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There are so many ways to learn a piece of music when we're working from standard notation. There are some who have been fluent in reading music that they can put it into their ear and fingers almost as second nature. There are some on the other end of the spectrum that find it so foreign a concept that if it's not TAB, they just don't learn it.
My question to the many of us along this long spectrum: If you're going to the effort to really learn a piece, a piece with a significant amount of harmonic content to it (chord melody or Bach), what's your process for internalizing the movement of voices and visualizing harmony? Is it very different from how you "see" the fingerboard when you're improvising?
And more to the point, How helpful would you find it to have visual content, like a chord grid (not TAB which has a numerical but not visual approach)?
I found the Mike Eliot books to be extremely helpful in this approach, to see the visual movement of a voice or harmonic movement in terms of the physical fingerboard.
Would having a chord grid reference help in the transition from a notational symbolic system to a kinesthetic/visualization?
Thanks for your feedback.
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04-28-2026 01:34 AM
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Whenever I've learnt a Bach piece my process has firstly been to read through it, making decisions on fingerings. I'll then zoom in on the beginning and any areas that are difficult. Tbh I find Bach quite logical so not too hard to memorise. I've never used one but I can imagine a chord grid being helpful.
Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Yes, playing a Bach piece is usually quite different from the visualisation involved in improvising, which is just one of the refreshing things about it...
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Depends on the Bach?
I got into the two part inventions (on one guitar) and while there is sort of a chord reference going on sometimes I found it useful for getting out of the chord mindset.
Otoh a piece like the prelude bwv999 is very much a grips thing.
As far as jazz things go - again it depends
I think I’m trying to get away from chords conceptually generally? Like play them but not think in those terms if that makes any sense.
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Of course when it comes to baroque music, cats were happily playing polyphonic music from tablature…
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I follow the scale degrees of the bass line
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The sound of music is literally invisible; Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
but is self revealing if you listen; visual
processes for grasping sound of music
are what I would consider inadequate.
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This is so interesting, everyone brings something of their own.
I try to move from the visual to the auditory as soon as possible. For chord melody and solo guitar arrangements I learn the melody alone until I can play it fluently and expressively. Then, consider the harmony but tend to think in terms of minimalizing the notes, including just enough to hint at the harmony with the melody. I also try to keep it “guitaristic” by considering places to use open strings, harmonics, strumming, which can involve transposing it.
So, in that sense I tend to see the fingerboard similarly to when playing ad-lib. This is of course limiting in some ways; it’s not so useful when trying to reproduce what’s visual, and in some sense I’m also haltered by my physical limitations. But to me limitations breed creativity, so rather than remove them I like to use them.
Perhaps it’s the diversity of ways of playing that keeps me coming back to this instrument we love.
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I'm loving that so many diverse, literate, individual and articulate players are a part of this group. Please keep contributing your thoughts and experiences, it's really helpful.
I want to share a little about where this question is coming from, aside from a really informative discussion. I'm in possession of a collection of Mick Goodrick's compositions for fingerstyle guitar. These are roughly 40 pieces that are beautiful performance pieces and because they're so integrally linked with the author of the Almanacs of Voice Leading, they're obviously contrapuntal at times, lyrical at times and always infused with the rich harmonies of a man who made a definitive move towards linear horizontal harmony.
These pieces have a lot to learn from and for many, being confronted with lots of notes on a stick (dense harmonic chords) may find it intimidating. So I'm working with Stelios Mehas and Mick Wright to come up with supporting study notes.
I've found that being able to visualize chord note groupings helps me see the movement from one chordal entity to another.
So I wondered what you guys thought about chord grids ... and functional analysis ... and melodic analysis in their possible role in turning the learning of a piece into a lesson in expanding our own improvisational/compositional process.
Here's a sample of Mick's music. Would there be some things you can think of that could be helpful in internalizing a piece?
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It's a vocabulary you have to learn, be able to hear the chord patterns and get them into muscle memory, Jimmy Wyble gave a course on it at GTI back in the day, entitled the Art of Two Line Improvisation. I could upload the course syllabus if you're interested. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Yes! Do share that. Anybody who's found their own way to a creative space, learned to quantify and control the elements of music is worthy of getting a spotlight. Recently cracked open Ernst Toch's Shaping Forces in Music. So much to think about. Thanks! Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Lovely! New to me, yet delicate and evocative, bringing out the subtle beauty of playing guitar. Thank you, and wishing you all the best in this valuable project! Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Actually, turns out I already shared the Jimmy Wyble course syllabus a couple of months ago, it's here: Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Jimmy Wyble's 100th birthday today
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That’s really lovely Jimmy. Classical guitarists bring such a distinct energy to things.
I don’t quite know what I have to add.
The music sounded largely contrapuntal to me? But that’s my ears. I think I’d need to go through it to know really.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 05-01-2026 at 05:56 PM.
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Typically, it's only sections of a tune where the harmonic flow becomes mysterious. Often, my ears aren't good enough to figure this stuff out perfectly from a recording. That's bad, but I'm not going to give up music. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
So, I'm often working from the chart, as well as the recording, and the challenge is to figure out why/how the written notation makes musical sense. As in, which notes are staying the same and which ones are moving? Not just for one chord change, but for the entire mysterious sequence. Typically, a tune sounds good because there is something sensible about the flow of the harmony. But, the written notation, especially chord symbols, may obscure it. And, then, there's the issue of figuring out which notes, that you can actually play, are needed to sketch the harmony.
So, sometimes, it's sitting down with the chart, without the guitar in hand, and trying to find the part you can actually play that brings the composer's intention to light.
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Yeah, it's a mysterious process, translating a composer's imagination and intention from one person to another. I've struggled with this problem myself and though I can read pretty well and know lots of pieces, it's always been in spite of the medium and not because of it.
I'm just trying to find out how these issues present themselves to others, particularly improvisors, particularly improvisors who want insights into how to relate to the instrument to unlock the grace and flow of a piece embedded in a bunch of dots and lines.
I really hope I can present the most elegant and helpful notation options in presenting Mick's music to the player.
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Since I read well, I start reading the music and if it is a tune, I add small chords. I am very conscious of time, so I want the melody in ingrain in my sense of rhythm the tune has. I don't learn Bach pieces as such, but I would simply keep reading over it internalizing the sound and time. Then I move around the fingerboard into different places to play the tune. Move over complete positions and then transpose the melody up and down and octave. Frankly for me it is simply going over and over the piece until it is down. Nothing magic or even out of the ordinary just the time and practice to get it correct. That brings be to the most important point that if I make a mistake I stop and correct it right there or it becomes ingrained in the muscles.
I don't think I contributed anything to the thread the question seemed like it was going other places but not sure.
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I don't know how relevant this is, but a relative straightforward example is this transcription I've made of the first sections of an Antoine Boyer arrangement of Waltz for Debby.
The harmony is relatively straightforward, but it maps onto an approach I would also tend to use for things like Bach lute suites. So I have the notes Antoine plays, but also a simple two part framework of the outer voices. The middle voices and 'filler' material is then added in.
I've put the chords in, because this is a jazz standard, but really mostly I am thinking in terms of intervals up from the bass. So instead of A7/G D7/F# G7/F C7/E I would be thinking of the intervals up from the bassline/lowest voice, which I believe works well for the guitar fretboard. So it's 6 #4 2, 6 b5 3 going down chromatically etc
It's also how I would go about making an arrangement like this myself. I don't think this is very unusual as an approach for solo guitar arrangement. Martin Taylor and Jonathan Kreisberg appear to use this same basic approach. I would be astonished if Boyer didn't, especially given the stuff he demonstrated in the Rick Beato interview.
Wouldn't work for everything? There's something very classical about the harmony of WfD, reminds me of Chopin, which I think is intentional. Antoine doesn't reharmonise this section of the tune. But then I tend to view the Goodrick cycles more contrapuntally than chordally. But I avoid four voice harmony in general. As I say I'm trying to get away from chordal thinking in general, and towards a more polyphonic approach which has been a long term goal. Trying to get away from grips and grip thinking.
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