The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #126

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    There is a biography of him that you can order from Amazon called "Guitar Man." As I understand it, the manuscript was found after the author had passed away. I'm too lazy to run back into the house and go upstairs and track the book down, it might be that it was some sort of graduate school project or something. Anyway, a lot of it is "as told by" George to the author and is very entertaining reading. The breadth of George's life story is really pretty dramatic.


    His father was Fred Van Eps who was a famous banjoist in the swing era (and George initially followed in his footsteps). His brothers were also all musicians and the Van Epps boys played together in bands quite a bit. By the time George was in high school he was making pretty good money as a musician. His dad was friends with Dick McDonough who used to leave his Gibson L5 in George's care, which was where George started learning how to play guitar and that instrument. For a while during the swing era he took both guitar and banjo to gigs but eventually transitioned exclusively to the guitar. During the swing era, he apparently made money hand over fist (good money even by today's standards) and frittered an awful lot of it away. He had a fondness for fast cars, for one thing. When he met his wife, she took over managing his finances and he was able to hold onto his money a lot more effectively.

    Fred also manufactured banjos for a period of time. George learned to be a machinist working for his father; his grandfather was a watchmaker and he had learned at his grandfathers work bench the skills that later went into making the locomotive you mention (if I remember correctly, it is a working steam locomotive built at a scale of 1/10 of an inch per foot or something like that. He overheard someone say it couldn't be done and took that as a personal challenge; it took years to complete.).

    During World War II, probably somewhat before, his dad started a prototype laboratory that did high precision machining, with quite a few government projects. This was called Van Eps Laboratories. In addition to Fred and George, I think most of his brothers worked there as well. They built part of the detonation mechanism for the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan; Van Eps was quite upset as the family did not know this was the purpose of the items they were making. That laboratory also made a precision record tonearm that eliminated parallax issues with the cartridge in the groove of the records. If you search the Internet for "Van Eps tonearm" you will find some information about it.

    GVE is of course most famous among guitarist as the inventor of the seven string guitar. He had been working on this idea for several years and in 1938 approached the Epiphone guitar company, with whom he already had a close working relationship as one of their most prominent endorsers, about modifying his instrument to accommodate a seven string neck. They built him a prototype to test and see if it worked and then sawed of the neck off his existing Epiphone Deluxe and attach the new neck. He was delighted with the instrument and played it pretty much exclusively for decades until the Gretsch Van Eps model was put into production. Several times he has referred to it in interviews as the finest instrument he ever played.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #127
    I now remember he told me his grandfather was a watchmaker. As I think back I'm amazed the encounter even occurred. I was 24, working for the NYS Department of Law in Albany on periodic assignment in the City. I was exceedingly shy, staying in the city on my own a few days at a time at one of the only hotels (it might have been the Hotel Manhattan) that accepted the State reimbursement rate. Don't recall how I happened to have breakfast where I did --- and can't imagine how the conversation began. And yes, he told me (or perhaps it was his agent who told me) that he invented the 7 string guitar. I can now recall he told me about his involvement with the detonation device. What a strange encounter -- but as I said earlier I have listened to that record over and over and marvelled at the beauty of his playing. And the encounter had such an impact on me that I kept the placemat with the notations in the record sleeve all these years.

  4. #128

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    I have all 3 of the books I will sell them cheap to anyone who wants to pay me a bit and the shipping. I found them not so good but George is a truly great and fantastic guitarist but his books make very little sense to me at least the later HM.

  5. #129

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    I got volume 1 yesterday and played through the first page.
    I'll be working on this together with Mick Goodrick's Almanacs. The plan is to work on major keys with both books then melodic and harmonic minor.
    There are no expectations and I'll just do a scale or two per day.
    I guess that this thread is the study group?

  6. #130

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    The Harmonic Mechanism books are not a method book per se. You don't have to start on page 1 and work your way through to the end. It's basically a compendium of all possible chordal movements on the guitar- just dip in and find something that interests you to work on. Not unlike Mick Goodrick's books, as well.

    George was able to improvise this stuff, apparently able to play take after take differently each time.

    Guitar is hard. Pianists are able to learn this stuff from the beginning, but the nature of the guitar is a matrix rather than linear and the finger gymnastics are one of the biggest challenges. George's method tries to reduce the finger gymnastics as much as possible.

  7. #131

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara
    The Harmonic Mechanism books are not a method book per se. You don't have to start on page 1 and work your way through to the end. It's basically a compendium of all possible chordal movements on the guitar- just dip in and find something that interests you to work on. Not unlike Mick Goodrick's books, as well.......
    Yes, I have the book and I have also read the thread.

    I've considered both options of starting at the start of the book or diving in at a different distance and starting at the start seems more logical to me.

    My triad knowledge is ok so the first few pages are not too bad. I'm looking forward to see what treasures the book holds.

    Edit: feel free to join us on the Goodchord thread which you can find under the theory header of this forum.
    Just pm David if you need a PDF copy of the almanacs.
    Last edited by Liarspoker; 10-15-2022 at 05:29 PM.

  8. #132

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    There's an interesting study route possible from the Van Eps Harmonic Mechanisms to Mick Goodrick's The Advancing Guitarist and Almanacs. They're not everyone's cup of tea (i.e. it is up to you to supply the pieces, songs, and improvisations) but, after an initial couple of years' preliminary work reading different guitar tabs and the simpler classical guitar pieces, I found these books offered a thorough and logical explanation of the guitar's awesome harmonic potential.

    A couple of useful and important differences are worth pointing out: GVE gives us his masterful left-hand fingering method, with detailed variants. The Mechanisms are written in conventional notation with no tab, but their logical sequences and fairly gentle learning curve means that after a few weeks' work most students get used to reading — even in the more 'difficult' keys — and the fact that this material is presented to us by GVE in all keys means that the usual 'practise this in all keys' injunction is also much harder to skip over.

    All the best, Mick W

  9. #133

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    Little progress report. Onto page 32 today.

    I started a little later than the post above as I had a solo guitar gig last Sunday so was practising repertoire.

    I see the 8 plucking patterns on the bottom of page 35.
    'employ each one separately full range'
    'apply them to the 2nd inversion and root position triads also'
    Crickey, that is a lot of work.
    Going forward I will use one pattern for one scale, the next pattern for the next scale etc.
    Last edited by Liarspoker; 11-02-2022 at 05:31 AM.

  10. #134

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    Little progress report. Onto page 36 this morning but I've also jumped ahead and started working on other parts of the book with more movement such as page 66.

    I'm probably doing it wrong but I'm not reading the triad chord scales too much. I just follow the appropriate scale up and down.

    I'm comfortable with the triads so far so it's all reinforcement atm.

    I am obviously reading the dyads and moving lines.

    Also I just make up my own fingerings, I'm not following those in the book per se. Perhaps I should really.

    That said I'm also working through some Steve Herberman triad stuff and I am using his fingerings. You have to really as there's so much movement.

    Since these closed triads are reinforcements it's with the spread triads that I'll really be learning more.

    Page 45. Can't wait

    How are you doing with this material?

  11. #135

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    Worked on closed triads and 6-3, 3-6 reductions a loooong time ago, 80s, 90s.
    Also Super and Sub Series and Blockout Patterns at the end of the book.

    I thought it was very interesting and great finger gymnastics, but have not worked with it since then.
    It's probably good to apply all this stuff to songs. I did not

    Curious what you think about the open 2nd (?) inversion triads on 48.

  12. #136

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    Quote Originally Posted by hohoho
    ... Curious what you think about the open 2nd (?) inversion triads on p. 48.


    Hello hohoho,

    Yes, there's something odd about the naming of the inversion of the spread voicings on pages 48 (George van Eps' Harmonic Mechanisms Vol. 1). I'd played through these without noticing the inconsistency. The variety of left-hand fingerings offered probably dazzled me - they really are great hand-training.

    It may just be an error – if we compare page 48 with page 45's first inversion triads – I'd be minded to call the triads on page 48 'Scale in root triads - spread-voicings', to match with the title on p. 50, 'Scale in open root triads - tonic down an octave'.

    I was taught that the lowest note in a triad's construction always determines the inversion, and I'd apply that to all the possible triad voicings, such as open triads and spread triads as well as close-voiced. The language gets a little vague though when we get to the difference between spread and open voicings - is ‘spread’ a special type of open voicing, or just another word for any open voicing?

    Some of the open-voiced triads (e.g. pp. 45-47) have the lowest note played an octave lower, while other open-voiced triads (such as those on pp. 48-50) have the outside notes of a close-voiced triad flipped – shifted up and down an octave – around the middle note. These 'flipped' voicings I’d call spread triads.

    My question is, are 'spread voicings' usually classed as a special type of open voicing?

    All the best, Mick W

  13. #137

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    Appears to be an error, those are definitely misnamed.
    These are misnamed open root inversions.

    It is interesting that Van Eps chose to present the spread close position chords
    E x x G C x // C x x E G x before the more standard open triad voicing fingerings, E C G, G E C, C G E. In any case the actual open 2nd inversion triads never made it into this sequence of the book. Oh well, this series of content heavy books got far more right than wrong.

  14. #138

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    Ted Greene in an unfinished book, created a perhaps esoterically named system of classifying inversions he called the V system. It organizes voicing types by whether chord tones are either consecutive or skipped over (gaps).
    The amazing community of former students organized and compiled a books worth of this unpublished content and it's posted on the tribute website.

  15. #139

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    Quote Originally Posted by bako
    Ted Greene in an unfinished book, created a perhaps esoterically named system of classifying inversions he called the V system. It organizes voicing types by whether chord tones are either consecutive or skipped over (gaps).
    The amazing community of former students organized and compiled a books worth of this unpublished content and it's posted on the tribute website.

    Dont know if this was mentioned before ..Ted studied with GVE..and this was the inspiration for the V system

  16. #140

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    I found this educational thesis on George Van Eps' books and it's influence on guitarists such as Barney Kessel, Jimmy Wyble, Mick Goodrick and Kurt Rosenwinkel. It is attached

  17. #141

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    Hi Mick-7

    Many thanks for finding and flagging this up. Jimmy Brennan's doctoral thesis on the Harmonic Mechanisms is an exciting read and a long-overdue celebration of Van Eps' life's work.

    All the best
    Mick W

  18. #142

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    George Van Eps Guitar Method is attached. It is out of print, so I can share it - if I am mistaken, let me know and I'll remove it.
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