How do you work on chords and harmony?

[pamosmusic]

Quoting from Julian Lage's article above:

"As jazz guitarists, there are certain prerequisites we have to master in order to begin developing our personal relationship to the music. We need to understand the physical mechanics of how to play the guitar, gain an intimate knowledge of the fretboard, and acquire a firm understanding of scales, harmony, rhythm, and improvisation. "

It's easy to overlook this statement. When it comes to jazz, "Gaining an intimate knowledge of the fretboard" I think amounts to instantly knowing what a given note on the fretboard is in relation to the chord in the moment. George Benson likened that to fretboard being lit up with each chord. Joe Pass said something similar also I believe.

I've made big strides towards this goal in the last couple of years with consistent work. The closer I get to that goal, the easier everything becomes. I think you're also more likely to learn things the right way, without the (subconscious) shortcuts if you can reduce the mental overhead of seeing everything in the context of the chord in the moment.

Ah that’s so interesting. I hadn’t really given that “lighting up” idea a ton of thought until I had a couple students who were coming over from other instruments (two horn players and a singer) who kept telling me they didn’t understand some triads we were working on it. I’d explain it and they’d say “I know” and I’d explain the fingering and they’d say “I know.” And I’d be like … “well it sounds like you get it.”

And all three would respond that it was just frustrating that they didn’t know what all the notes were when they played a chord. And I had to think about it for a second, but basically they felt like they were cheating or taking a shortcut because they were finding a chord by the shape. And I had to explain to them that that’s just kind of how guitar works. It’s such a handily visual-tactile instrument that it would be a little odd to try *not* to identify notes and chord tones and intervals in that sort of visual way.

Super interesting.

[Tal_175]

And all three would respond that it was just frustrating that they didn’t know what all the notes were when they played a chord. And I had to think about it for a second, but basically they felt like they were cheating or taking a shortcut because they were finding a chord by the shape. And I had to explain to them that that’s just kind of how guitar works. It’s such a handily visual-tactile instrument that it would be a little odd to try *not* to identify notes and chord tones and intervals in that sort of visual way.

Super interesting.

For a while I was trying to do both. I know the notes on the fretboard and I can fairly quickly tell the notes in any chord, in any key. So it seemed to me like I had to maintain both views of the fretboard with equal emphasis at least in the practice room. But that was a huge overhead. A major breakthrough happened in my development when I realized that I only needed to focus on the intervallic/visual relationships. The note names are still useful of course but in a secondary capacity.

[Tal_175]

I also think there is a big pedagogical difference between learning the fretboard by shapes versus intervals as primary visual references. For example I find juggling triad inversion shapes and applying transformations to them (aka Pat Martino) very gimmicky. It's a method that accepts a low ceiling from the get go. At least that was my experience. (I'm not saying Pat Martino has had a low ceiling BTW, I'm fairly certain that his fretboard horizon stretched way further than his simple teaching tools).

There is nothing wrong with seeing inversions as a set of horizontally laid out shapes if one doesn't sacrifice intervallic relationships of individual voices with the chord. Otherwise it just becomes a shortcut, IMO.

Of course everybody learns differently but there is a difference between shapes vs intervals as primary references. We all learn the shapes automatically by repetition. Intervals take deliberate effort to learn but they open the door to a higher resolution understanding of the fretboard.