Book of chord etudes in the style of William Leavitt

[darvil]

Hi everybody,
I'm a big fan of the chord etudes included in the William Leavitt's "Modern method series" (e.g. p. 62 of volume 1). It seems to me there are no other book by Leavitt including similar etudes, so I was wondering if there are collections of similar chord etudes by other authors, in the style of Leavitt (possibly with increasing complexity/difficulty). Also, a method based on this approach would be very nice - reverse-engineering Leavitt etudes to understand their logic isn't easy, at least to me (I do have the Mel Bay's Melody Chord Playing system, but it's not the same approach).

Thanks you!
dario

[Jimmy blue note]

Hi Dario
I certainly feel your love for chord melody playing. It's the thing that got me into loving jazz guitar to begin with, Joe Pass, Johnny Smith, Gene Bertincini, Ed Bikert...
I remember searching for something that would give me explanations and help me to figure out what was going on. I never get into the Leavitt books, maybe you could post a page to see where you're coming from.
Personally, it's been a long and really satisfying journey for me and there wasn't one method that did it for me. I learned to play melodically, and then I got a SOLID knowledge of chords, how they work and where they're located on the map of the fingerboard. There were a bunch of books that helped me in both respects and the putting them together, that was something that I worked on and put together on my own, and I'm glad I did it that way. I found the process of my own putting together melodic elements (scales) and harmonic structures (chord forms/grabs) was a revelation that really made my own command on their integration much deeper.

But I WILL share one book, actually a series of books that really helped me. That's Mike Elliot's series on Expanding Jazz Harmonies.
He takes really beautiful tunes, shows the melody and chord symbols and gives a chord grid showing how and where to join these two elements on the guitar. THere's also a really great explanation section in the front that throws out ideas of what his process is, not too much so you get locked in to one interpretation, but strong enough for you to have a foundation to build your own on.
Here's a bit from the first volume:

And here's a piece from the book where it's applied:

And they are arranged in order of complexity. He uses jazz standards and popular tunes, and there were two excellent and delightful volumes. THe series continued with two more volumes but they weren't authored by him. Interesting to see another approach to chord choices.

Anyway, that helped me and I don't know if it has anything to do with the Leavitt approach but these books have always been a treasury for me and I was so grateful to have come across them myself.
Good luck and make it fun!

[tbeltrans]

Hi Dario
I certainly feel your love for chord melody playing. It's the thing that got me into loving jazz guitar to begin with, Joe Pass, Johnny Smith, Gene Bertincini, Ed Bikert...
I remember searching for something that would give me explanations and help me to figure out what was going on. I never get into the Leavitt books, maybe you could post a page to see where you're coming from.
Personally, it's been a long and really satisfying journey for me and there wasn't one method that did it for me. I learned to play melodically, and then I got a SOLID knowledge of chords, how they work and where they're located on the map of the fingerboard. There were a bunch of books that helped me in both respects and the putting them together, that was something that I worked on and put together on my own, and I'm glad I did it that way. I found the process of my own putting together melodic elements (scales) and harmonic structures (chord forms/grabs) was a revelation that really made my own command on their integration much deeper.

But I WILL share one book, actually a series of books that really helped me. That's Mike Elliot's series on Expanding Jazz Harmonies.
He takes really beautiful tunes, shows the melody and chord symbols and gives a chord grid showing how and where to join these two elements on the guitar. THere's also a really great explanation section in the front that throws out ideas of what his process is, not too much so you get locked in to one interpretation, but strong enough for you to have a foundation to build your own on.
Here's a bit from the first volume:

And here's a piece from the book where it's applied:

And they are arranged in order of complexity. He uses jazz standards and popular tunes, and there were two excellent and delightful volumes. THe series continued with two more volumes but they weren't authored by him. Interesting to see another approach to chord choices.

Anyway, that helped me and I don't know if it has anything to do with the Leavitt approach but these books have always been a treasury for me and I was so grateful to have come across them myself.
Good luck and make it fun!

Thanks for this post and always appreciate your informative posts, Jimmy. This area of chord melody is of particular interest to me too. I know that Mike Elliot studied with Johnny Smith and some of the chords in that series you highlight have some of that "stretchiness" that was typical of Johnny Smith. How did you come to be able to manage that type of chord, or did you revoice these to suit your own way of playing them?

The reason I ask that specifically is when working through those books, once I learned how chords are built and the notes of the fretboard, that is what I started doing. However, I feel that I may have been missing some beautiful voicings that may be possible only with such wide stretches.

The complete series consists of 7 books. The first two are from Mike Elliot as you describe very well here and contain standards. The second two are from Len Brownling and are similar treatments of pop ballads of the day such as "Endless Love" and "You Needed Me". The third group of three are from Pat McKee called "Jazz Harmonies: The System" and contain a whole systematic approach to chords for the guitar from which the chord melody books draw their voicings. These together make up a rather complete systematic approach to chord melody playing, but as you say, loose enough to not lock you in.

By the way, as an aside, Mike Elliot used to live in the Twin Cities area and apparently taught at McPhail. He had a solo guitar album (later made into a CD) that is somewhere on youtube. I can look for it and post the link. He bought an early 70s Gibson Johnny Smith from Johnny Smith when Smith had that music store in Colorado. It was a dual pickup model. I bought it back in the 90s from Willie's in St. Paul, but later sold it because the gasses from the pickguard really wrecked the electronics on it. The guitar was then owned by an old guy (which I am now today) who had gotten arthritis bad enough that he apparently couldn't play anymore. I never met the guy, but was told this information when buying the guitar at the shop. It was a beautiful guitar otherwise, though it had been stolen at one point and the serial number was partially scratched off. Fortunately, the shop had the paperwork to identify the guitar with serial number. Unfortunately, Mike Elliot's time was before I moved to the Twin Cities, so I never knew him. I know from local history that he was a highly respected player and protege of Johnny Smith himself.

Edit: Here is the link to Mike Elliot's solo album on youtube:

Tony

[darvil]

Thank you very much! That approach seems to be interesting. Unfortunately, the books you mention seem to be out of print.

Since you asked, here's an example of chord etude by William Leavitt (Modern Method Vol.1):

[tbeltrans]

Thank you very much! That approach seems to be interesting. Unfortunately, the books you mention seem to be out of print.

Since you asked, here's an example of chord etude by William Leavitt (Modern Method Vol.1):

It is a real shame that the series starting with Mike Elliot's books have gone out of print. Considering how much guitar-oriented learning material is available today, there is still something to be said for these older books as Jimmy pointed out. Considering that Jimmy got a lot from, and recommends these books, it would be very worthwhile to scour the online used book stores to find some of these books. Try abebooks.com for starters.

I seem to remember seeing mention of a PDF of chordal material from Leavitt floating around the internet somewhere. You might want to google "William Leavitt" to find it. As I recall, it was mostly chord melody stuff. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I saw reference t that. It might have even been in some thread here in the forum.

Tony

[Jimmy blue note]

... I know that Mike Elliot studied with Johnny Smith and some of the chords in that series you highlight have some of that "stretchiness" that was typical of Johnny Smith.
The complete series consists of 7 books. The first two are from Mike Elliot as you describe very well here and contain standards. The second two are from Len Brownling and are similar treatments of pop ballads of the day such as "Endless Love" and "You Needed Me". The third group of three are from Pat McKee called "Jazz Harmonies: The System" and contain a whole systematic approach to chords for the guitar from which the chord melody books draw their voicings. These together make up a rather complete systematic approach to chord melody playing, but as you say, loose enough to not lock you in.


Tony

Wow great story! And way cool that you know these books. They seem way under the radar of the usual suspects, but through them I learned voice movement, the importance of a good fingering technique (I'm classically trained so a thumb on the back of the neck really helped me) and these were etudes of great pride and beauty as I learned real songs I could play and ways to change and alter them to make them my own, and ultimately apply these sound and valid approaches to my own playing.
He studied with THE Johnny Smith? Wow. My own connection with that line was Harry Lahey and to this day Johnny is a shining beacon for me.

By the way, I have the feeling that the Mike Elliot books are out of print (Why doesn't somebody reissue these?!) and if anybody can't find them, PM me. I have them on my google drive.
Yeah Tony, my entire jazz guitar career has been one of chord melody playing, it's my dream come true every time I pick up the guitar and play something I've never done before.
I think the books I mentioned were a really important part of my knowledge, practical and ear.

[tbeltrans]

Thanks Jimmy. Yes, Mike Elliot studied with Johnny Smith. As I understand it from people I know who directly knew Mike, he moved to Colorado to study with Smith for two years before moving back to the Twin Cities to being teaching and recording.

Regarding the entire series that I mentioned previously, I have all of those books. There used to be a store here called The Podium. One guy who worked there in a very knowledgeable capacity, teaching, working on guitars, advising the store what books to stock beyond their core of serving the classical guitar students at the university, and on what guitar amps and archtop guitars to stock, kept the store well stocked with books. I took advantage of that and garnered quite a nice collection over the years. When the store eventually closed, it was a sad day for the area and I doubt there will ever be another like it. Unfortunately, musical tastes change along with the prevailing culture, so I wonder if support for such a store would be strong enough for it to survive today.

The Pat McKee Jazz Harmony books are of special note because they are not simply a series of chord dictionaries, but instead they systematically teach you common to "advanced" chord voicings by delving into what make up the voicings, how to modify their components to voice them for your own specific needs, voice leading, etc. It is a complete system from the ground up across three volumes. The third book has one of those floppy disks with backing tracks for practice. Unfortunately, I haven't owned a turntable in years. Maybe I can find somebody around my area that has one and I can hook up my laptop to record it to MP3.

Couple that with the 4 books on chord melody, and now you have a complete grounding in harmony and how to apply it in a very practical manner. This is a case in which the sum is greater than the parts when you have the entire series. These all have the same style cover. There was also another book in that series on the Nashville numbering system, but it seems to be a sort of aside since I don't really see that system being discussed among the jazz crowd.

These books were published by Hal Leonard, which as we know, is the "800 pound gorilla" in the music publishing industry. To get these published again would probably take some serious legal finagling, which equates to big money. Scanning them would be quite the project with its own dicey legalities, so the best thing for anybody who is interested would be to scour the online book shops. I doubt these were particularly rare, since Hal Leonard does things in a big way.

We just had our first snow overnight and into this morning. It is only probably an inch or so, but it is the first warning shot of impending winter. In these parts, winter is a great time to hunker down with some good learning materials. Your post about these books stirred my interest, so I dug them up to revisit. Perfect timing all around! For me, it is always a good thing to revisit past materials with fresh eyes.

I looked up Harry Lahey, and he seems to have been quite the player too. So if you studied with him or had any materials he might have written, I am sure he would have been quite the guiding light into this style.

Tony

[darvil]

Edit: Here is the link to Mike Elliot's solo album on youtube:

Tony

Thank you, that's amazing - also very nice blend of acoustic/electric tone in the recording.
There's also a remastered version, here's the link to spotify (if you have an account): link

[Contrapuntal Improv]

Leavitt was a huge fan of Van Eps and many of the concepts that are in the Leavitt Etudes are contained in the various Van Eps's books. You might want to take a look at "Guitar Solos" by George Van Eps, these are more advanced pieces, yet they have come similar ideas.

It's nice to see that there are people that appreciated the Etudes, I've been teaching them out of that book for almost 40 years and they are still a delight to hear! I've always wanted to hear Leavitt play, just to see if it was anything like the Etudes.

[darvil]

Leavitt was a huge fan of Van Eps and many of the concepts that are in the Leavitt Etudes are contained in the various Van Eps's books. You might want to take a look at "Guitar Solos" by George Van Eps, these are more advanced pieces, yet they have come similar ideas.

It's nice to see that there are people that appreciated the Etudes, I've been teaching them out of that book for almost 40 years and they are still a delight to hear! I've always wanted to hear Leavitt play, just to see if it was anything like the Etudes.

Thanks, I'll check it (I have volume 1 of Van Eps Harmonic Mechanisms for Guitar, very good technical book).

[Bob65C]

If you Google 19 chord melody solos arranged by William Leavitt you can download the pdf of them. I just did it a few days ago and printed them all out.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Leavitt also had a duets book. I have a copy of it around here somewhere. I believe it's also out of print but am not certain. You may want to search for that.

Berklee has a "Jazz Song Book 1". It has some nice arrangements in it but is recent and not Leavitt's work.

Mel Bay has those "Jazz Guitar Standards" books with multiple authors/artists per book. There are some very nice chord melody arrangments in those.

Tredwellsmusic.com|Guitar Duets Vol. 1, William G. Leavitt, guitar duet