Learning Inversions for Standards and more

[fumblefingers]

Hit a nerve with the covers comment. Dont judge.

why not judge? is there some standard of conduct that you're referring to?

[fumblefingers]

Hey here's some cool books for chords :
Chord Chemistry - Ted Greene (lots of chords)
3-Note Voicings and Beyond - Randy Vincent (really cool stuff here)

I would say ultimately if you want to sound like X, you've got to transcribe X or otherwise figure out what they do.

Identifying voicings is hard but by and large feasible. Start with the top note, then the bass note. Then try to make out the chord quality and you should have an educated guess from there. But if it is too hard(which it is in most cases) you should try to watch a video of the guys you like playing to pick up specific voicings.
Generally you can make you where the hands are and you should be able to take it from there.

In Bill Evan's case you might want to try a transcription book or something.

The best videos are duos. Here's a couple of videos where I picked up lots of cool stuff recently. Sound quality is clear so you should be ok in most cases, but if you are stuck, you can just take a look at their hands and get a hint.

Aside from picking out specific voicings from tunes, I also recommend working on standard shapes like drop2 drop3 triads etc.
These shapes and their inversions are available in lessons on this website I think.
Once you have nailed the shapes, try to put them in tunes.

All the best!
Pushkar

thanks for the vid. i really think that Vic J. is the main man there. just one opinion of course.

[pushkar000]

thanks for the vid. i really think that Vic J. is the main man there. just one opinion of course.

Yeah no worries
I can't say he's my favourite here(its quite hard to choose one really) but he does some great stuff. When I heard his chords in the intro of the first tune with PB, I didn't even wait to hear the whole song, I ran for my guitar and started working that out.

I'm really into duos right now. What I dig about them is how they just suddenly drop the most incredible phrases and chord voicings and before your brain has fully comprehended the greatness of what they just played...its already gone.

[jtizzle]

You can go to mymusicmasterclass.com and buy Ben Monder's two video course on harmony. Takes you through pretty much most of Mick Goodrick's Chord Almanac (which is considered one of the best books on guitar harmony, and is out of print), in a matter of less than two hours. It being a video lesson also allows you to hear what he plays and see how he plays it.

[richb2]

What am I missing? It eh6794 says get a free scribd account. But this page allows for a free month and then $8.95 per month afterwards.

[pubylakeg]

+1 on the recommendation of Barry Galbraith's "Comping" book. There's a wealth of authentic 40's/50's type voicings and chordal phrases in there.

Steve Rochinski's book " The Jazz Style of Tal Farlow/Elements of Bebop Guitar" has a section on Tal's common usage chord shapes. You'll need to use your left hand thumb for a lot of those !

[dingusmingus]

You can go to mymusicmasterclass.com and buy Ben Monder's two video course on harmony. Takes you through pretty much most of Mick Goodrick's Chord Almanac (which is considered one of the best books on guitar harmony, and is out of print), in a matter of less than two hours. It being a video lesson also allows you to hear what he plays and see how he plays it.

Jtizzle, have you worked with that lesson and/or the voice leading almanac? I've taken a quick look at the Goodrick book (or what I could glean from the Internet, since the full book is out of print now) after my teacher talked about it. It looks very interesting, but I was wondering how one would actually implement it in playing. Perhaps the Monder lesson goes into that?

[vhollund]

I've just been through the Ted Green book
Great stuff and great voicing ideas

[jtizzle]

Jtizzle, have you worked with that lesson and/or the voice leading almanac? I've taken a quick look at the Goodrick book (or what I could glean from the Internet, since the full book is out of print now) after my teacher talked about it. It looks very interesting, but I was wondering how one would actually implement it in playing. Perhaps the Monder lesson goes into that?

I don't have the almanac, since it's out of print. I have the Ben Monder lessons but I haven't gone through them yet as I just skimmed through it. However, I studied with Brad Shepik who coincidentally worked on very similar harmonic things that appear in the Ben Monder videos, and Brad told me this all came out of the almanac.
Since you've looked at the almanac, you know it's basically a collection of all possible harmonic pitches on the guitar. Ben's thing (and what I worked on with Brad) focuses mostly on the basic seventh chords, their voicing types, and their inversions. Ben goes into the superimposition thing, where you can superimpose a basic seventh chord over another root to create an extended sounding chord, so for example, playing a Maj7b5 (1 3 b5 7) chord over a root that's a tritone away creates a min11b5 sound, or playing a Maj7 chord over a root a maj 3rd below creates a Maj9#5 sound, and so on.

The Ben Monder thing goes slightly into how to apply it, but it really is up to you to how you want to do that. The idea is that it's going to take way too long to learn all the superimposed sounds, considering there are 14 types of basic 4 note chords, and multiplying that by 11 other roots (although you get to disqualify quite a few because of conflicting chord tones), there's a lot to work with, so basically you take a few that you like and use it over a tune. Brad liked Maj7b5 chords, and those are the ones he uses mainly as superimposed sounds. I like heavy dissonances when I play, so I like things that result in like, Maj7#5s, Min6 chords, altered dominants, so that's what I've looked into when figuring out what I want to superimpose. But the idea is to learn one, and apply it on a tune. Take a good tune that has many different chord qualities and awkward resolutions, Stella is always a great choice, or Embraceable You, and apply the certain chords you want to superimpose at all the spots you run into it, try different voicing types and do it in different keys.

There's really nothing special about this, it's like when you first learned to play basic chords. You apply it once you start practicing it.

[dingusmingus]

Thanks Jtizzle for that helpful reply. The last month or so, I've actually been going back over all the meat-and-potatoes drop 2 voices on all string sets in all inversions. I haven't done much with superimposition, but that would be a good next step.

Like you say, you have to use any of these ideas over tunes to make them stick. I was just intrigued by the Goodrick voice-leading concept because it uses a string of one kind progression (say up a second) through a whole key. So, figuring out how to use that in a tune takes a little doing, depending on the tune I guess.

I'll check out those Monder lessons.

[wolflen]

for me--just some thoughts on some of the issues this tread touched on--

1 - you do get what you pay for

2 - nothing is free

3 - the most expensive way to acquire something--is to steal it

we pay with our time and energy learning the art of jazz (and music in general) to get back the beauty and mystery of music that we can share with others and perhaps touch their lives in some way that music has touched ours


ted greens' web site has lots of chord studies..there is no charge..but they will accept donations via paypal..

to me the difference between no charge and free-

no charge-there IS a cost involved but we are not going to charge you for it..

free..there was no cost in the creation of (the product, service) ..so you may have/use it - (ever find a product like that? see #2-we pay directly or indirectly- we can't cheat the universe)

[ah.clem]

What am I missing? It eh6794 says get a free scribd account. But this page allows for a free month and then $8.95 per month afterwards.

Would you go into a bookshop (any bookshop, new, used, out of print) and just take a book off the shelf, drop it in your bag and wave bye to the clerk at the register as you head out the door? That's what you may be doing at Scribd. In my opinion, they don't seem to care much about where their content comes from and only seem to take down copyrighted materials when sued. Of course this is just what I have read about them as a company. Personally, in the past, I had seen many music books on their site that were in print and being sold by legitimate vendors; I haven't looked on their site for years as it's just too oogie for me. I'm not interested in supporting them financially. It's too sketchy and really has the potential to hurt authors. If you don't care about that stuff, then go for it, I guess. Make someone rich off other people's work.

[gratay]

I am working through the first Ben Monder lesson at the moment and am finding it really thorough as far as chords and inversions go. Not really a lesson on comping as such. Theres a lot of information to work on for a very long time.

I am looking into video lessons specific to comping as well and I think after I've spent a fair bit more time on this Monder stuff I was looking yesterday at some possibilities,.... like Steve Herberman's lessons look good??? anyone tried these?

[jlart]

To put the icing on the cake, awhile back I found this channel https://www.youtube.com/user/tstrahle/videos on YT. Tom Strahle details all in this channel, aside from being a talented all around musician, he has a pretty impressive curriculum, in the music industry.

The great part about this is that he shares his knowledge all for FREE!! I think of him as a Reg type of guy, shares knowledge without restrains. By the way Reg has also and impressive array of good material on his channel Free also .


And for the cross subject matter there is an immutable law of the universe "Don't do to others what you don't want done unto you" That in itself explains it all.

Take care guys.

[mrblues]

I am going to finish the conservatory in 1 month. AFter that, I know what to do, and this is there inside my "wanna be pocket" for my guitar knowledge.

I am thinking about using drop2s and drop3s to practice 2-5-1s and 3-6-2-5-1s in every key, and going to start them from 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th.

I think if i have that, I will be a bit nearer to my goal. Hope this helped You too.

[Double V]

I was just intrigued by the Goodrick voice-leading concept because it uses a string of one kind progression (say up a second) through a whole key. So, figuring out how to use that in a tune takes a little doing, depending on the tune I guess.

I'll check out those Monder lessons.

The two part Monder video lesson is cool, but I wouldn't say that he talks at length about Goodrick cyclyes if thats what you're looking for.

There is a fantastic thread started by TruthHertz in the Theory section that is all about the Goodrick Almanacs: Anybody use the Goodchord Voice Leading Books?

Its a long one but worth jumping in if you're looking for Goodrick Alamanac material.

[joe2758]

lots of good advice here already. i'll just add rich severson's 99centguitarlessons.com is a great resource for instructional comping material (or jazz guitar material in general). Also, I much prefer video lessons to books as it's closer to having an actual teacher.

did anyone mention joe pass chord book? I got a lot out of that, it does require a good amount of self-directed learning though.

Whatever your plan for learning new grips, be sure to stretch your imagination with what you're actually playing with those voices, e.g. substitutions, rhythms, feel, adding or subtracting notes to voicings you already know, approaching chromatically etc...

a quick example would be to take a 4 note 7th chord on the top 4 strings. play the top 3 strings of that voicing a half step below the chord, play the same notes but now in position a half step higher, play the bottom 3 notes of the voicing a half step below the chord, then the bottom 3 notes of the voicing in position. You can do the same thing approaching from a half step higher. Or a hald step above then a half step below. Or any combination. experiment, that's the fun part. That's a good amount of movement and just 1 voicing.

just sharing some of what i have learned )