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Hi, guys!
First of all, I`m really happy I`ve found this place, `cause there is a real problem to find forum for jazz guitar players on Russian internet (I'm from Russia). So, I`m here.
I have been playing the guitar for almost 20 years and at the moment I stick to jazz, learning jazz standards, comping, chords and so on. But my biggest passion is chord-melody. I`ve got a lot of books about the topic and I`ve watched tonnes of videos, but I`m still struggling to figure out:
When I`m playing chord-melody arrangement, has the melody note to be 'a part' of appropriate chord?
For instance, I`m playing E note from the melody, and I harmonize it by Gmaj7, let`s say. Do I have to find a form of Gmaj7 that has E at the top of it (In this case I have to remember sort of at least 7 forms of each chord that has all 7 notes at the top), or I can just find some usefull fingering of Gmaj7 so I could get the E note on 1-2nd strings?
I hope you`ve understood my thought, and I really hope you can clarify it for me.
Regards.Last edited by blackraven; 06-21-2016 at 07:29 AM.
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06-20-2016 06:18 AM
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Thanks, KirkP!
I had a look on it. The guy is amazing. He`s really more a piano player than a guitar player.
Last night I tried to make a chord melody arrangement for "The Shadow Of Your Smile" and I figured out, that`s it`s... how to put it... not hard (at least as you have an alogorythm) but you can`t play a chord melody for a new standard "at once": you have to write it down, you have to figure out the best chord voicing (for you)) and remember it (Jesus! so many voicings have to learn and remember!!!))
But then you`ll get amazing arrangement. And anyway, it`s a great harmony and chord construction practicing! ("Ok, so we have E as melody here and the chord is Cmaj7, the 1st string... E is the 3rd of Cmaj7, so I gotta look for a Maj7 chord voicing with the 3rd on the 1st string. Here we go..." and so on ))
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see if you can get ted greenes book....cord chemistry......should help....start with simple tunes.....
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Thanks, artcore!
I`ve got the book and know about the site with pdf`s of his arrangements. Now gotta work all it through and try not to break fingers and brain at the same time!
For me the problem is that I have too much information and can`t decide what to start from.
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By the way, the chord names are often abritrary, and don't need to be followed to the letter. Your example of an E melody note against a Gmaj7, for instance, can easily just be G6. Try Martin's method of bass note and melody, then fill in. Add your own colors, in the above example, a simple g6 in 1st position sounds really "jazzy" by playing an A on the 3rd string, thus creating a G6/9 chord.
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Thanks! I know that you sort of can change a family of chord. It looks like jazzers here are huge fans of Ted Green`s theory. Really gotta have a look!
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I really have never thought about "meat" of chords. Even now, as I`m becoming a jazzer, sort of, I`m stick to several main chord shapes with the root on 5/6 strings, so for me it`s a challenge actually to think about chords as several notes )))
So, jazz it`s one of the greatest ways to learn music theory, at least harmony, at least for me.
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It's a slow process when you are starting out, but as you work through voicings and fingering mechanics for each tune the problem-solving process sticks with you. As you learn more tunes you'll find patterns you've encountered in other tunes, so each tune comes quicker.
Originally Posted by blackraven
Check out Tim Lerch's Youtube channel and lesson page.
http://timlerch.com/lessons.html
He gives skype lessons if you want to pick his brain, and he's a great teacher in the Ted Greene style.
Here's a lesson Tim did on constructing bass lines, which is an essential part of solo guitar.
Think of the bass line as a second melody. The notes in the middle are the glue that tie the two melodies together.Last edited by KirkP; 06-22-2016 at 03:46 PM.
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yeah....start out slowly....don't try to play like Ted Greene in the beginning....so much good info on the net today....but it can be too much as well......
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Thank you guys!
So much to learn, so much to work thgrough.
But hey, jazz should be fun, not only cjallenge )
So, I hope I upload some my stuff here someday and it won`t be too shamefull )
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So, I`ve found an article of Greg O`Rourke here and all the things he mentioned about Matt Warnock`s materials about the topic. I.e. if I need to play a note of the melody that at the same time is the 3rd of the chord, so I just have to have a look at chord chart and pick up the proper chord with the note needed.
But the problem is that IMHO it doesn`t sound enough "jazzy" ))
I know that there are plenty of chord voicings and substitutions, so should I look for until I find the best one?
I hope you got it )
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Looking up chord charts is very slow and obviously won't work on the bandstand. I'd suggest putting a lot of time into study and practice of chord inversions and arpeggios with the ultimate goal of being able to play the chord of the moment (or at least part of the chord) wherever the melody happens to take you on the neck. Originally Posted by blackraven
If you don't think you sound "jazzy" enough, I wonder if that could be a rhythm issue. If you are learning primarily from printed materials, you won't get a sense of rhythmic feel.
I'd suggest finding two or three solo guitar recordings or videos that are in the style you'd like to play and study them very carefully. Play it multiple times and focus on only one voice each time you play it (melody, bass, and middle notes). Listen not just for the notes played but the rhythm of each. Try to play along with just that voice. Look for the swing and syncopation of each voice. Once you can play along with one voice at a time you might try playing the bass and melody lines together without the middle notes.
I'm not a teacher or a pro -- I'm just sharing some ideas that have helped me.
Another suggestion: Focus on just a few bars of a solo guitar recording to dissect and learner to play it as I've described above. Try to get to the point where you can loop over those bars indefinitely with the "jazzy" feel you hear in the original recording. For example, if the recording has a two-bar iii VI ii V turnaround, you might start with that.
The basic idea is to break things down into bite size chunks.Last edited by KirkP; 06-26-2016 at 02:34 PM.
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KirkP, thank you very much. I`ve kust figured out that I can remember 12 chord shapes for the beginning and play beginner-level chord melody arrangement.
There are 12 of them because: you have to remember 4 voicings for each of 3 chord groups - melody note for the root, the 3rd, the 5th, the 7th. And 3 groups at least - maj7, min7, dom7. So there are 12. and you sort of be able to play chord melody with voiving on the 1st string. And after that you have to learn the same patterns for 2nd and 3rd note voicings. Maybe it`s too mechanically, but this algorythm allows you to play nice. Kind of.
But of course, I have to learn arpeggios and scales and so on. I`ve just heard too much about exact "method to make an arrangement". That`s it.
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I muscled my way through the theory part of it, trying to learn chord melody on my own for a good while. At some point though, it's really helpful to just see how real players do these kinds of things and find some standard grips for common melody/chord combinations. once you have some basic go-to's, then, you spend the rest of your life adding to it.
Robert Conti's "chord melody assembly line" is excellent for the basic parts, in my opinion. Probably the best $40 I spent in jazz guitar instruction, at least up to that point, (several years ago now). It's really basic/simple, but that's what I needed at the time. Really straightforward . Great stuff.
http://www.robertconti.com/product/c...assembly-line/
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I met Robert Conti back around 1985 or '86. Nice guy playing great ballads in a beautiful way.
Last edited by MarkRhodes; 06-26-2016 at 07:18 PM.
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Guys, I`m back here and I`ve got stuck again )
I`m trying to get into chords, drop2/drop3 chords and can`t figure out the/a bestr way to learn them.
I have charts with frets/dots and everything from this site but I don`t think that it`s a good idea to just remember them, to learn by heart. I guess I have to understand why each note of the chord is there on its place. But there are too much stuff: 4 inversions, drop2/3 for each of them and so on. So what should I take as "basic" chord? Of course I have to learn intervals and understand them, I was said that the best way to learn chords it`s just to learn intervals and then build accorded needed. But how can I decide how to build, if I have so many inversions and forms?
You may suggest "just relax and learn tunes" but the idea is to build chord vocabulary and then spice up my accompaniment and/or make CM-arrangements but how should I learn all those chords?
Thanks guys. I hope you understood the problem nevertheless I said to much )))
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Originally Posted by blackraven
Only way to learn and remember is to use it. Just memorizing raw data like chord grip give you no point of reference to the sound or how it fits into making music. Sorry but learning tune is the answer to everything, just learning chords forms is like buying a dictionary to learn to speak, No, you learned to speak by speaking to others, you learn music by playing music.
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thanks for an answer! Originally Posted by docbop
But how can I build the dictionary if I see Cmaj7 in the fake book and have no clue what the forms of it I can use? I`d just use one-two forms (grips) I`ve already known. How can I start expanding my knowledge?
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Originally Posted by blackraven
Joe Pass said I never use to fancy chord grips too hard to try and grab when I play.
Play whatever chord grip you know and when practicing you think I don't like jump over there to play that I need another grip around here then learn another on. Necessity is the mother of invention. Also learn how to create chord grips far more useful than trying to learn 5000 grips. Work on triads, then triads and seventh, after that adding colors or altering things is no big deal. Amazing what can be done with triads, triads in the diatonic scales, triads and bass notes, triads built with upper extensions. Looks at the great chord players George Van Eps, Ted Greene, and many others they all talk about triads and the value of them.
IF you know the basic triad and their inversion shapes you'll always have a chord form handy.
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Break it down into small, manageable chunks. Originally Posted by blackraven
Start with Dominant 7 chords on the top 4 strings (DGBE). Learn the four fingerings. Don't worry about anything else. Just do 7th chords. Start with F7, then move on to other keys until you can recognize where any given 7th chord should be fingered.
Then, raise the 7th a half step. Now you've got major7 chords. Do the same thing. They're just like the dom7s, but with one note different.
Then, lower the 7th, and lower the 3rd. Now you've got minor7s. Do those''
Finally, lower the 5th and do m7b5s.
While you're doing this, play through a couple of tunes and see how the various grips relate in terms of doing II-V-Is and stuff like that.
By the time you've done all this (and really, take as much time as you need), you'll have a sense of not just where the grips are, but why they are where they are, and you should be able to play them all over.
Now you can start messing with them. Raise the root a whole step. Now you're doing (rootless) 9th chords. Raise the 5th. Now you're doing 13 chords. Drop the 7th. Now you've got 6th chords.
It takes quite a while (at least it did for me) but once you get fluent with them, you can really move around the fretboard.
Now repeat the process on the middle four strings.
Once you've got those down, you can start working on Drop3s (I didn't bother with drop 2s on the bottom four strings, because they sounded way too muddy for me. Drop 3s get you those bass notes while retaining the clarity of the upper strings. But you may feel differently about that.)
The point is, to just take one thing and learn the hell out of it before you move on to the next thing.
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All the drop two's made my eyes roll back in my head . Lazy I guess. The hack I finally found to working on that kind of thing which seemed to work with my attention span was to basically pair a "new voicing" with a more familiar one.
Take whatever new drop 2 voicing you're working on , and every time you have a chord which is four beats, play 2 beats of a familiar one and two beats of the new one. Gives you some melodic interest , and it also gives your a frame of reference for where things lie on the fretboard which feels more concrete. Usually do the same with licks etc. as well. Just my two cents.
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By the way, the best way to learn new voicings in a non-mind-numbing way is to learn chord melody.
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Originally Posted by Boston Joe
Really good advice here (I've edited the post, as indicated by ....). "Active learning" where you basically "derive" these yourself has a much better chance of sticking with you.I have a real problem using the "8900 Chords To Learn On Your Coffee Break" kind of books. The problem is....this kind of learning ....where too much is done for you...can end up being "in one ear and out the other". Flip through the pages, put it down...pick it up again....put it down....you can fool yourself into thinking you can know it.
Sweating through the stuff yourself....will be hard...at first....and then you'll start to see connections and some "rhyme and reason", and then it won't be hard.
Fun reinforcement....using these with real tunes...is more fun and sticks with me, better. So minMaj7 chords----learn "Harlem Nocturne"....dom. sharp 5...."A Train"....., etc, etc.
I try to learn tunes, and play them in each area of the neck....do the same thing with different chord groups.
( I tend to like "bottoms up" learning...so if you wanted to learn how to write detective stories, you could read boring literary theory, or you could go read Ross McDonald, or some other writer you like.)
Maybe after a while, then you can turn to the other type of book...and I bet a lot more of it will stick with you.
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oh boy. Guys, so many good advices.
And the main is "get rid of those damn books, keep The Real One only" ))
I thought myself that "try to figure out why" is the only way to realy learn smth.
So I shouldn`t spend time learning blindly all those grips but rather figure out how those work and why.
You know, funny thing. I just began to read Matt Warnock`s book "Jazz Guitar Practice Guide" and there was a thought that you need to decide 5 goals in your jazz guitar and do small chunks for every big goal every time when you practice. So I decided 5 things:
- to build chord vocab
- to learn 50 Jazz standards
- to learn chord melody
- to learn how to improvise
- to learn how to play in tempo
and for the 1st goal I started (no, I didn`t start, I was doing it before) to learn chord grips for drop2. But then have figured out that I`ll not accomplish it unless I got how it works and why.
So now I guess my list of goals became one line shorter ))
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Wow I started doing just that for myself a few months ago. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
well i did voicing on strings 1-4, 2-5 and 6-432 not remember why i didnt do 5-321, maybe i should do that now.
Mostly it worked out ok for 4 note voicings except when I don't use a form or two for a while i completely forget it and have to work it all out against from scratch, my memory isn't good at all!
Then i found m6 and m7b5 shapes are the same and then noticed other similarities ie b7b9(no root) and dim7, so my fingers remember all the shapes but my mind has to tell them what the shape is called.
Seems kind of round about but I'm sure if i understood more chord theory it would make more sense.
Also I have a question about doing extended voicing such as 9th 11th 13th, My question is when you cant play all the notes because of lack of fingers/strings , (especially because have to often add the melody note) is there an order of dispensability? i.e.
1. you drop the 5th (only if it isn't altered)
2. in 13th chords the 11th and 9th are dispensable.
3. if the 9th is present the Root may go?
etc.
[these are probably wrong - just my own made up examples]
I just work on playing solo arrangements, but very basic, just of the chords + melody of simple tunes, hopefully one day I'll be able to solo improvise on them too, or maybe not. :/Last edited by mozzfret; 11-27-2017 at 09:16 PM.
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