, but nice to have it in one package.
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He's an interesting guy, I like his remarks in the conclusion...He's not a big fan of modes and scales and theory...I never knew much about Robert Conti, but he seems like he would be a fine teacher to work with for the lucky few that live within reach of
Vegas...That is if he even takes new students....He mentioned that one guy would fly into Vegas to take a lession, thats dedication for ya.....Old school, South Phila guy...
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This post is just some Saturday morning thoughts reflecting on my experiences with Sudnow and then Conti's methos of self-teaching. This post is ot addressing anything that aybody here has said, so please don't take any of it as arguing with anybody here. If anything, I have found this forum to be quite supportive of everybody's efforts to learn and grow musically. I have met so many adults who wished they had learned to play an instrument, most often guitar or piano, earlier in life but were either told they didn't have talent or were otherwise guided elsewhere. For them, I believe that both Sudnow (piano) and Conti (guitar) can help resolve that issue now that they may have the time and resources to get an instrument and learn to play it, given proper instruction. This post is based on my personal experiences and observations and probably reflects some others who may read it, while not at all representing many others here wh learned through other means ad may even have become quite accomplished in the process. There is such a wide range of people who read and participate in forums, that I would find it difficult to take a "one size fits all" stance on any of this.
In his DVDs and books, Conti says to learn the theory after the fact. Play it and then learn why it works so we have an intuitive context for the theory. David Sudnow said the same thing a bit differently "always learn in the context of the song". When I see theory discussions in forums, there is a lot of intellectualizing (and on some occasions, a fair amouunt of "chest beating" that can erupt into needless arguments), and I wonder how much of it actually translates to playing tunes (though I have no doubt the people involved are all very good players themselves), especially the more esoteric it gets. I taught myself basic diatonic theory and could rattle off all kinds of stuff, but readily apply none of it to playing tunes. That often does result from learning theory completely in isolation of playing the music. It was encountering David Sudnow's materials for self-teaching keyboard that put it all into perspective for me. I am reasonably sure a GOOD teacher could do that for me too, but finding one is the issue. There is no more guarantee that a given teacher in person will connect the dots in a way that fits my learning style better than a particular book or DVD. I am not talking about the advantages of a teacher being able to watch the student and help avoid bad technique habits, but only that area covered by either a teacher or book/DVD.
My experience with having a guitar teacher came after having been playing several years already. The goal was to play chord melody. The teacher I had, played chord melody reasonably well. He had me working through the Johnny Smith book. I spent an entire spring and summer of weekly lessons going through the first part of the book, playing all the scales and chord exercises, with the idea that in the fall, we would start applying all this material to playing tunes. I spent a couple of hours every day for months doing exactly as the teacher directed, playing scales, arpeggios, and the chord sequences in that book without learning why or what to do with them to play tunes. The end of summer came and I figured this was going to be the payoff for all that prep work, when we woulld connect the dots and bridge that huge gap between all the exercises and playing real music. Instead, the teacher got a job in Japan and left. I looked for another teacher, but each had his own approach to playing, and none of it included any of the work I had done. In each case, I would essentially be starting over with that person's approach. I pretty much gave up and got into playing finger style (Leo Kottke and that sort of music), which was fun for a while, but not what I set out to do. I did write a paper in the 90s when I set out to figure some of this chord melody stuff out for myself. I got to where I could put together a chord melody arrangement, but it took effort and a fair amount of memorization, which is not my strong suit. I learn best by doing, and memorize by doing again and again, the way we learned to speak as kids.
Some years later, I encountered Conti's Source Code series. My wife and I went on a cruise not too long after the Assembly Line book arrived. All during that cruise, I devoured that book using my Soloette travel guitar. The cruise was 10 days, and I was able to spend several hours a day focused on that book. Then, I got The Formula and worked through that. I am still working with that book, and probably will be for a long time to come because there are endless ways to use these ideas. The Formula really is a doorway into a endless world of harmony. Why a teacher could not have put it together like that, I will probably never know. At this point, I figure that some people are just gifted as teachers, and Conti is one of these who really can play AND explain very clearly step by step what he does. I saw that in college too, with vast differences between the professors who taught what was convenient to teach and those who really got into the material and taught the way students could learn.
I suspect that the standard ways of teaching music work for some people and not well for others. For those for whom it does work, it seems they have "talent" and the rest just have to accept that music just isn't our thing (i.e that time-worn "some gots it, some don't"). But then smebody like Sudnow or Conti comes along and suddenly the rest of us have another shot at it, while those for whom the standard approaches worked will critize the methods of people like Sudnow or Conti as being somehow lacking. I saw Sudnow called a charlatan in a piano newsgroup even though I personally knew people, including myself who were doing fine learning to play tunes in that "cocktail" style. In that group, there was a certain, formal, way you learn to play, probably because the group largely consisted of classically trained players. If that method was not followed, then whatever you were doing was not valid. Conti was taken to task (and people like me who talked about his materials) in an earlier jazz guitar forum. When I talk about Conti's materials in groups such as this, I am not getting paid by Conti to do it (I have never met him in person and oly talked to him o the phone a few times - enough to know he is very generous with his knowledge and committed to helping people learn to play), and I am not really addressing those who already play well. My focus is on steering those people like me who want to learn to play in this style, but have not yet found a satisfactory path. There are many paths to any end, and this one works for some, while others may fare better in a more formal setting. I simply don't believe there is one valid way to learn, making all other possible paths "cheating" or "shortcuts" or doomed to failure.
I have a theory about the so-called "bell curve" as a means of measuring students' ability to learn in school. My theory is that the people at either end are not necessarily stupid at the low end or geniuses at the high end, but that there those for whom the teaching styles generally used in the classroom match their own learning styles, and students for whom that sort of teaching doesn't fit. I believe the same thing about learning to play an instrument. If that were not true, then guys such as Conti, Joe Pass, and others from that era would not have been able to play as they did (and do). That level of performance would be reserved for those who went through a formal school to learn to play, and th jazz schools did ot come along until later, though we will never know how well any of these guys would have done or not done in that environment. Sudnow and Conti were two people who were able to translate their own learning experiences into a method that those of us not in the kind of situation in which that style of learning can take place (i.e. hanging out with friends and jamming, swapping licks, and learning from each other and from recordings at a young age), could still replicate it to some degree on our own.
Whenever the subject of chord melody comes up, I would much rather point to Conti's materials and say "do this" than start talking about theory, because of my own experience. When involved in the Sudnow piano method, I saw older adults learn to play standards in a "cocktail" style (what we call chord melody on guitar) because of the clear teaching. The teaching styles of Conti and Sudnow are very similar in that "old school" way that just works for at least some of us who may not work well with other means of learning to play. Through doing it, you learn to do it.
For me music is a hobby, something that I enjoy as a part of my life, rather than it being the central focus of my life. I have a "day job" as a software engineer and other responsibilities. The time I spend playing tunes out of fakebooks is a small, but enjoyable part of my day, and I have no ideas of becoming a star or anything like that. I don't have a Youtube channel and I am not performing anywhere, though I did play for two years or so full time in a trio that played the Holiday Inn circuit back in the late 70s, as so many people my age now did back then. I decided that was not the life for me, and I moved on. In that trio, the guitar work was really fairly simple (so having played in that evironment doesn't enable me to lay claim to any sort of virtuosity beyond being a general "technician" of the most basic sort), though I could read charts and music as well as becoming fairly proficient at playing a foot pedal bass while playing rhythm guitar. It was after leaving that work that I went through the experiences I mentioned earlier in this post.
Tony
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Tony,+1
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Tony, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to your journey with music....Just keep on enjoying the trip....its a great hobby and you pick the direction to go in....If we had the internet way back when I was a kid maybe I would have discovered cord melody playing years ago...but I'm glad we have it now and we can progress teacher or no teacher.....If it was too easy, hell, it wouldn't be any fun!
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Yes, the internet is a great source of information. It is a kind of "double-edged sword" too because we can get too much information so we get lost in it and end up being more confused than when we started. In a forum, a person can ask how to get started learning chord melody or how to get to the next level or how to learn to improvise. These are all big questions with the potential for even bigger answers, ad everybody who has learned these skills has their own approach which is usually a combination of various ideas and practices. Everybody wants to help, so you end up wth a big thread with all manner of contrasting ideas, all good, but all running off in different directions.
One thing a good teacher can provide is focus, distilling all that needs to be learned to acquire a particular skill into a series of activities to be learned in the process of obtaining that skill. Until we have acquired that skill ourselves, it can be difficult to sift through all the information to determine what to do now and next, and next, etc. to get to our desired goal. Everybody is different, but in my case, I like to have a clear path so I always know where I am. One of the things I like about all the materials I have from Conti is that each focuses on learning one thing well, rather than trying to provide a bit of everything involving that skill and leaving it to me to sort it all out and figure out how to make use of it.
I think I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but I think that a great "next step" after The Formula is the two books from Mel Bay that contain several of Barry Galbraith's chord melody arrangements and the CDs with all these played. You can analyze these using The Formula ideas as well as learn how to make an arrangement come alive, since Conti is focused on getting the harmony right. Once you have that foundation, you can apply it to these Galbraith arrangements to get further ideas for breaking up the chords into partials, arpeggios, and varius textures. With that foundation, you can start making informed choices as to what you want to do next, and next, etc.
Today, I picked up three other similar books of chord melody solos. One is from Gene Bertoncini, another from Jake Reichbart (both from Hal Leonard), and a third from Berklee Press by John Stein. Each is the same format as the Galbraith books (i.e. the full arrangement in TAB and notation, with a CD of each tune), and all are focused on standards in the chord melody general style, but not stripped down for easy consumption. They are what these guy have recorded commercially (the Hal Leonard books). The John Stein book has extra text about each tune and something of the author's process of creating chord melodies of them. To me, having studied Conti's material makes it much easier to have a working knowledge of at least playing tunes s we can take such information ad actualy use it.
Tony
TonyLast edited by tbeltrans; 02-02-2013 at 07:12 PM.
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One correction o the three new books I mentioned - the Jake Reichbart book comes with a DVD, and the presentation style is very simiar to his stuff on YouTube. He is quite prolific and handles pop tunes just as well as standards with his approach to playing. He has a DVD available that is entirely focused on how he approaches arranging a variety of styles for solo guitar, and another on his view of jazz harmony. However, I am one who needs to have a focused direction, so for me, getting the Conti materials well in hand before attempting to take in all the other information that is available is the only way I seem to be able to get any real progress. Others may find that spreading themselves out with all that is available works better. I have these DVDs fromJake Reichbart, but had to set them aside for a later time. However, the book/DVD is him presenting several standards, so for me, that fits in with what I do with Conti's materials as another set of ideas for texture when playing the harmony learned from Assembly Line and The Formula, which are central to what I am doing with the guitar.
Tony
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I've been reading through one of robert Yelin's book with the same intension...Trying to figure his logic in cord choice..Thats fun, usually it all gets back to cycle 4 with the standards....with some skips and changes that he likes....You have minor third, diminished cords, half steps ( cycle 4)...common tone substitution....what else is there?.....did I miss anything?......
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Yes, that pretty much sums it up. However, as simple as that sounds - just a couple of standard bass line intervallic movements, there is an art to using them in the myriad ways that Conti, Galbraith, Yelin, and so many others have done to make music. There are endless ways to combine these ideas and that, at least for eme, takes a lot of attention and listening. I know you realize that, but until I tried actually maing use of these ideas, I thought it would not be as much work as it really is to get results worth listening to.
It is like chess, in a way. The rules are simple, but the implementation is far from simple, and takes a lifetime to master.
Tony
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Conti has lots of chord melody arrangements. You can see how he applies it as you see common devices reused. Chromatic descent implying tritone subs and cycle of fourths. Examples are very important in my opinion and you can use the ideas. I did a version of Happy Birthday on YouTube using some of these methods.
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Agreed. I have some of his arrangement books too, and they are a great way of seeing and (hearing as you play through them) the ideas from The Formula in action. In fact, Conti says that The Formula explains ow he arrived at these arrangements, and it si quite clear, on seeing his arrangemets, how consistent and true that is. Conti is very consistent across his chord melody materials in that almost all the chord "grips" he uses in these arrangements are the same ones he uses in The Formula, which in turn are the same ones he teaches in Assembly Line, so that one book builds solidly on another and the work you do in one, carries over to the next. So for those who will say to skip over Assembly Line as it is merely "paint by numbers" are missing the foundation that this book builds for getting a feel for how this style works, as well as for the chord "grips" used when working in The Formula and his chord melody arrangements. As I mentioned previously, if you have the chord vocabulary well in hand so you are not wasting mental bandwidth hunting around for the correct chord, you can then really focus on the sounds being created in The Formula. David Sudnow talked about this in his piano course when he taught how to voice chords under the melody. He said there are a finite number of chord shapes that we would discover over time that we like and will use in our own music making, and that until we get these well in hand, we have the trouble of not being able to readily hear them in action to facilitate knowing what our choices for harmonizing a melody will sound like because we can't move smoothly from to the other yet. Joe Pass likewise said he had his "favorite grips", as do most players. So I have heard this stuff time and again from many accomplished players on both keyboard and piano, lending much credence to what Conti teaches and how he teaches it.
TonyLast edited by tbeltrans; 02-04-2013 at 08:56 AM.
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Is anyone familiar with Conti's Ticket to Improv DVDs, which is pitched as a as more beginning series ("...If you’re an entry level jazz guitarist such as a blues or rock player trying to make the crossover ..."). I've been following this thread with interest and notice no mention of either Ticket To Improve or of the Advanced Improv DVDs.
These DVDs may all be looking ahead for me, but I have non-guitar jazz experience, and I'd like to know if there is some big advantage to starting with Ticket To Improve versus perhaps purchasing the Assembly Line and then the Formula DVDs. -- Thanks for any insights you may have.
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I personally have seen this phenomenon in a community college setting, where I think it is especially out-of-place. The emphasis is on things like getting one's scales in 16ths up to 180 bpm - this in order to move on to four year program, and even though the community college charter is also to teach non-matriculated students for personal reasons. I am completely on board with the idea that one needs to drill and know scales, arpeggios, etc by heart and then some! But this can be turned into an obsession and made to clash with the fact that everything grows in its own time. Originally Posted by tbeltrans
@tbeltrans: I know I've focused on only one aspect of your posts, so thanks for all the time you have invested in this thread.
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I have some Ticket to Improv DVDs - this is different from Chord Melody and The Formula! (which is for reharmonization and chord melody). Overall I love Robert Conti's approach. He's even called me and sent me free stuff after seeing some of my videos and guitar lessons on YouTube. Super nice guy to boot.
The concept is you learn the solos note for note then you mix and match phrases from the first 3 solos in the 4th tune. I think it's a great way to go for various reasons - you learn technique, learn the language of jazz. You can't always cut and paste phrases as they will be out of context but I think it gets you much further than trying to make music out of scales and arpeggios. Many won't agree with me but this comes from experience.
I ascribe to the 'imitate, assimilate, innovate' method that Clark Terry mentions. Many are opposed to playing others solos/licks but I think the imitate phase is very important. I went to jazz college and learn a bunch of scales, modern method, classical pieces but it did almost nothing for my ability to play jazz.
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I have all the Ticket to Improve's except the recent one.One thing I like about Robert is that he explains everything he does clearly and shows you "how to".He gets you playing right away easy to follow and" take it to the gig" is possible.
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@ wkriski and @jazzuki -- Thanks!
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The chord melody books and DVDs are focused on chord melody. For at least some of us, that is what we want to play, but Conti covers lots of areas, with equal focus, in his other materials too, which gives you as well-rounded skill set as you want to aspire to. This is a good thing because, if is teaching style with one book works for you, you don't have to go elsewhere to learn other parts of the skillset. Originally Posted by HighSpeedSpoon
I believe that one of Conti's real strengths as a teacher (especially works well for self-teaching from his books and DVDs) is that he focuses on one thing in each of hs materials. Instead of giving you a bunch of pieces of information and leaving it to you to figure out what to do with it, he leads you step by step through whatever the focus of that book is, whether chord melody or soloing over changes or comping. He makes sure you get it. I would think that learning some of his soloing cocepts will help to add spice to chord melody playing, and maybe chord melody skills can help fatten up some of the soloing too, so in the end, it all fits together.
Conti and others of his generation (musically speaking) learned to play before there were jazz schools and curriculums for learning jazz (i.e. it was not yet formalized into exercises and theory). Some people call his approach "old school", and that is his method of teaching. Make music and then learn why what you are already doing, works. All his materials, as far as I know, have that similar approach. It makes sense to me.
In case Conti reads this, I was recently referred to as an "old school" C programmer by one of the new college grads we recently hired. None of these new-fangled scripting languages for me. I went from assembler (fitting my software into a few hundred bytes at times) to C, so I guess I am "old school" too. I guess that just happens when you have been around a while. I thought it was funny, so I hope Conti does too.
Tony
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Thanks for your comments, HighSpeedSpoon. As I have mentioned in other posts (and Conti says on his DVDs), his approach is to get the music into your hands ("the action is on the fretboard, not in some book"), and then later you can learn why what you are doing, works. To him, it seems to be a matter of the order in which you tackle this stuff, rather than that you do one or the other (i.e. play vs theory being mutually exclusive). But the main thing is to play music and continue doing that all through the learning process and beyond. If you have ever watched any of Joe Pass' videos, he has a similar approach. He puts the emphasis on playing and hearing how it sounds, rather than on discussing theory. Though, like Conti, it is obvious that Pass knew his theory. Originally Posted by HighSpeedSpoon
Tony
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