Four tools to learn all the chords

[ModesSchmodes]

If you never do a minute of systematic fretboard work like this it doesn’t mean you won’t play jazz well. Plenty of great players never worked on this sort of stuff

OTOH doing 15m of this a day for a few years will give long term knowledge and freedom of the instrument. I can speak from my own experience of working on this type of stuff for around a decade (Nb I was already a working player before I started this). It gets easier!

It’s a bit like doing strength training and working on general fitness to improve one’s ability to play team sports I suppose.

That's a good analogy! I mean honestly, in the end everything we're discussing here and most of what's written in all those books we like to collect and never get around to reading, are tools. Tools to give us the ability to express our ideas in a playing situation. Some people might need more of those tools to express themselves, others don't.

In keeping with your analogy, I'm reminded of a video of a professional swimmer I saw a long time ago: He said that people who are really good at swimming do not have those perfect broad-shouldered upper bodies because they swim, but they swim because they have those perfect broad-shouldered upper bodies, because they found that swimming at a higher level came easier to them than others.

[Christian Miller]

Well none of this comes remotely naturally to me. A few minutes a day builds up though…

[AllanAllen]

The secret to being great at guitar is really as simple as don't stop practicing.

[StringNavigator]

It's quite a long video, but Joe Diorio talks about this a lot. Funny enough he ALSO recommends the exercise Christian's video is about.

Perhaps Christian can take a listen to a Herb Ellis or Joe Pass video and teach us more.

Joe's got a sense of humour.
Joe Diorio: "You gotta have an act. It's music business...!"

I've always viewed improvisation in this way. It can happen, but it's really regurgitation. We can mix and match parts and arrive at something, but it's not a gift out of thin air. Improvising grew from the idea that classical musicians read their parts. But improv sounds like memorised parts reheated. Some pattern tricks to mindlessly blast out when seeking applause... Composition completed days before a performance cannot be called improvisation.

Maybe it is Show-Biz. Look at me! I'm an improviser... But most of it is forgettable. Especially guitar, which has become a hot-bed of fake improv. I listen often to old recordings by Coleman Hawkins, and every line is a keeper. Every line comes from his personal repertoire of lines based on a sequence of chord changes. It's how he approached and practiced and composed his response and version or variation of that Broadway melody. It also comes out of a tradition. I'd rather listen to that than a barge-load of improvisers...

And as JD demonstrated in the video, tricks... (I enjoyed the video on many levels.)
Now, many have parlayed the act into money and fame. And more power to them. But I pity the followers and believers who think that Bird and others simply pulled notes out of a magic hat.
Practice! Practice! Practice! No life... Career dedication. All the greats practiced intensely.

The melody already exists. Just play it. It was probably a tune from a Broadway Show written 70 years ago. They weren't written for JG. JG's don't own them. They're not improvised. They are relics from a time when men and women danced together and they were written for men and women to see themselves in a romantic, misty "mirror". That all died around the time they killed JFK and monopolised the media.

Just play the melody and arrange the harmonies. Take your time - there's no shortcuts. Music is called an art for a reason. But it can also be a business, as JD says, however there's no money in it for millions and millions of guitar owners. Anyone calling themselves an improviser and selling books is more an imposter making money off "student" guitarists who want it all handed to them.

The closest I see to improvisation today is what's occurring in Paris, France. It's starting to look like a Sorist-Run American city - or Toronto...

::

[Christian Miller]

Perhaps Christian can take a listen to a Herb Ellis or Joe Pass video and teach us more.

Joe's got a sense of humour.
Joe Diorio: "You gotta have an act. It's music business...!"

I've always viewed improvisation in this way. It can happen, but it's really regurgitation. We can mix and match parts and arrive at something, but it's not a gift out of thin air. Improvising grew from the idea that classical musicians read their parts. But improv sounds like memorised parts reheated. Some pattern tricks to mindlessly blast out when seeking applause... Composition completed days before a performance cannot be called improvisation.

Maybe it is Show-Biz. Look at me! I'm an improviser... But most of it is forgettable. Especially guitar, which has become a hot-bed of fake improv. I listen often to old recordings by Coleman Hawkins, and every line is a keeper. Every line comes from his personal repertoire of lines based on a sequence of chord changes. It's how he approached and practiced and composed his response and version or variation of that Broadway melody. It also comes out of a tradition. I'd rather listen to that than a barge-load of improvisers...

And as JD demonstrated in the video, tricks... (I enjoyed the video on many levels.)
Now, many have parlayed the act into money and fame. And more power to them. But I pity the followers and believers who think that Bird and others simply pulled notes out of a magic hat.
Practice! Practice! Practice! No life... Career dedication. All the greats practiced intensely.

The melody already exists. Just play it. It was probably a tune from a Broadway Show written 70 years ago. They weren't written for JG. JG's don't own them. They're not improvised. They are relics from a time when men and women danced together and they were written for men and women to see themselves in a romantic, misty "mirror". That all died around the time they killed JFK and monopolised the media.

Just play the melody and arrange the harmonies. Take your time - there's no shortcuts. Music is called an art for a reason. But it can also be a business, as JD says, however there's no money in it for millions and millions of guitar owners. Anyone calling themselves an improviser and selling books is more an imposter making money off "student" guitarists who want it all handed to them.

The closest I see to improvisation today is what's occurring in Paris, France. It's starting to look like a Sorist-Run American city - or Toronto...

::

im not sure what any of this has to do with my video lol

I suppose Joe Pass is an object lesson in how far you can go with jazz guitar while sticking to essentially very typical chord voicings.

[StringNavigator]

Joe Diorio, master player, master teacher. And an excellent artist, too. He was a force of nature for the guitar.

[StringNavigator]

Gifted...

[emanresu]

Probably get that down first then? Comping can with commonplace grips.

I don’t think a lot of this stuff is of immediate use actually. It’s mostly building capability, flexibility and fretboard knowledge. You can find uses for all of this, but if your aim is to functional as a jazz player there’s more important things to master. if your long term aim is to play like Wes Montgomery you can learn the drop 2’s and 3’s as well as the common ‘guitar grips’ and leave it at that - in fact I’d say Wes probably didn’t do this type of work at all going on interviews (he said he’d worked on other things than chords).

Inversions are so important to learn. And shifting to another chord by moving a note or two also.
After learning 7th chord inversions of most common chords (maj,min,dom,m5b7), I was able to memorize certain
classical pieces soooooooo much faster. Hm, like Cavatina or.. pieces that use colorful chords a lot.
I remember once practicing for a lucrative solo gig and needed fancy pieces to justify the cashmoney asked,
quite a few just stayed in the memory even when that wasn't the goal. Was going to sight-read but became easier without the score.

Sadly, using them on the fly to comp freely, they would probably take insane amount of practice. Many of them are not a smart choice(technically) even in medium tempo.

[pamosmusic]

Inversions are so important to learn. And shifting to another chord by moving a note or two also.
After learning 7th chord inversions of most common chords (maj,min,dom,m5b7), I was able to memorize certain
classical pieces soooooooo much faster. Hm, like Cavatina or.. pieces that use colorful chords a lot.
I remember once practicing for a lucrative solo gig and needed fancy pieces to justify the cashmoney asked,
quite a few just stayed in the memory even when that wasn't the goal. Was going to sight-read but became easier without the score.

Sadly, using them on the fly to comp freely, they would probably take insane amount of practice. Many of them are not a smart choice(technically) even in medium tempo.

Whew yeah. Triad inversions in particular are so helpful for learning classical pieces. Those little dudes are evvvvverywhere.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah, I mean this stuff isn’t to do with jazz specifically. It’s just chords. Bachs got em. It’s about mapping the instrument.

What you do with that knowledge is something else…

[Tal_175]

My path to chordal mapping has been to concentrate on the voicings within the middle four strings first. The remaining task is easy as there is effectively only one more string to incorporate since the two remaining strings are both E's.

This is gonna sound controversial but I found that triad inversions have a very low ceiling for developing a robust fretboard visualization. Triad inversions make it easy to find something to play horizontally but moving them around quickly becomes a geometric game that makes it harder to have access to the other harmonic possibilities.

For each chord type, finding voicings for each note on the B string horizontally is something that has been extremely useful for me. But the key is not to memorize voicings just as grips but be aware of how each voice relates to the chord root. Next is to see the other notes around the voicings and how they relate to the chord. Then the barrier between chord grips and line ideas start to disappear. Each chord type becomes like white keys on the fretboard that you build voicings and lines from. Of course voicings are still recalled as grips but the mental afford of switching between the "grip view" and the "white keys view" becomes more manageable in real time, especially in the practice room.

Inversions are useful during the initial steps of creating this horizontal visual reference. But many inversions don't end up becoming essential voicings in the end.

[Reg]

Yea... personally the whole learn the fretboard and all the chords, inversions.... just isn't that difficult to get together.
Really, there are lots of ways to get there... but you do need to get there if that is what you want. Because at some point your going to have to actually make all your developed skills.... produce.

I quit using what I, personally used decades ago. I hate inversions or chord tones voice leading... again personally they suck. You really need great chops and even better rhythmic skills to create music worth listening too.

String Nav... posted some nice info above, but I have to disagree with the point that nothing is new... I discover most of what I play from gigs... yea we use lots of the same shit... but we also find lots of new material from interaction and actually.... get this..... thinking about where the music could go, by listening and using theory... or musical concepts to create new material. I mean at a Big Band last night.... depending of players... I change harmonic references, usually with modal interchange concepts and rhythmic styles. And good soloist have ears, they, for the most part love it and go... Just changing styles will usually lead to new material... I'm not worried about trying something new.... and most good jazz players have skills and can adapt on the fly and it's part of entertaining etc... (and again, I'm nobody, just average working jazz player).

I always push the get your tech. skills together etc... but once you get past the early stages it will become obvious to You what you need to keep working on. Most of the learning tool or methods, tools etc.... are just personal awareness moment markers.