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Yeah, I agree...I retired at 55, with a state pension....It took years of planning, saving, and no world cruises....In my opinion it was worth it for the freedom I now have....You can't put a price on that....Once you free your mind from all the work BS you will see how quickly you can improve on things that matter too you, like music.......its a mental game....
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05-14-2013 08:35 AM
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If you think about it, though, someone who was 20 in 1970 was born in 1950 and would have heard many kinds / styles of music before rock took over. There was still an emphasis on melody and lyrics, at least in the singer/songwriter genre (Elton John, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, the Eagles).
Originally Posted by tbeltrans
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Look what Pat Methany is doing with some old tunes from the 70's/80s.....you don't have to stick to the standards...
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BIG NEWS guys---listen up and give me some feedback, please:
I heard from Mike, Production Manager at Conti's place. He wonders if our members might enjoy access to 6-7 complimentary video lessons (single note and chord melody, beginner to advanced) if they were posted in the appropriate forums.
My first thought is, "Duh, of course!" (Is there any reason NOT to think this?)
My second thought is, "Hhhmmm, has anyone done this before?"
And third:"Where best to post them?"
I told Mike I would mention the idea here and get input from your guys---we're all Conti fans here, we know how good his material is and we want others to benefit from his teaching too---so let's hear what you think!
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Hi, guys! Someone new to the forum here but with nearly fifty years of guitar playing experience. Thrilled to find this forum. I play anything from classical to country rock to my favorite, jazz guitar, naturally. I have built up a nice personal library of my own transcriptions of jazz standards and the Great American Songbook.
I jumped in here because I met Robert Conti by chance way back in the early to mid-Eighties. I thought you might appreciate the story. It was a nice spring Mother's Day that fell on a Sunday, and my family went out to lunch at a nice restaurant. As we were waiting for our table, I heard someone playing a solo jazz arrangement of a fine standard. Following the strains of music, I found myself in a small bar area with a dark haired gentleman dressed formally in a nice suit playing to his appreciative audience. I took a seat some six feet away from Mr. Conti who was totally absorbed in his playing. After listening to him play three tunes or so, I approached him during a brief break to offer my compliments for his beautiful ballad playing and to ask his name. Very much under his breath he murmured his name, almost as if he were still focused on the music. Fearing my relatives would think I had deserted them, I reluctantly tore myself away from Robert Conti's spellbinding presence. Btw, he was quite a bit thinner in those days. And that was the last I saw or really heard of Mr. Conti until many years later when I encountered his YouTube videos. Truthfully, I prefer his ballad playing to his bebop style.
I don't have any of his books, as I don't really need them at this point in my development. Don't misunderstand, I simply already create arrangements on my own with my Sibelius notation software (legacy G7) often just listening to tunes off YouTube or using an old Hal Leonard "Real Jazz Fakebook" I've had for some fifteen years or so. But I can appreciate his philosophy of showing players straight up how to execute phrases and such. Certainly if you stick to his workbooks over time you learn to do things in an organic manner anyway. But I think you can reach the same goal just by learning to harmonize melodies. And a teacher doesn't hurt to move things along.
I hope to post more of my own arrangements on YT soon.
Jay
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One question I have is
is going through the "the Formula" DVD lesson a pre-requisite for doing the Chord Melody DVD?
Dave
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Dave - Originally Posted by dkstott
I am not sure what you mean by "the Chord Melody DVD" (i.e. he has 5 chord melody DVDs, each covering a tune and the Chord Melody Assembly Line book with DVD). But regardless, no, you don't need to read "The Formula" for any of those products. If you go through "Assembly Line" before going through any of his 5 chord melody DVDs, you will know the chord forms he uses and how to match them up to melody notes. That will make learning what he teaches on the DVDs much easier. I would learn at least one or two of his chord melody arrangements before tackling The Formula so that you have a sense of what he is teaching you to do.
All that said, my suggestion is this order:
1. Assembly Line
2. A couple of his chrd melody arrangements, either from his Signature Series books of arrangements or from a couple of his chord melody DVDs.
3. The Formula
4. Play lots of tunes from fakebooks using what you have learned.
Tony
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Agreed. I was somewhat surprised at how many good tunes came out of the 70s. For some time, I felt the 70s were a sort of culture vacuum, but I was wrong. The 50s had lots of melodic stuff going on, as did the acoustic side of the 60s. The singer/songwriter stuff, as you put it, says it quite well. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Tony
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That is a great idea! As for anyone having done this before, if he is first up, then he is blazing a trail. People have certainly put up free lessons with links to them in forums before, but I don't know that any of the "big" name guys has as of yet. As for the best place to post them, my suggestion is his YouTube channel with links in appropriate groups, such as this one. If he emails you with the links, nobody can accuse him of spamming - which some groups would jump at the chance to do, though I get the sense this isn't one of them. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Tony
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What Metheny recordings are these? I would be really interested in hearing what he has done. Everybody has done The Beatles, and much of their stuff works well in a variety of settings. There have been a number of balllads done too, such as what Mark was talking about. I am probably not familiar enough with what came out of the 80s though to recognize any of them. Originally Posted by artcore
Tony
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sorry, I wasn't specific on my question
Conti has "The Formula" DVD and then there is the "Chord Melody Assembly Line" DVD lesson.
His course descriptions aren't much help to me in figuring out the differences. They both seem to cover similar things
I do some chord melody from other's arrangements already, so I am wondering if "the formula" is where I want to start or if I should go with the "chord melody assembly line" lesson.
Dave
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Welcome to the forum, Jay. I suspect many of us have a lot of years playing, but are only more recently focusing on chord melody, at least in this thread. I have been able to work out arrangements for some time now, but being abel to do it in real time is somethinig new for me, and that is what Conti's materials are really about - never having to play the same tune the same way twice in a row. I am starting to experience that here and there, so I know it is possible with a lot more time on the fretboard doing the right things. It is the "doing the right things" part that makes the difference between being able to do that after X number of years and not. Conti teaches us the "doing the right things". Originally Posted by targuit
If you watch Conti in videos, you can see him in that totally absorbed state too. I have never heard him live, but have talked to him on the phone a few times now. I bought a Conti guitar (and had some nice conversations with both Mike and Conti in the process - both great guys) and must say it really is a very, very nice and playable instrument. Don't let the price fool you - it could easily sell for much more. I also have a "vintage" Gibson Johnny Smith, so I do recognize quality. I would really enjoy meeting Conti in person someday, maybe after a gig when he is done working for the day.
What Conti does with his chord melody materials is give you a vocabulary and teach you how to find your own voice using it. Do you have your "favorite grips" as Joe Pass talked about? It seems that is what guys from that era did - they had a vocabulary of chords, knew the melody, and developed a sense of what sounded good with what, like we have with words and how we speak, putting those same words everybody uses together in our own unique ways. That was Joe Pass and that is Conti - none of this slaving away at an arrangement to be locked into place forever. I think Charlie Byrd was more classically oriented that way, since his background was classical guitar and he studied with Segovia.
Tony
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A lot of people I know are well into their 50s and still paying on a mortgage, car payments, etc. My wife and I did go on a 10 day cruise once in the early 2000s. I paid for all of it out of money I made on some stocks. We have been working toward retirement for some time now and could easily do it as soon as we are elgible for the earliest of SS. Really, the main thing holding us back is the medical insurance. What do you do for that between the age of 55 and 65 when you become eligible for Medicare? If we can solve that, we would retire now. Guitar, here I come!!! Originally Posted by artcore
Tony
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Good question. I started with the "Assembly Line" and just ordered "The Formula." The "Assembly Line" teaches you to play a chord over each available note for a C major, F major, G7, Am, and Dm chord (-including accidentals), as well as the most useful shapes for diminished and augmented chords. Then he gives you some examples (-snippets of familiar tunes) and you see what you come up with and can check your results with Conti's answers in the back of the book. It taught me a lot. Originally Posted by dkstott
"The Formula" builds on this. Some people can start there; I wasn't one of 'em!
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Glad to hear that. I told Mike I'd get back to him tomorrow (Wednesday, 15 May) Originally Posted by tbeltrans
Last edited by MarkRhodes; 05-14-2013 at 08:43 PM. Reason: Mistaken date
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Don't you mean Wed. 15 May??
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YES! Sorry. (I'll go back and edit that post but leave this here for otherwise your reply might puzzle people.) Thanks for catching this. Originally Posted by edh
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Thanks for the reply, Tony! Love this forum. And I love to talk and play music. I wanted to share my Robert Conti story because so much of what you can hear of him on YT for example is him blowing bebop at frenetic tempos. The guy was a monster on the ballads I heard.
As for the question of favorite grips and the like. Here's my approach and evolution. I learned classical guitar as a kid formally, and that was a great foundation in my opinion. I went crazy studying Joe Pass, George Benson, Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis....in my twenties and up to the present day. I think the key to developing comfort playing chord melody lies in the dictum of Joe Pass - learn songs.
For me at first it was playing along to music on vinyl, tape, and finally CDs. Somewhere along the line I found that harmonizing Segovia's diatonic major and minor scales and working with an extensive chord book helped me to really learn in depth the fretboard and more importantly to uncover voice leading which is so key to chord melody playing. In a sense, the melodies lie within the chords and the harmonies can be created off the melodies. Over the years I discovered that I needed to trust my ears and to 'dream' the music. That means to me to think about melody in terms of target tones and to learn to trust my subconscious to connect them. This psychological 'surrender' of control to the subconscious - to become the vessel and not try to micromanage the music - is critical to me, but took me a while to grok.
What does this have to do with "grips" and things? Well, there are myriad ways to play each and every chord, but when I play I let my subconscious choose the harmonies as I 'dream' the melody. So I when I play an Fmb5 in the context of a song, the chord happens in various positions on the fret board and in different inversions, but I'm not thinking about that, I'm just dreaming. In other words I just intuitively know where the chord is in whatever fret position I find myself along the way. So I don't think about it.
Then again, there are so many ways to play the song. For example, when you analyze how Martin Taylor plays Georgia
versus Joe Pass, you see two different approaches to the fret board. Now my style is more akin to Joe Pass in terms of how I finger the notes and chords. I really like Martin Taylor's playing - I think he's brilliant, but his fingering to me is more idiosyncratic, while Joe Pass' approach is more "classical". Note I don't say one is better than the other, just different. And I've studied both guitarists' music in depth for years.
But in the end it's about finding your voice and your style.
Jay
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I hear a lot of '70s hits on radios in public places---who doesn't, right? I'm not wild about all of it (--I was alive and listening when this stuff was new and I didn't love it all then, either) but much of it is tuneful, catchy, well-done. (I think many pop bands in the '70s still used studio musicians and that made for solid tracks. Of course, Steely Dan, my favorite, used so many top-flight studio players, they ceased being a band and became two guys and a small army of pros making killer records.) Originally Posted by tbeltrans
And then there's Pink Floyd, who for all their experimentation know a great hook when they find one and how to wring the most out of it. Even some hard rock / heavy metal bands knew how to be catchy----AC/DC, obviously, and Ozzy Osbourne, for that matter (-who doesn't love "Crazy Train"?) and Queen......
I think one key is that people were still writing SONGS.
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I think the Conti video lesson offer is great. What can be the downside, as long as the mods don't see it as spamming?
I've recently been adding a different arranging approach to my studies (not that I'm really good at it yet, or even close, just trying/figuring it out); I'm thinking more like how I arrange for a horn section. I am trying to play the melody and dropping in chords or chord phrases that are similar to a horn section response. The melody note is not necessarily the highest pitch, and the backing chords are antiphonal. I suppose this is already a well-respected technique that I am just not familiar with on the guitar, but it is where my studies are leading me. It might end up a dead-end, or might be something I use during a CM improv (if I could make the heads sound recognizable - lol). Hell, I'm playing around with stuff so far beyond me at this point; just want to be a better player. I always keep going back to fundamentals.
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THIS moderator wouldn't see it as spamming! ;o) Originally Posted by ah.clem
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hey targuit, your playing like an experienced improvisior...as opposed to some like myself that think through arrangements, try different approaches then lock into somthing we like and try to remember it, for a little while at least.....it works both ways but some jazz guys will say ,well, thats not jazz, and its not!...in the sense that its a practiced arrangement...but we are using jazz harmony....and its all good....I don't think I could ever reach the point your at...
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Hey, Artcore! Nothing wrong with learning an arrangement note-for-note, as Robert Conti tries to convey in his lessons. There can be a great satisfaction in mastering an arrangement. But it is actually harder to learn things "note-for-note" than to understand the chordal structure of the song and play it intuitively. I know that takes time, practice, and desire. But you can do it, and the more songs you learn, the easier it becomes. Btw, I don't want to take anything away from Mr. Conti's approach, which he loves to point out does not bog you down with extensive musical theory. And while I haven't looked at his Formula video or checked his web site for a while, I suspect that he is trying to teach you essentially how to harmonize a melody. My suggestion - start with a simple bass line and the melody. When you can play them together, the rest is about harmonizing with inner voices. If you have a jazz standard in mind, let me know if I can help. Might be fun.
Btw, although I know music theory quite well, the only scales you need to know are diatonic major and minor scales. Modes? Valid study material, but my eyes glaze over and in my opinion is absolutely unnecessary if you can play what you hear in your mind. But practicing harmonizing the diatonic scales? The key to fret board mastery and voice leading. It ain't rocket science.
Jay
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Dave - That's fine. I wasn't criticizing, just trying to make sure I answered the right question. Originally Posted by dkstott
Anyway,if yoou are already playing chord melody and have a decent chordal vocabulary for it, then you could just go right into The Formula. It also helps to be able to understand what the harmonized major scale is and what various intervals are.
Tony
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Well here is the odd part about much of the music you mentoned (at least from my perspective) - in their settngs, these pieces sound complete and there is enough going in the original recordings to keep people's interest. But strip all that away and there is surprisingly little left. In the case of Steely Dan, it can be difficult to find something of a kernel in all that to make a full solo piece from because it is all so tightly intertwined. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Iheard a solo chord melody attempt at Comfortably Numb on YouTube and I found it boring. I can't fault the player, since he did a good job. There just wasn't much to work with because it was so repetitive. Besides that, the whle tune is build up to that really heartfelt guitar solo. Without it, the song is rather flat.
A tune such as Over the Rainbow has such a strong, recognizeable melody, that you can do pretty much what you want with it and it comes alive. There really is much like that in recent history.
Tony
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