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Hey fellas, sometimes I see players doing some type of comping that not the usual (at least for me) meaning using different inversions, boxes, wes, pass...movements, is more like counterpoint, more like moving voices, sounds bit organ-ish to me, I saw Jack Pearson doind some cool stuff like that on a f blues, wondering me if is there any book that teaches those type of movements, starting from blues turnaround I guess.
Cheers
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12-08-2025 06:07 AM
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Broken record time for me I guess.
I got chord charts like the one below and used to write out ii V I progressions in all kinds of ways, this one maps out diminished 6 shells. There's another page somewhere with them compiled as long and short ii V I progressions that stay in one fret group, but also ones that have an ascending and descending tenor line.
My point is, the concept is simple and you can do the work on your own if you have the foundation, chord grips and enough theory for an index card.
Attachment 127668
Other people will probably recommend the Joe Pass chord book, or Ted Greene Modern Chord Progressions.
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When I began learning studying harmony from root movement, I started with playing dyads with just root and melody notes.
This gave me a good ear and finger based foundation so when Mick gave me the Almanacs, I could see the relationship of inversions, voice movement and melody along with hearing counterpoint voice leading on the fly.
But it sounds like you're looking for a book that will teach you chord grips that move in counterpoint. Since playing like that involves developing ear based skills honed over time from practical exercises, (a way of thinking that you can't get from just one book on chord forms) I think you need to realize that to play in several voices, you need to think in several levels.
Are you thinking moving bass lines like Joe Pass, or moving melody lines in multiple voices like Ben Monder?
It would be helpful to know what you're hearing.
Real time counterpoint takes a lot of work. I don't know of any single book that will get you there without a lot of work, in your ear, in your fingerboard concept, in your visualization of lines... without a lot of constant use of voice lead exercises.
The best source I found with the triads section of the Almanacs of Voice leading, all cycles, spread and close voicings. These are essentially mini exhaustive etudes in voice movement in all possible combinations.
That was a good starting point for me. They were also foundational material for Julian Lage, Lage Lund, Ben Monder and a whole generation of "modern" players.
But it's not a "how to" book.
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People talk about almanacs being a good resource for counterpoint, I really don't see how. The voice leading cycles in the book are very limited representations of real life situations. Chords are voice-lead through different cycles inside a scale. I can see that being a good fretboard workout but when actually playing tunes you have:
Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
- Progressions that often move through non-diatonic chords.
- Motion within a single chord (which often involves non-diatonic chords like passing dominants or diminishes).
Am I missing something?
I am not saying that working through the exhaustive cyclic fretboard workouts for a few years won't help finding voice-leading ideas in some harmonic situations. It just doesn't seem to be the most efficient approach for someone who needs to get better in all situations relevant to playing real tunes.
There are books on voice-leading standard progressions on guitar that seem more directly relevant, like "Voice Leading for Guitar" by John Thomas or "Modern Chord Progressions" by Ted Greene. These resources are helpful but I think learning voice-leading is mostly an individual journey on the guitar. You get better at it if you explore harmony on the instrument. I think working on tunes by harmonizing the melody with different bass motions, and finding inner voice options to fill the middle while paying attention to how each voice moves (or not moves) is more rewarding than going through any book. At least I haven't found a resource that was more effective than just working this way.
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As others have suggested here, the process is one of self-discovery. A book that's close to what you're describing is this one by Jimmy Wyble: Originally Posted by Basshead
Hey fellas, sometimes I see players doing some type of comping that not the usual (at least for me) meaning using different inversions, boxes, wes, pass...movements, is more like counterpoint, more like moving voices, sounds bit organ-ish to me, I saw Jack Pearson doind some cool stuff like that on a f blues, wondering me if is there any book that teaches those type of movements, starting from blues turnaround I guess.
Cheers
https://www.melbay.com/Products/9386...ovisation.aspx
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The first thing that springs to mind is Christian Miller's Counterpoint course.
There's also this - https://amzn.eu/d/4qu4a2L
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You're absolutely right. They don't provide the direct literal direction or guidance that allows a user to translate notes into the linear horizontal and vertical simultaneity that is counter point. You can't take any page of these and "cut and paste" them into a solo. But that's not their intrinsic value. Originally Posted by Tal_175
These books are studies and etudes, not in a static chord progression, nor are they guidelines for playing over chord progressions in a tune, but they are the means by which a student can acquire the awareness of linear movement that allows one to think in 3 or 4 voices... and beyond.
Musical compositions are made up of root movements and the accompanying chords that facilitate the harmony that articulates that. But our tradition trains us, especially guitarists, to think of root movement as a bass voice centred process. Root in bass, variations accomplished through inversions. But root movement in equality of the SATB form, the way harmony was thought of from Bach to Mahler, that is more about the confluence of lines.
Traditional harmonic treatment of chords at specific structures (drop 2, drop 3, grabs with the root in the bass), doesn't instill an intuitive ability to move voices within the inner voices. To do so requires etudes that sharpen and develop linear movement in constant flow and interaction of voices. THAT's what the cycles are: Not progressions you put into Stella at a jam, but acquiring the 4 voice control to see ALL pieces as an opportunity to reharmonize in moving lines.
Now this requires practical work, as any etude does. That's why I think these may not be the ideal solution for the OP. But if you're an advancing guitarist who is looking for a way to re-wire your harmonic brain, that's what these cycles do.
When I have studied Villa Lobos etudes, I never thought of them as stuff I could put into a solo. But the more I really internalized the concepts each one was meant to accentuate, the more they developed playing and technical skills I was then free to employ. Same with Julian Lage's etudes, or Bach preludes, or working with a speed bag if you're a boxer, or doing jump rope exercises if you're a skiier, or Wax On/Wax Off, or painting bamboo if you're a brush painter... these are connection and awareness integration programs. When your progression is perceived as a movement of a 4th, or 5th or 6th and not merely Bb to Eb, you can have a formidable set of options that allow you to harmonize by interval witeh voice led elegance. That's what the almanacs are about.
They offer all possible intervallic chord combinations, and through use of chord family groups, let the user acquire an intuitive mastery of all possibilities. That's why they're so big. Not because you need to know them all, but so you can acquire a finite familiarity and choose yourself how expansive your sound can be.
So no you're not missing anything... if that's not the way you want to think. But I offered this as one resource for the player who wants to learn to play linear in their harmony in real time; what I interpreted the OP's search for counterpoint ability to mean, in the short or ultimately the long term.
It's not for the player who really wants a casual touch of some counterpoint in their playing. Not that's not what's offered, But if you want to become intimate with moving harmony, the Almanac is an answer that's as big as your own imagination.
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Before I go off the deep end with my Special Interest, does it seem to anyone else like Basshead is enquiring about resources that will help him introduce a bit of inner voice movement and inversions to otherwise static block chords?
Or should I go into my fugue state?
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I don’t think there is a force powerful enough in the universe to reverse what's put in motion already. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I think it's very much up to you what you do with them, they are sourcebooks. Some of the cycles relate to standards or ways of dressing up static chords. Others might have a more compositional appeal. Originally Posted by Tal_175
A variation of the VLA style exercise that I find more immediately applicable is one I got from Lage Lund. This entails taking a chord voicing type (close triad, open triad, drop 2, drop 3 or anything else you could imagine) and moving up or down the neck with the top voice moving a little as possible and inverting the chord as required.
The way I look at it is that much like soloing you need to develop a comping vocabulary. How many of us transcribe comping? I have to admit I don't do it enough.There are books on voice-leading standard progressions on guitar that seem more directly relevant, like "Voice Leading for Guitar" by John Thomas or "Modern Chord Progressions" by Ted Greene. These resources are helpful but I think learning voice-leading is mostly an individual journey on the guitar. You get better at it if you explore harmony on the instrument. I think working on tunes by harmonizing the melody with different bass motions, and finding inner voice options to fill the middle while paying attention to how each voice moves (or not moves) is more rewarding than going through any book. At least I haven't found a resource that was more effective than just working this way.
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Is that where you go around madly screaming "Fu Gue!"? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Haha. I'll be on my best behaviour. Originally Posted by Tal_175
TBH there's only two things to it
- voice leading frameworks
- diminutions
Or
- the basic skeleton
- ornamentation of the basic skeleton
I think when you put it like this it should be familiar to most jazz players.
We all accustomed to ornamenting and embellishing standards progression for example. So if we assume the former is provided to us, we can concentrate on the latter.
Contrapuntal/fugual textures are just artful applications of the latter. My course that James mentioned goes into that to the point of simple imitative counterpoint, but even that is way beyond the needs of most jazz comping.
Both things are big areas, and need to be discussed in specifics. If you are interested in a specific approach, that guides the discussion really.
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Lage Lund was the first player that came to mind when reading the thread title: Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I just played through some of the cycles in the almanac. I've done a lot of fretboard harmony work already so it's obvious to me how to continue a given cycle of diatonic chords with minimum voice motion. But I see that almanacs perhaps provide a more organized method for getting there than how I worked on moving voices. It's sort of like the chord equivalent of scale exercises for single lines like sequencing different intervals and arpeggios and their inversions through a scale. Like you said, it seems more like a foundational work for seeing and hearing harmony in multiple moving parts on the fretboard rather than providing a readily applicable counterpoint solution to a given tune. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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JImmy oh, that is very nicely said. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Het fellas, thanks for the info, Ive studied classical guitar when I was younger, I know about fugues and that romantic period, its true that we all should incorporate some Bach and Debussy in our daily routines but Im talking about a different sound, I think this way of playing comes from the Gospel organ, which probably comes from the old church European organ tradition (Bach in Germany, etc...) type of thing but it has a vibe that might be somehow connected to Philly and to the blues turnarounds and the tritone sub turnarounds. I wish I could explain this better but is not easy in a second language and Im not sure if this makes sense at all for most of you.
Anyway, which are your fav Bach fugues to practice? and I guess we if we wanna go this way we have to mention the fugue/jazz master Pasquale
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Yeah Gospel as I understand it (in my own limited way) is a mix between the European church music and the harmonic practices of sub saharan Africa. Churchy progressions like the I VI7 VIm I7 IV VI7 IIm (Tonicising Romanesca), IV Ib V7c I ("Prinner") and so on can be traced back to that lineage. But then there's a lot of influence of West African harmony, for example what Gerard Kubik calls 'spanning' in the vocal harmonies. (We can also see planing practices in Big Band writing, as Kubik points out.) Originally Posted by Basshead
Het fellas, thanks for the info, Ive studied classical guitar when I was younger, I know about fugues and that romantic period, its true that we all should incorporate some Bach and Debussy in our daily routines but Im talking about a different sound, I think this way of playing comes from the Gospel organ, which probably comes from the old church European organ tradition (Bach in Germany, etc...) type of thing but it has a vibe that might be somehow connected to Philly and to the blues turnarounds and the tritone sub turnarounds. I wish I could explain this better but is not easy in a second language and Im not sure if this makes sense at all for most of you.
Anyway, which are your fav Bach fugues to practice? and I guess we if we wanna go this way we have to mention the fugue/jazz master Pasquale
As I understand it, Gospel often uses a harmonising scale that omits the leading note, leading to lots of Vsus and plagal type cadences. The influence on both jazz and mainstream pop is huge.
And of course then there's modern Gospel which has just gone to Mars. As a friend of mine (a great jazz drummer) said - there's a spiritual connection with Bach, in that the congregation in Leipzig used to complain about his wild reharmonisations on hymns. So he was going to Mars as well, at least for the era.
Improvising fugues ... well I've taken some tentative steps in that direction myself, at least to the point:
Bach serves as a poor model for learning this stuff because his music is too complicated and atypical. To errrr.... good? For pedagogy, you need something simpler, but still well written like Corelli etc. I think people assume I study Bach, but mostly I study other composers in bite size chunks for my own forays into baroque improvisation. A lot of Italians. There's a very useful book of anonymous German church versets, and so on. Then when you come back to Bach you can see what he's doing a bit better because you understand what he's riffing off. And my respect for his genius increases...
But I do practice his music of course. I tend to learn other things from it.
Here's my version of Two Part Invention no 1. Not technically a fugue, but not a million miles away. Electric guitar allows me to preserve (most) of the original pitches. It's not perfect, but I learned a lot from dong it, mostly technique stuff.
Bach two part invention on a Fender Tele. Why? Who knows. - YouTube
Quite a few jazzers have done this - Gilad, Tom Ollendorff, Jonathan Kreisberg.
The Bach fugues from the Lute Suites are challenging, and interesting in how not strict they are compared to Bach's celebrated keyboard fugues which are very strict. It's interesting and informative the way BWV1000 goes into prelude-like arpeggio textures and so on, and down to two voices. Of course this probably has a lot to do with its origins on the solo Violin music, which takes you to school on implying counterpoint in a solo line. Yeah Bach keeps us going
Fugues for guitar are going to take us away from Bach quite quickly... The best written fugue specifically for guitar is IMO Guiliani's Fughetta. It's a proper fugue mostly in open position, which I respect. You can also see how Guiliani's brain was working too if you know your figured bass etc so it's incredibly useful for that reason.
The Diabelli Fugues are also nice, if a bit harder. And Weiss's fugue although technically for lute.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-09-2025 at 06:51 AM.
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Oh and no discussion of this stuff would be complete without mention of Ted Greene. He's the initial impetus for me getting into it. I appreciate the way this video isn't perfect, and he's really improvising.
What Ted says about the bass is really important and insightful. (Notice the cheeky quote of No Moon At all on the the chromatic bassline for example.)
Contrary to popular belief Bach wasn't a species counterpoint guy - he was a bass guy. That's how he taught. (More scholarly info here)
Ted was somehow able to intuit how to do it - he didn't have access to all the historical scholarship on baroque and classical improvisation that has exploded in the past 20 years or so. And while he's using modern theoretical language (I IV V etc) instead of the figured bass that would have been taught at the time, the way he talks about the different bass lines in this video is the way that the musicians of the 18th and early 19th centuries appear to have conceptualised their harmony and counterpoint. He would have loved Partimento!Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-09-2025 at 07:14 AM.
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This is the transcription of what he played in the video. A simple bass motion goes a long way when the melody has a lot of the harmony in it and voice-lead nicely. That is my first impression of it anyway. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
https://tedgreene.com/transcriptions...WillKriski.pdf
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Thanks for that. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Quite a few of the chords are incorrectly labelled IMO.
So what we have here is an exploration of stepwise basses. This is an important first step in the old treatises. We might call the harmonisation of a stepwise bass as Ted does here the Rule of the Octave, which in Ted's terms is mostly I IV V chords and occasional secondary dominants.
So Starting at the 3/4 the correct chord symbols are -
F#m C#7/G# F#m/A Bm - the first four chords of the ROTO
then he leaps to Bm/D, D#o7 then to Fo7 and back to F#m completing the scale - all these chords diatonic to the F# harmonic scale - which doesn't quite fit with the 18th century ROTO which has a melodic minor bass (but not all melodic minor chords), but it's similar in concept. I'd say Ted is more diatonic to one type of minor scale here than Bach or his contemporaries would have been.
Ted introduces some chromaticism as we go on. On page 9-10 we have explorations a descending chromatic 'lamento' bass.
There's a lot of nice stuff in there. I've tended not to study Ted's material directly, because I'd rather use him as an inspiration - I think he introduces his own style into it a little - and go direct to the sources as he did. But there's probably a video in here somewhere....
Also the choice of fingerings is interesting - very high up. I'd fret practically all of this stuff in lower positions. I wonder why he chose those? Softer sound maybe?
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well, I guess I have one more thing you can consider.
I personally think the easiest thing you can do now without further study is playing "non-harmonic tones" (so called in classical music) to connect you chord progression.
If you have one chord going to another as you would usually play, look at the physical grip of your hand and see which of these you can use the most easily in any voices (vary which voices)
suspensions, appoggiaturas (esp lower chromatic), passing tones (esp chromatic), retards, escape tones, neighbor tones (lower chromatic) etc
Then you can use multiple, like a suspension in one voice and a passing tone in another.
Ideally with 3 note voices like Allan posted
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Yeah maybe me and Tal should start a Ted Greene baroque improv discussion or smth. Not really relevant to the OP.
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997, but i don't play anything challenging anymore Originally Posted by Basshead
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I used to enjoy playing 998. Probably more than people enjoyed listening to me play... Originally Posted by joe2758
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I love Ted Greene, I saw a couple of those old videos but not this one so please, keep talking about him here for me, I actually studied some of his pdf on his sites and really inspire me to do my own little comping arr.
Ima check out that pdf Tal posted, still not what Im looking for but really interesting and deep, Ima try to find a video where someone does what I was talking about, I think Kessel or Hall, maybe Berstein are into that type of comp.
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