The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Posts 1 to 12 of 12
  1. #1

    User Info Menu

    Hello everyone , I am new here on the forum and new to jazz as well , I am so much interetsed in Chord melody and solo guitar playing
    and love joe pass style of playing . I have a background of playing blues rock music. played and performed over a decade .
    I found a local teacher to teach me jazz . he is a great and experience teacher , Unfortunately he moved to another city and he was the only available teacher here who can teach. jazz music . We have covered lots basic ground and built a good foundation .
    I am just curious about or need guidance to continue my musical journey . from here what next i suppose to do or study , I have found lots of
    online resources but what you need or which thing you need to do next thats a confusion . i found there are lots of great players on the forum and I hope they can share their experience and
    guide me which way i need to go further .
    I started with
    1 . Shell voicing , then start adding noted on B n E string (played simple standards like Autumn leaves n all of me )
    2 . learning lines ans transcripe short pieces and lines or simple solos
    3 . Drop 2 voicings on middle and top string set added tension nots and played over standards likle there will never be another you , just friends or wine n roses.
    from here which way to go ???
    Kindly share your thoughts with me
    Thank you

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by koki
    Hello everyone , I am new here on the forum and new to jazz as well , I am so much interetsed in Chord melody and solo guitar playing
    and love joe pass style of playing . I have a background of playing blues rock music. played and performed over a decade .
    I found a local teacher to teach me jazz . he is a great and experience teacher , Unfortunately he moved to another city and he was the only available teacher here who can teach. jazz music . We have covered lots basic ground and built a good foundation .
    I am just curious about or need guidance to continue my musical journey . from here what next i suppose to do or study , I have found lots of
    online resources but what you need or which thing you need to do next thats a confusion . i found there are lots of great players on the forum and I hope they can share their experience and
    guide me which way i need to go further .
    I started with
    1 . Shell voicing , then start adding noted on B n E string (played simple standards like Autumn leaves n all of me )
    2 . learning lines ans transcripe short pieces and lines or simple solos
    3 . Drop 2 voicings on middle and top string set added tension nots and played over standards likle there will never be another you , just friends or wine n roses.
    from here which way to go ???
    Kindly share your thoughts with me
    Thank you

    This site has some materials to get you started. Also, there are many chord melody books. Learn a few arrangements or sections thereof, and see what the arrangers do.

    Also you can try this:

    1. Take a good standard/ballad
    2. Learn then melody in the proper range (vocal range)
    3. Circle one note per measure and play a chord under it based on the chord symbol. Experiment with different voicings and add tensions where they sound good (9, 11, 13, etc)
    4. Then add more chords under carefully selected melody notes, a little at time. Don't overdo with too many chords, keep the melody in focus.
    5. Make sure to add some filler in measures where there isn't much motion. (maybe a bass note or two)



    Pretty soon you'll have a simple chord melody arrangement that is all your own. Then keep going with other tunes.

  4. #3
    The primary bottleneck in learning to play CM is voicings - how many you know, limitations re string-sets you know etc. You can systematically learn a bunch of voicings as chord-scales etc, but it's pretty difficult to remember all of that and retain or without application to real tunes.

    I personally think that tunes and reps in different voicings is key to progressing. Honestly, you get more reps on everything if you learn to harmonize each melody note individually, at least in the beginning . Or at least almost every melody note. Whether you like the style or not as a listener or player is almost beside the point . The reps are the shortcut to learning this stuff much faster in my opinion, and you learn more voicings, the more voicings you play in a given tune. It's just a math thing, But it takes a good while to learn any given tune at first anyway. It's really not that much harder to harmonize everything.

    Robert Conti's "Chord Melody Assembly Line" book/DVD is probably the best $30 or so I ever spent in playing the guitar. Period. It teaches the style , and when you really learn it , you can just play things out of fake books more or less on the fly, of course depending on how much time you put in. But it's changed the way I approach the instrument , both in jazz and in other styles.

    If you prefer sparser arrangements with your chord melody, it's very easy to reduce things down from "busier". Adding more IN from a sparser style... isn't quite the same process. Doesn't work both ways. If you learn the fuller "harmonize everything" style you'll get the sparser thing for free basically. I don't really play like Robert Conti at all , but he got me started.

  5. #4
    Thanks Matt for your suggestion . I heard alot about robert conti dvd's , i will definitely check it out , does he also use the drop 2 or drop 3 voicing ?
    I tried and check few online resources like Martin taylor school or others . they dont teach drop voicing and all .
    thats why i was little confused .
    And as you mention about learning tunes and reps in different voicing . I m sorry I m new to this forum and jazz music . I didnt get or understand by reps . Is it for repertoire or something ??

  6. #5
    This site has some materials to get you started. Also, there are many chord melody books. Learn a few arrangements or sections thereof, and see what the arrangers do.

    Also you can try this:

    1. Take a good standard/ballad
    2. Learn then melody in the proper range (vocal range)
    3. Circle one note per measure and play a chord under it based on the chord symbol. Experiment with different voicings and add tensions where they sound good (9, 11, 13, etc)
    4. Then add more chords under carefully selected melody notes, a little at time. Don't overdo with too many chords, keep the melody in focus.
    5. Make sure to add some filler in measures where there isn't much motion. (maybe a bass note or two)




    Pretty soon you'll have a simple chord melody arrangement that is all your own. Then keep going with other tunes.

    Thanks Man . sounds good to me . do i need to learn other voicngs as well like Drop 3 or just master drop 2 first then move to other stuff

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by koki
    Thanks Matt for your suggestion . I heard alot about robert conti dvd's , i will definitely check it out , does he also use the drop 2 or drop 3 voicing ?
    I tried and check few online resources like Martin taylor school or others . they dont teach drop voicing and all .
    thats why i was little confused .
    And as you mention about learning tunes and reps in different voicing . I m sorry I m new to this forum and jazz music . I didnt get or understand by reps . Is it for repertoire or something ??
    Sorry. In American English, "reps" usually refers to repetitions, especially in regards to exercise etc. If you learn a 32 bar tune with one chord per bar, you're probably learning fewer than 32 unique voicings for the whole song. whereas, you might learn two or three times that many if you learn one voicing per- melody- note.

    Drop 2's are cool, but for beginners, you usually start with combinations of drop 2 and drop 3 voicings, which facilitate voice leading of 3rds-to-7ths and vice versa - on the 3rd and 4th strings, with roots on 5th and 6th strings.

    Drop2 is a really helpful for systematically learning the fretboard, maybe later. But short term, they can definitely be helpful for finding voicings for problem spots etc. The conti book is great for getting you past the "reinventing the wheel" stage and gets you to some basic beginner grips. It also helps with basic problems, such as voicing the maj-7 melody note over dominant etc.

  8. #7

    User Info Menu

    Koki, you got some great advice from Matt and Jazzstnt (so did I for that matter). However, I'm wondering why you're so hung up on Drop voicings.

    Everybody, including Martin Taylor, uses these voicings. They just might not call them that. The Mickey Baker book is filled with Drop 2, Drop 3, and even a Drop 2 and 4. However he doesn't call them by any specific name.

    I have tons of stuff from Frank Vignola and even subscribe to his Truefire channel. Never, ever have I heard him refer to a chord as a Drop3 or Drop2. Jimmy Bruno was once asked on his YouTube channel if he could explain what a Drop2 chord was. His answer was, "What the hell is a Drop2 chord? I never even heard of that."

    My point is that "Drop 2" is just a term. Some people use it, others don't. But they all still play these chords.

    I look at it this way: a Drop 3 has a skipped string with the 3rd a 10th away from the root. A Drop 2 is played on 4 adjacent strings. (I know that not all chords played on 4 adjacent strings are Drop 2s, but who cares? It's just not that important.)

    Don't get hung up what someone calls a voicing. They are the same chords everybody plays.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack E Blue
    Koki, you got some great advice from Matt and Jazzstnt (so did I for that matter). However, I'm wondering why you're so hung up on Drop voicings.

    Everybody, including Martin Taylor, uses these voicings. They just might not call them that. The Mickey Baker book is filled with Drop 2, Drop 3, and even a Drop 2 and 4. However he doesn't call them by any specific name.

    I have tons of stuff from Frank Vignola and even subscribe to his Truefire channel. Never, ever have I heard him refer to a chord as a Drop3 or Drop2. Jimmy Bruno was once asked on his YouTube channel if he could explain what a Drop2 chord was. His answer was, "What the hell is a Drop2 chord? I never even heard of that."

    My point is that "Drop 2" is just a term. Some people use it, others don't. But they all still play these chords.

    I look at it this way: a Drop 3 has a skipped string with the 3rd a 10th away from the root. A Drop 2 is played on 4 adjacent strings. (I know that not all chords played on 4 adjacent strings are Drop 2s, but who cares? It's just not that important.)

    Don't get hung up what someone calls a voicing. They are the same chords everybody plays.
    I basically agree with everything you're saying above. Honestly, I was trying to not get too "political" about drop-2. :-) It can become somewhat contentious on the forum. I think there are a lot of things to get underhand BEFORE worrying too much about learning ALL drop2 or drop 3 etc.

    It just wasn't a thing as much until more recent years. It CAN be helpful for more advanced study later. Just my $0.02.

    Good post.

  10. #9

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    I basically agree with everything you're saying above. Honestly, I was trying to not get too "political" about drop-2. :-) It can become somewhat contentious on the forum. I think there are a lot of things to get underhand BEFORE worrying too much about learning ALL drop2 or drop 3 etc.

    It just wasn't a thing as much until more recent years. It CAN be helpful for more advanced study later. Just my $0.02.

    Good post.
    Matt, I was still writing my response when you posted yours, so I didn't see your response until after I posted. Nothing I said was directed at you.

  11. #10

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by koki
    This site has some materials to get you started. Also, there are many chord melody books. Learn a few arrangements or sections thereof, and see what the arrangers do.

    Also you can try this:


    1. Take a good standard/ballad
    2. Learn then melody in the proper range (vocal range)
    3. Circle one note per measure and play a chord under it based on the chord symbol. Experiment with different voicings and add tensions where they sound good (9, 11, 13, etc)
    4. Then add more chords under carefully selected melody notes, a little at time. Don't overdo with too many chords, keep the melody in focus.
    5. Make sure to add some filler in measures where there isn't much motion. (maybe a bass note or two)




    Pretty soon you'll have a simple chord melody arrangement that is all your own. Then keep going with other tunes.

    Thanks Man . sounds good to me . do i need to learn other voicngs as well like Drop 3 or just master drop 2 first then move to other stuff

    Well "mastery" is one thing, "basic facility" is another. Having a large chord vocabulary is a long term process. But yes - and as a start - I would say get a basic handle on the following:


    1. Drop 2 - root position from strings 6, and 5. Root and other inversions from string 4.
    2. Drop 3 - from strings 6 and 5 (root position and a few second inversions)
    3. Barre chords from strings 6 and 5
    4. Quartal voicings from strings 5 and 4
    5. Freddie Green "shell" voicings
    6. Know a few 9th, 11th, 13th chords - with and without altered tensions (i.e. 13b9, 7#9b5)


    Being able to improvise chord melody is a high goal. You needn't attempt to start there. You can approach this skill as I mentioned above. Just try to make a simple arrangement and take it one chord at a time, using trial and error. If you are even a little bit handy with the above chords you might be amazed and what you can come up with as "a guitar arranger".

  12. #11

    User Info Menu

    also..check out the Ted Greene site...he has many tunes in CM style..from basic to very advanced...

  13. #12
    Thank you so much guys for your advices and suggestions. It's really helpful , I will keep posting my progress .
    Thanks again