George Benson teacher attacking other teacher calling him idiot, a-hole and loser

[Mick-7]

So, Christian, without delving into Allan's phrasing, which of course is important because it affects how the lines will be fingered, I would normally stick to standard scale fingerings. Will this not work?

Take this line....

Allan Holdsworth line (diminished)

D7b9 GM7

Fingering:
---- 3 - 4 - 2 - 4 - 3 - 1 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3

e|----- 16----------------11------------------------------------------------------|
B|--15----13--15----------------------------12---------------------------------|
G|--------------------14------13--14--10------------10-------11-------------|
D|---------------------------------------------------13-------10--------9--------|
A|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------12---|
E|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Diminished scale:

e|--16--14--13--11----------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------15--13--12------------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------------------------14--13--11--10---------------------------------|
D|--------------------------------------------------------------13--12--10--9-------------|
A|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------12--11---|
E|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

[Christian Miller]

OK so my phone really doesn't like the formatting of the tab. I had to read this on a computer...

So, Christian, without delving into Allan's phrasing, which of course is important because it affects how the lines will be fingered, I would normally stick to standard scale fingerings. Will this not work?

In a word no, not for the fast stuff, 16th triplets at 120 and so on. And even for the slower stuff, it doesn't sound like Allan.

So it depends on how much you want to sound like him. But if you do, the fingerings are really a trip.

Take a look at Allan playing live, obviously, pay attention to how he used his left hand.

Take this line....

Allan Holdsworth line (diminished)

D7b9 GM7

Fingering:
---- 3 - 4 - 2 - 4 - 3 - 1 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3

e|----- 16----------------11------------------------------------------------------|
B|--15----13--15----------------------------12---------------------------------|
G|--------------------14------13--14--10------------10-------11-------------|
D|---------------------------------------------------13-------10--------9--------|
A|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------12---|
E|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Diminished scale:

e|--16--14--13--11----------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------15--13--12------------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------------------------14--13--11--10---------------------------------|
D|--------------------------------------------------------------13--12--10--9-------------|
A|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------12--11---|
E|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

EDIT: OK so the first one is the 4nps septuplet diminished thing. Duh!

The thing is, the 4nps fingering I posted is EASY once you have the shape dialled in. It's not problem to play. More importantly, it seems to reflect the sound of how Allan plays it.

Importantly because of the properties of standard tuning the 3nps dim shape that several of these lines are based on doesn't require any shifts. This means it's very easy to play FAST. That's another reason why I would die on the hill of it being in that position.

Your fingering looks pretty awkward tbh. I wouldn't like to pick that haha. I suppose possibly you can manage those single notes on a string with left hand hammers?

Important - bear in mind that these really aren't crazy stretches they might seem to be. You can play a lot of this stuff with a hand position similar to a 3nps scale at 3rd fret. Allan will consistently choose higher positions for this reason. Frets are closer together innit.

This is where I'm basing my approach for fingerings in the transcriptions, If you want to gain an insight into the mechanics of Allan's technique this video is invaluable. 5 hours of your time well spent if you are a fan.

If you are pushed for time here is my 1 minute YouTube short discussing the diminished pattern fingering. I think it's also discussed in the bowels of the 5hr vid somewhere. (Edit: It’s at 2:38:49 there’s a timestamp in the description.)

Crazy lines with this Holdsworth Diminished shape - YouTube

Attached are the City Nights fingerings. Allan wasn't afraid to stretch.

[pamosmusic]

I definitely shift this way, which I’m 99.9% certain it’s an artifact of all the classical I played.

Then again Holdsworth is not my wheelhouse … I’m out here transcribing Clifford Brown like a chump.

[lawson-stone]

Playing with three fingers comes from a misunderstanding of the mechanics of the hand leading to a lack of hope for the fourth finger. The initial impression is that the fourth finger is weaker, less controllable, and will be generally less usable in the long run. All fingers are unusable in the beginning, and adopting a three fingered approach develops those three leaving the fourth behind - a self fulfilling decision.

The fourth finger is actually the strongest finger. This is easily demonstrated every time you grip a golf club, a baseball bat, a bar for doing chin-ups, grab the handle of a large pot of water on the stove, the handlebars of a bicycle, etc. You may be able to realize this without even doing the physical experiment, just imagining doing it.

The fourth finger has this strength despite being smaller and shorter; the smallness is not a reflection of strength because the muscles are up in the forearm (the bulgiest side at that), and the shorter length gives it mechanical advantage.

The three fingered approach sets the fingers at an angle whereby they point somewhat up the neck which extends their distance from the hand and put the string contact on their pads. That geometry is an additional loss of mechanical advantage, as opposed to placing the fingers parallel to the frets and curled (both less distance), and finger tip contact to the strings (mech. advantage).

The three finger approach is typically accompanied by placing the hand against the back of the neck. The thumb only contact with no hand contact, four fingers parallel and curled, tips contacting provides a freely variable position over the finger board like a rack (hand) and pinion (thumb) system, allowing local hand shifts without thumb shifts. The three fingered grip on the neck works against all this.

There is a stylistic continuum that ranges from sloppy to relaxed to focused to precise. Full control allows one to play anywhere within this continuum as desired (it even takes some skill to play "musically authentic" in the sloppy - relaxed range). Form that incurs losses in strength, reduction in mechanical advantage, and restricts spatial position flexibility and speed may not allow complete expression of some parts of that continuum.

Some may hold that the desired effect is the "tone" of three fingered execution (the sound of the articulation, feel, the balance of its musical possibilities vs its characteristic constraints). I think the method of the right hand sounding the strings (picking, fingers) is the primary source of that, not three or four fingers.

I was just given CM some good-natured ribbing.

[Mick-7]

Your fingering looks pretty awkward tbh. I wouldn't like to pick that haha. I suppose possibly you can manage those single notes on a string with left hand hammers?

You're right, other than the highest note G#, easiest to play the entire thing in the 10th fret position, or you could play it all in the 13th fret position, but you'd end up on the low E string.

Vertical scale positions commonly encompass two standard "CAGED" positions, so a five fret finger span from 1st to 4th finger is the usual, but I wouldn't normally slide with the 4th finger. The diminished scale lends itself to that though with it's whole/half step movements.

Aren't virtuoso's irritating?

Probably best to take this conversation to one of your other threads, thank you.

[noisyneil]

I've been following Farrell's stuff for the past 5 years and although I can't excuse his behaviour, I do understand why he's upset.


Maddox has plagiarised his phrasiology and concepts without coming close to understanding them. It's quite frustrating to watch Peter paint himself into a corner by ceding the moral high ground but Maddox is a hack.

[Christian Miller]

When jazz guitarists get into messy drama… it’s kind of sad cos noone cares


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tomv713]

Calling Chase a hack seems a little harsh.

Guy seems pretty competent at jazz guitar to me?

[Christian Miller]

I think we are stronger united, but a lot of income these days comes from online products, not gigs. Zero sum game vibes?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[noisyneil]

Absolutely. He can clearly play.

I slightly regret using such a loaded term, but it seemed appropriate if you consider the parallel with journalism.

Scratch the surface of a subject and claim some kind of authority. It's damaging in my opinion.

Peter is a fiery character and I disagree with his business model and the tone of his interactions with other educators. That said, what he presents (albeit rather circuitously at times) is a really clear route into the way Benson thinks and plays.

Maddox misrepresents these ideas but Peter should have politely explained the points of difference. It would have been a much more constructive discussion.

[MarkRhodes]

Chase irked me on another subject.
As some have said above, Chase takes things he has learned and makes them easier for other players to grasp. He presents nothing as his own. And this is fair----no one is watching him to learn his method / approach the way one might with Peter Ferrell (-who learned what Benson does and teaches 'the Benson method', with Benson's imprimatur).

Enter "the secret of two chords." Whatever one thinks of this teaching, the phrase is used in published material by Peter Ferrell and Chase borrowed it without attribution (AFAIK).

Soon after he did Pat Martino's "secret of one chord", which is a gloss on Pat's "Linear Expressions." And that's fine, a lot of people have made YouTube videos about that book of Pat's. Still, the title struck me as cheesy.

More recently, Chase published a video called "You're Practicing These 5 Exercises Wrong."
One of the exercises is the chromatic 1-2-3-4 (on each string) alternate picking exercise so many of us learned as beginners. He said that this was a terrible way to teach putting chromaticism into one's jazz playing. In that, he is correct. However, that was never the purpose of the exercise. I can't think of anyone ever who taught that as a method of introducing chromaticism into one's jazz lines. No one, that is, except Chase Maddox, who said it so he could condemn it.

When I pointed this out to him, he said it was pointless to practice such an exercise and wrong to teach it. So be it. The man's entitled to his own opinion. But making cracks in a video about teachers who teach (or players who practice) that exercise as if they are doing something wrong is, well, wrong. More to the point, saying it is wrong because it fails to teach Something Else Entirely (something it made no pretense of teaching) struck me as unsporting. Now I think he's a jerk.

I unsubscribed to his channel and blocked his emails.

[pamosmusic]

Chase irked me on another subject.
As some have said above, Chase takes things he has learned and makes them easier for other players to grasp. He presents nothing as his own. And this is fair----no one is watching him to learn his method / approach the way one might with Peter Ferrell (-who learned what Benson does and teaches 'the Benson method', with Benson's imprimatur).

Enter "the secret of two chords." Whatever one thinks of this teaching, the phrase is used in published material by Peter Ferrell and Chase borrowed it without attribution (AFAIK).

Soon after he did Pat Martino's "secret of one chord", which is a gloss on Pat's "Linear Expressions." And that's fine, a lot of people have made YouTube videos about that book of Pat's. Still, the title struck me as cheesy.

More recently, Chase published a video called "You're Practicing These 5 Exercises Wrong."
One of the exercises is the chromatic 1-2-3-4 (on each string) alternate picking exercise so many of us learned as beginners. He said that this was a terrible way to teach putting chromaticism into one's jazz playing. In that, he is correct. However, that was never the purpose of the exercise. I can't think of anyone ever who taught that as a method of introducing chromaticism into one's jazz lines. No one, that is, except Chase Maddox, who said it so he could condemn it.

When I pointed this out to him, he said it was pointless to practice such an exercise and wrong to teach it. So be it. The man's entitled to his own opinion. But making cracks in a video about teachers who teach (or players who practice) that exercise as if they are doing something wrong is, well, wrong. More to the point, saying it is wrong because it fails to teach Something Else Entirely (something it made no pretense of teaching) struck me as unsporting. Now I think he's a jerk.

I unsubscribed to his channel and blocked his emails.

Yeah that’s annoying.

For what it’s worth, he does this probably for the same reason he and Peter Farrell landed in an entirely avoidable online beef … which is to say it juices the algorithm.

Social media and YouTube in particular really love Don’t Do This DO THIS … or You’ve been doing X ALL WRONG … or why This Thing Is RUINING YOUR PLAYING … kind of formats. So chase can’t admit that he invented that use of the spider drill only to attack it in his video. Because it’s central to the circulation of the video itself.

[Tal_175]

It's interesting that people blame the Youtube algorithm when the problem is people clicking on click-bait links. The algorithm is more a mirror than a manipulator.

[pamosmusic]

It's interesting that people blame the Youtube algorithm when the problem is people clicking on click-bait links. The algorithm is more a mirror than a manipulator.

Yes people click on stuff that is dumb and the algorithm reads that … and also there is unlimited content and people can’t click on something that isn’t put in front of them in the first place.

Also in this, the year of our lord 2025, are we really going to try to argue that YouTube et al couldn’t choose to reward content that is less adversarial?

[Cunamara]

Well, as the Wall Street Journal attributed to Wallace Sayre, "Academic politics are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so low."

[djg]

But making cracks in a video about teachers who teach (or players who practice) that exercise as if they are doing something wrong is, well, wrong.

even if he is right?

[John A.]

When jazz guitarists get into messy drama… it’s kind of sad cos noone cares


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's like the old joke about academia -- the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low.

[nyc chaz]

Pete said in another thread on this forum that everyone was a loser that uses this forum,so just know that if you want to defend him.

[tomv713]

Pete said in another thread on this forum that everyone was a loser that uses this forum,so just know that if you want to defend him.

Jokes on him, I already knew i was a loser

[Christian Miller]

Pete said in another thread on this forum that everyone was a loser that uses this forum,so just know that if you want to defend him.

You mean you don’t think his admin was a real person? ;-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[noisyneil]

Pete said in another thread on this forum that everyone was a loser that uses this forum,so just know that if you want to defend him.

I don't think anyone is defending his childish name-calling. Personally, I'm in favour of defending the integrity of his content. As I said, he's lost the moral high ground and most people see him as a bit of a petty and mean-spirited character as a result.

It's worth going back to his early long-form youtube videos where he explains the core concepts with a fair amount of linear clarity. Unfortunately most people don't know how valuable his method is because he hides most of the structured stuff behind a prohibitive paywall. When questioned about the price of his books and video courses, he says you'd pay more to go to Berklee. Yeah, well there are reasons a university course is expensive. If only he'd make his materials accessible to people other than older, wealthier hobbyists, he'd gain some traction. It's a silly model if you ask me.

I'd love to have a chat with him about how he could position himself but, based on the way he's handled previous interactions on the subject, I don't think he'd be receptive, which is a shame.

[SOLR]

Pete said in another thread on this forum that everyone was a loser that uses this forum,

Which he joined to post his opinion.

That sounds a bit like" I wouldn't want to join a club that would have me as a member" as per Groucho Marx.

S

[nyc chaz]

Which he joined to post his opinion.

That sounds a bit like" I wouldn't want to join a club that would have me as a member" as per Groucho Marx.

S

Well,if you read the thread,as soon as i pointed out to him that he was on the forum commenting and ergo that must make him a loser,he stopped posting.

[nyc chaz]

You mean you don’t think his admin was a real person? ;-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Honestly,i'm not quite sure what you are saying? Where did i say i think it wasn't him if that is what you are asking.

[noisyneil]

Did anyone else catch this?

Peter Farrell Guitar | It is time to say "Goodbye"

If you are interested in taking your game to a higher level, go to: peterfarrellguitar.com and have access to... | Instagram

Made me wonder if GB's people have caught wind of the cattiness and decided a bit of distance might be in order.