The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Been an interesting thread this, although I feel that it has branched out into a lot of separate issues. Bottom line is do what you want. You can be a great jazz player whether you can read or not. If you become musically literate, however, this can open many doors and is arguably an essential requisite if you want to be in a working jazz band (I know, I've been there) and there are a lot of experienced professionals on this site who will say the same. If you are capable of learning to read music then I would only encourage you to do so. I don't like playing numbers 'cold' although had to do this when playing with other musicians. In jazz, unlike classical, the lead sheet is there to give you only the outline to work with and I was always told off by my tutor if I simply played what was written.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #52

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    <rant>
    Wes and Django prove that you don't have to be able to read, and, since the goal of the majority of the players on this forum (and perhaps the majority of amateurs) seems to be to be able to play standards from the real book and improvise in a quasi bebop vein, I agree with the idea that reading skills are unnecessary to reach that goal. All you need is a good ear and about a year's worth of practice, and you're good to go. There's no need to study the music deeply nor to work hard at it. You don't need to know any theory either, just the major scale, melodic minor scale, six chord grips, 20 standards, and 3 or 4 II-V-I licks will get you up and gigging at your local restaurant.

    I have run across a few players who stick with this approach and get really good. The vast majority don't, however, and typically are unaware of how poor their playing is, and how bad their "ear" is. And even those that are relatively good are rarely that fun to play with because they can't do much outside their comfort zone. Most of them don't know that many tunes, or need a lead sheet for every tune they play. I can't just lay a new tune on them without a bunch of wasted time rehearsing it. Usually after the third tune I've heard all their licks. They tend to not interact much with the band, they do their thing and the rest of the band might as well be an Abersold backing track. Pick up gigs with such folks are embarrassing because you have to spell out arrangements between every tune. If you've been to jam sessions you know just what I mean.

    Reading is just one skill of many that make a accomplished musician. Unlike groove, interaction, phrasing, dynamics, etc which are hard to get good at, especially off the bandstand, Reading is a relatively straightforward skill to learn: you just practice it and you get better. My belief, based on looking back at what I did wrong in the path I took, is that someone with high goals in this music can save themselves a lot of aggravation down the line keeping reading as one of their basic practice ingredients for a long time (five years?) after they start their jazz guitar path. I spent 6 months reading a few hours a day when I was 19, another six months when I was 22, and only read sporadically for the next 32 years. Although I got good enough to play in a few incredible situations, I wish I had continued for a couple more years at the very beginning: I would have saved myself a lot of stress, and probably would be a much better player now. I just spent the last three months practicing reading intensely, and I'm amazed at how much I improved, even with a semi-functional 53 year old brain. And my jazz skills (such as they are) have not suffered in the meantime, I've been playing as well as I usually do in gigs and rehearsals. And I'm not suggesting reading is more important than other skills, I'm just surprised when people who otherwise seem to understand the standards of playing jazz carve out an exception for reading, like it's so incredibly hard and so rarely useful. If you are gigging every night with incredible players and hold a day job, like Wes did, reading is probably a waste of your time. If you can find a couple of hours a week to read jazz guitar forums, you have enough time to become a reasonable reader. I wish someone had made that clear to me 30 years ago, hence this rant. Some other time I'll rant about how the Real book is the worst thing to happen to jazz and you should all throw yours away.....
    </rant>
    Last edited by pkirk; 01-14-2015 at 01:44 PM.

  4. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by pkirk
    I have run across a few players who stick with this approach and get really good. The vast majority don't, however, and typically are unaware of how poor their playing is, and how bad their "ear" is. And even those that are relatively good are rarely that fun to play with because they can't do much outside their comfort zone. Most of them don't know that many tunes, or need a lead sheet for every tune they play. I can't just lay a new tune on them without a bunch of wasted time rehearsing it. Usually after the third tune I've heard all their licks. They tend to not interact much with the band, they do their thing and the rest of the band might as well be an Abersold backing track. Pick up gigs with such folks are embarrassing because you have to spell out arrangements between every tune. If you've been to jam sessions you know just what I mean.
    I don't like to play the "wes didn't read music" card to justify the fact that I'm not working on it, because it would be just plain stupid to compare myself to him.

    I don't think the players you are talking about are mediocre jazz musicians because they can't read. Again, I just can't see the link between the ability to sight read and musicianship. I think people who can't read are statistically worse than those who can read, simply because the latter are generally more serious about music in general. Other than that, there is no direct link between your sight reading abilities and the artistic value of your playing.

    I do think that it's crucial to know how to read and write music, because it gives you a solid understanding of what's going on rhythmically and harmonically. But being able to sight read a piece of music on the spot ? I don't see the point unless you regularly *have* to do that and there's no way around it. Working on that skill will just make you better at it, but it will not make you a better jazz player.

    These are just my current feelings on the topic... I may be wrong !

  5. #54

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    I am a very very slow reader .... painfully slow

    however I keep doing it and I'm getting faster

    I'm painfully slow now instead of glacial

    result !

    PS I don't understand how being able to read well/sight read will help a player
    to understand the underlying harmony though ..............

  6. #55

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    Quote Originally Posted by pingu
    PS I don't understand how being able to read well/sight read will help a player
    to understand the underlying harmony though ..............
    Well, it's certainly not the only way to come to understand harmony, but it can be a useful tool to getting there. As I posted earlier, there are many harmony treatises that are written in conventional notation. Good luck learning anything from them if you can't read music. Case in point: Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book (http://tinyurl.com/ppz5u9m). All the examples are written in standard notation. I would love to learn from this book, but I get bogged down just trying to play the starting point/voicing before I can start making the harmonic moves to see his point.

    YMMV but, for my money, I'm learning to read!

  7. #56

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    I would not get too hung up on 'sight' reading versus reading notation skills in general. I would argue, however, that improving your reading skills is at the very least complimentary to one's overall musicianship, and that reading becomes part of the fabric of your overall musical skill set.

    Chord construction is based upon intervals. Notation is a visual representation of that relationship as well as information imparted regarding rhythm and duration of notes. Not necessary, but it does help understand intervals, chords, the fret board.... If you do not appreciate that level of sophistication, than ignore it. Free country....well, at least it used to be.
    Last edited by targuit; 01-14-2015 at 05:07 PM.

  8. #57

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    I agree with Paul Kirk. It's easy for a guitar player to rationalize not reading, but there's a huge payoff to putting the time in. You don't need to be a strong reader for jam session type situations where tunes come from the standard repertoire and there's always someone else to cover the melody if you don't know it. You also don't need to be a strong reader to play with a regular group where you know the tunes to be played ahead of time (keep in mind that Wes may not have been a sight reader but he came up playing with his brothers for many years and probably had a chance to learn a lot of tunes from them).

    Beyond those paths, one of the tried and true ways to becoming a better player is to play in small groups with more experienced, accomplished players. If you're lucky enough to be able do that, you'll often find that those players want to play things that are new and challenging to them, and that may mean calling tunes on the spot, picking them at random or playing compositions that people bring in. Calling chestnuts like "Autumn Leaves", "There Will Never Be Another You" or "Blue Bossa" can be a major buzzkill in this type of situation. You don't have to be a Broadway show reader that nails everything on the first pass, but if you're not even in the game, you're bringing the level of the group down, and if someone else has got to cover the melody, what's the point of having you there? The smaller the group, the more painfully obvious it becomes when you can't handle new material without practicing it in advance.

    The bottom line of what I'm saying is this: It's probably true that reading doesn't make you a better improvisor, but it can be the ticket that allows you to play with better musicians, and THAT will definitely make you a better player in every sense.

  9. #58

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    It also is one (but not the only) vehicle for mastering the fretboard.

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by Professor Jones
    I Other than that, there is no direct link between your sight reading abilities and the artistic value of your playing.
    I agree with you on this. (But I've never been interested in the artistic value, if any, of my own playing. I figure such value has to do with how others receive it, and in any case I'm too close to my own playing to make any valid judgement about it).


    I don't agree with the distinction between "reading" and "sight reading", but think of it as a matter of degree, so a more precise question might be "at what point are you a good enough sight reader to be able to play in any of the contexts you aspire to?" In my experience, if you aspire to play with the best players in your area and want to explore things other than bebop/hardbop streams in jazz, being a pretty good reader is important, given that everyone else in the band will be. How important was never clear to me for when I started, I figured being able to comp and improvise reasonably well was 99% of it, Now I realize that there is a lot more.

    I also don't see how reading is *not* an aspect of musicianship. I suppose that's a question of terminology, but I always understood it to be a central part of it. Another aspect of musicianship is being able to play comfortably in odd meter. It's critical for where jazz has headed recently, but irrelevant for bebop/standards playing. So I'd expect pushback if I were to argue for woodshedding in 5,7, or mixed meter etc a whole lot. I get asked to to a lot of it in some of my musical contexts, and for similar reasons, I wish I had spent more time with it early on.

  11. #60

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    Of course, sight reading is a musician's skill. But in the end, what matters the most is what we hear when the musician is playing, and what he or she has to say (this is what I had in mind when I talked about muscisianship). That to me, is the most important thing to work on : to always add new motifs/concepts/licks... to your bag, so you can express yourself freely and in an exciting way. That alone, takes a great deal of work and dedication, and will have a direct effect on your artistic skills.

  12. #61

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    It is strange that all of the sax players, trumpet players, piano players and bass players I have had the honour and pleasure of playing with are good readers. it always seems like it is the guitarist that has this gap in their musical education. I wonder if that is as a result of the fact that so many guitarists are self taught and, for some of the reasons articulated in this thread, do not consider it necessary to become musically literate.

    I don't want to labour this subject but I am passionate about us jazz guitarists keeping up with the other musicians and not being viewed as the musically illiterate underdog. I think it is also worth explaining that the lead sheets provide only the framework (melody and chords) for the player to improvise and comp around and NOT to simply repeat verbatim. This is a point which I feel might not be immediately obvious to aspiring or novice players.

    Anyway, enough said. In reality, I have never met a jazz musician who couldn't read and I don't know of a single jazz band or orchestra who would entertain the idea of a musician that couldn't read music. I have no point to prove here, I've been playing a long time so have learned these things and they are a reality.

    I suppose if a player wants to sit alone and memorise a few tunes in his or her bedroom then fine, I'm sure there are many competent players who can do that. If however, guitarists want to better themselves then get stuck into some reading, there isn't a single reader out there who would say that it was a waste of time learning (I hope!).

  13. #62

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    Something that's playing on my mind. A lot of good advice here.

  14. #63

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    I took a glance at that link, Airborne - and it looks like the creator of the site did a good job.

    I learned reading skills via singing in the choir from grade school on and especially from classical guitar lessons for a few years from the age of eleven or twelve. Oh, and a subsequent forty years or so of practice essentially daily.

    Maybe we are trying to reinvent the wheel. Take some classical guitar lessons for six months or pick up a Christopher Parkening classical guitar method book. Some Sor etudes. Elizabethan lute music for guitar. You end up adding some beautiful music to your repertoire. Just a suggestion but straightforward and not out of the realm of possibility.

    Rome was not built in a day. Reading takes time, patience, and a little dedication. But the more you read, the better you get. It's that simple.

    Jay

  15. #64

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    Every day, public schools are filled with NORMAL kids in school band learning sight reading skills that will surpass most of us guitarists by the time they are 13 years old. By the time they are done with high school, they are veterans. This is why horn players, pianists, are ready to tackle some heavy shit when they're young adults. It's just a different perspective on what some consider essential music skills. Sight reading can help to make you an "insider", if that's where you want to go. If not, do what makes you happy. Most virtuosos in many other popular genres of music don't feel a lack of sight reading skills is a handicap at all.

  16. #65

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    Quote Originally Posted by CP40Carl
    It is strange that all of the sax players, trumpet players, piano players and bass players I have had the honour and pleasure of playing with are good readers. it always seems like it is the guitarist that has this gap in their musical education. I wonder if that is as a result of the fact that so many guitarists are self taught and, for some of the reasons articulated in this thread, do not consider it necessary to become musically literate.

    I don't want to labour this subject but I am passionate about us jazz guitarists keeping up with the other musicians and not being viewed as the musically illiterate underdog. I think it is also worth explaining that the lead sheets provide only the framework (melody and chords) for the player to improvise and comp around and NOT to simply repeat verbatim. This is a point which I feel might not be immediately obvious to aspiring or novice players.

    Anyway, enough said. In reality, I have never met a jazz musician who couldn't read and I don't know of a single jazz band or orchestra who would entertain the idea of a musician that couldn't read music. I have no point to prove here, I've been playing a long time so have learned these things and they are a reality.

    I suppose if a player wants to sit alone and memorise a few tunes in his or her bedroom then fine, I'm sure there are many competent players who can do that. If however, guitarists want to better themselves then get stuck into some reading, there isn't a single reader out there who would say that it was a waste of time learning (I hope!).
    Couldn't agree more. There's a reason for the "guitarists can't read" jokes.

  17. #66

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    This forum is cool, it's always fun to watch basic musicianship be debated by guitar players... who generally don't have clue what that actually is.

    One of my first post 4 or 5 years ago was about why I was even on this forum... the main reason was to help guitarist become better musicians.... and as Broyale said above... the jokes about guitarist around the county... classic is how to make a guitarist quit noodling... put a sheet of music in from of him/her.

    Like I've said... the actual reading the notation usually isn't the problem, it's being able to play what's actually notated. Most guitarist don't know their fretboard, don't know the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic patterns... let alone understand the articulations, dynamics, ornaments, repetition signs.

    And what is even more important with being able to play jazz... it to understand what's not actually notated on the charts... what the notation implies.

    Somewhat the quote...
    To at least somewhat master the proper written language is the minimum obligation of aspiring musicians to his/her art.

  18. #67

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    I look at it this way - what are your aspirations? If you are a fine jazz guitarist who cannot read music but you are Django reincarnate, don't fret! If you want to learn the musical language as expressed in notation, study. Can learning to read music notation enhance your musicianship? Is this debatable? I would have to answer affirmatively. But the choice to learn notation or not is the individual's to make for what works for them.

    As to Reg's point about playing what you read or write for that matter, I think that goes with the territory. In other words, although I am not a classically trained pianist, I can play, and I do not tend to write or compose what I cannot play. With the guitar as well as piano, I use the notation as my framework harmonically and melodically for improvisation.

    I think too often people set this issue up as "either/or". Fact is that knowing how to read will not automatically make you a Wes Montgomery on the guitar, but it might help pay the bills.

    Speaking of which, I'm going to start a thread about making money with (jazz) music....stop laughing....

    Jay
    Last edited by targuit; 01-15-2015 at 11:05 AM.

  19. #68

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    I think the bottom line is that everyone is going to have relative strengths and weaknesses especially as a non-pro. If you came to guitar and jazz later in life and you have a busy non-music day-job, not to mention perhaps kids, time allocation is critically important. You have to decide how to allocate your time to achieve your musical goals. If you only ever spend at most 5% of your music playing time sight reading, then question whether it's worth spending much more than 5% of your practice time on it (I still spend about 10% of my practice time on it anyway since there are technique/time/ relaxation elements to my reading time too).

  20. #69

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    I think you may be right. I have been avoiding sight reading and trying every way possible to get around this, and after many years of playing, I have to admit this is the hard way. I have a fundamental understanding of music theory as far as applying the right scales to chord changes but it's the melodies or the "Head" of jazz tunes that slow me down. I have to learn them by ear and that tales time and then I forget them easily because I can't write them down. When I try to stop and learn to read and write music it makes me want to quit and smash my guitar, here lies the problem.

  21. #70

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    Quote Originally Posted by Reg
    This forum is cool, it's always fun to watch basic musicianship be debated by guitar players... who generally don't have clue what that actually is.

    ...

    Like I've said... the actual reading the notation usually isn't the problem, it's being able to play what's actually notated. Most guitarist don't know their fretboard, don't know the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic patterns... let alone understand the articulations, dynamics, ornaments, repetition signs.

    And what is even more important with being able to play jazz... it to understand what's not actually notated on the charts... what the notation implies.

    Somewhat the quote...
    To at least somewhat master the proper written language is the minimum obligation of aspiring musicians to his/her art.
    +1 and this thread also reminds me of a recent discussion we all had debating the value of studying 'classical guitar'...

    How can learning more about the language of music be bad?

  22. #71

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin M
    I think you may be right. I have been avoiding sight reading and trying every way possible to get around this, and after many years of playing, I have to admit this is the hard way. I have a fundamental understanding of music theory as far as applying the right scales to chord changes but it's the melodies or the "Head" of jazz tunes that slow me down. I have to learn them by ear and that tales time and then I forget them easily because I can't write them down. When I try to stop and learn to read and write music it makes me want to quit and smash my guitar, here lies the problem.
    Then that's the thing to practise. As much as you can bear. If it's easy it's not worth practising.

    I find it makes it easier to remember if I avoid going near the guitar until I can sing the whole thing through confidently. If I try to play things on the guitar before then, I forget what I was trying to do.

  23. #72
    Takes a great deal of patience to learn to read music , as an adult, who already knows music. I think what cosmic is saying about schoolkids learning to read is a big part of it. The most important thing that those kids do is work on reading in a very gradual graded method. Start with a very basic simple level and gradually build.

    a lot of times there's advice here to just get a real book or clarinet books or whatever and start reading. That's great if you're at some kind of basic level. But like the post that talked about reading the Mel bay book and starting over completely, that may be the quickest way to the end point If you don't have the basics.

    If reading is always painfully slow and pisses you off every time you do it, you're probably working at to high-level. You'd probably have more success and get there faster in the long run by working a few levels down and working your way back up. Less anger and irritation. It just takes a lot of patience as an adult who already knows what it's supposed to sound like and doesn't want to wait that long.

    I'm currently spending A good bit of time working with a group of young students in reading on the guitar . This past week I found myself telling a student that the quickest way to learn the play page 37 was to go back about five pages to a reference point where he was comfortable. You're wasting your own time working on page 37 if you're struggling with page 25.

    If you're not down with the basic Mel bay level, then reading out of a real book is going to piss you off. If you want to learn to play out of a real book, you may get farther in the year of reading Mel bay than you would in a year spent struggling to read out of a real book, if the basics are what is needed.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 01-23-2015 at 12:10 AM.

  24. #73

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    One way to learn to read music notation is to get some music notation software like Sibelius. With an inexpensive keyboard synth you can link via USP to the computer and input notes. If you have any keyboard awareness, you can bang out the melody to nursery rhymes or other songs that you know well. The correlation of the notes on the piano or synth keyboard and the computer screen will be totally helpful.

    I learned to read initially in grade school in the school choir, followed by classical lessons. Yes, youth is a great time to learn. But if the bloom is off the rose, so to speak, do not despair. I wish I had today's tools back in the day.

    If there is a strong need overall for a course to kick start learning to read and write notation, please let me know. I would like to create teaching material based on learning "what you already know" in terms of melody and harmony expressed in notation.

    There is no reason under the sun that guitarists should be wearing the 'dunce cap' in a group of musicians.

    Jay

  25. #74

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    Jay,

    to read and to sight-read are very different things.
    To learn to sight-read involves much more other skills than just reading.

  26. #75

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    As someone who reads notation daily for over fifty years, I would agree with you, Johah, but sight-reading is a more evolved version of reading. Sight reading has varied degrees of difficulty, depending on the material. Try sight reading Henze's music for guitar- good luck. Even for someone with years of experience.

    Before you can run you walk and before that you crawl.
    Last edited by targuit; 01-23-2015 at 02:04 AM.