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I love how “guitaristic” those guys are, Charlie, Barney, and Mickey in that video. I feel that — among other virtues — they really lean into the instrument as a guitar, playing to its strengths.
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06-10-2023 09:56 AM
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I dug out my old copy of Vol 1 recently. I bought it in approx 1971. The cover is long gone but otherwise it is in good shape. It’s a bit dated maybe but still lots of good stuff there.
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It’s true that everybody says the book is dated, but what isn’t? I think everything I most admire is dated.
Originally Posted by Bach5G
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I’m out of date.
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You ain’t old till you cold. Originally Posted by Bach5G
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I started guitar when I was 15 and still have it embedded in my playing 58 years later !
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First post here. Unfortunately, this one may be a bit long, and although I read the thread in its entirety I apologize if I'm retreading old info here, but I thought some of you might find this of interest.
I bought "both" editions of Book 1, both the 1955/1959 reprint and the out-of-print 1973 "New! Completely Revised" versions. To be extra-clear here, I am not talking about "Book 1 and Book 2", but the two editions of Book 1. Over the last couple of days I compared the two books to see what was different, as I had read several times in various places that the books were essentially the same (other than that the 1973 edition had introduced new copying errors without correcting the old ones.) I also looked at the errata page that has been floating around for a while and also compared this to both editions.
I have gone over both editions now through lesson 23 (the end of "part one"), and was surprised to find only six places where the two were different in terms of content. Out of these six, three of them were actually corrections to "fix" specific errors which had been listed in the errata page, and only one of these that I spotted seems to be an actual copying-over error (and only an omission at that). In fact, I found that the majority of the page corrections suggested in the errata had either been implemented or addressed in some other way. In the cases where they weren't, i found that that the value of the correction itself seemed to be rather subject to interpretation. I am no jazz scholar, far from it; but I do have some minor editing experience, and I have to say that I found the second edition of Mickey's book to be a rather profound improvement over the first edition in many ways. Since this is my first post here, I won't get into any great detail now, but I had considered creating a new thread to discuss the differences in the two editions. I feel as though this second edition has unjustly gotten a bad rap, and I'm wondering whether those of you who have both editions might be interested in a discussion of them. This current thread does have some discussion of errors found in the first edition, and I'm interested in learning what carried over and didn't carry over to the second, as there are some instances where ascertaining what is an "uncorrected mistake" and what is a "careless copying error" are above my pay grade, so to speak. I don't actually have the requisite knowledge to tell one from the other as a certainty. But I'm very interested in working from a version of the book that does not involve second-guessing, although I did get the impression that some of the members who have posted in this thread may have found that working through the book in that way was an educational exercise in itself!
This thread has been idle for some months, so maybe opening the discussion in this thread would make more sense than creating a new one. Does anyone else here have both books, and have you also compared them? Thanks.
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Old thread or not, it would be interesting to hear about the second edition, and whether it does indeed provide a profound improvement over the first. I play every day, though in short bursts, and almost all of it is straight out of the first edition of the Mickey Baker book 1 as I work through it at a snail’s pace.
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Looks like everyone else has kind of clocked out of MB.
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I just don't care about the differences between the books and the errata sheet are. What's that got to do with playing jazz? Questions on the content in the book might get you some discussion. Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
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Actually, I think Rob is the one remaining true spirit when it comes to the Micky Baker book around here. The rest of y’all are done and dusted with it clearly. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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In a way. But someone has to have both versions of the book, and the time to sit down and compare them instead of practicing. Just seems like a poor use of time to me. Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
Like the Decitrig said, most of the errors are trivial and have been corrected in the reprints.
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OK, then! I'll refer to the books as 1E (for first edition) and 2E (for the second) so as to save a little on typing.
At a glance, the most obvious improvement of 2E over 1E is the clarity and space provided for reading the material itself. The chords in Lesson One are more clearly drawn (a hallmark of most features in the book, really), and where the chord graphics appear in the exercises, the unoccupied frets are generally truncated at the bottom to save both space in the text and no small eyestrain for the reader. Mickey's usage of the "mi" designation for minor has been replaced with good old "m", and the altered flats and sharps tend to appear above and to the right of the chord name rather than on the same line. Readers familiar with 1E may be surprised just how much space these latter two changes alone have created, while also removing the "jumbled, crowded" appearance of many of the old measures.
The quarter notes are evenly spaced in the measures in 2E, as opposed to the more "swinging" appearance of 1E, and for the most part, the stems of the notes themselves now point in the modern conventional directions (down if above center, up if below). If you are used to reading music on the staff, this is likely as welcome as the spacing.
Another interesting improvement is that they made sure that the "standard" and "new" sections line up above and below each other, measure for measure. Take your copy of 1E and look at page 24, lines 9-12 (16 Bar Sequences, Chord Cycles). The top line is a condensed form of the standard section, while the "new" takes up the other two lines for a total of three lines, none of which line up with each other. In 2E, the old and new sections line up note for note, using only two lines. There are many little touches like this throughout the first half of the book. I'd like to post a picture or three.
To be fair, I'm not suggesting anyone run out to purchase the second edition if they don't already have one. The second edition may have some hidden drawbacks I'm not aware of. The first, glaring "new" copying-over error I spotted was the omission of a chord. In 1E, on the topmost line of page 6, the last chord is a D7. In 2E, it has vanished, leaving the G chord to play over all four beats. I didn't really find much of this sort of thing, though (and in this case all you'd have to do is write the D7 into your new copy). If anyone else has a 2E copy I will post the *extremely* short list of other discrepancies I've found between the two (I'd also be happy to hear of any I didn't catch). For all I know, there may be a score of copying-over errors in the second half I haven't spotted yet... we are about to get into "notes on the staff" in a more serious and dense way, after all, and going over each and every one will take me another couple of days-- but I am fairly optimistic about it, seeing that the first half has gone so well so far. Let's hope that Mickey and the editors didn't run out of gas in the home stretch!
The first edition definitely has a special charm of its own, I won't deny that-- it just has a more homespun feel to it, and it is the more obvious product of a given point in history... and you might even miss the infrequent appearance of Form 22 marked as "ma9"-- this chord has been replaced throughout 2E as "ma6/9"!
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That was merely for anyone who might come here looking for your own informed opinions about the book; more informed than mine, for sure. If I've wasted important bandwidth by adding to a dead thread, here are my apologies for wasting your time as well.
I actually enjoyed doing this juxtaposition stuff. I had read a little about Mickey himself, what little was out there where I could easily find it, anyway, and did my own research on what was available, before deciding I'd rather see them both. I also noted that a lot of people might be warned away from the revised edition because it's "loaded with new errors"-- so far as I've been able to discern, it certainly is not (any more so than the original, anyway). Honestly, I felt bad for some of these people who had followed these MB group threads, perhaps uncomfortably squinting through their copies of the first edition-- if I wasn't an even bigger bookworm than I am a guitarist, I might have stopped working out of the book myself for the simple reason that it's not exactly fun to read along with.
Sorry I showed up so late to the party. Any cake left?
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I was more like, spitballing as to why nobody is joining the conversation.
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Of course. I intended no snarkiness of my own either. I had realized before I even wrote anything that this thread is a ghost town and that I might even get "yelled at" for kicking a dead horse; most forums frown on what might be seen as necroposting even if it's a sticky. What I'll do is finish comparing the books, and by the time I've finished, we'll see if there's any interest evinced by other forum members in continuing with a discussion of "what was a fix and what was a copy-over error" beyond my final assessment, which I'll try to keep brief. If not, I'll still be glad to have done it. I had actually been looking for a genuine comparison like this for my own peace of mind. Cheers.
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Great stuff, Decitrig. You have mathematically enhanced this august thread. I don’t care if the info is trivial for some.
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I agree, the point for the student is to thoroughly internalize the lessons in the book and mess around with them six ways from Sunday rather than to get ensnared in marginal details that eat up one’s practice time. But posting stuff in a forum eats up time too. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Thank you for your kind replies. Part II of the revised edition has many, many changes from Part II of the first edition. Lesson 27 alone has so many that it almost seems rewritten entirely.
I wrote a long response today, but I must have set off a fire bell somewhere, because it didn't post.
After having looked at both editions side by side and being almost completely finished with that, here's my two cents:
If you are intending to follow Mickey's instructions to the letter and spend at least the first prescribed six months working on his approach to substitutions, I think you would be better served by getting the revised 1973 edition. Your eyes will thank you, and the improved form and corrected content is a no-brainer. If you want to work all the way through the second half that covers all the lead stuff, I can't tell you for a certainty that 2E is better or worse; only that it sure has a staggering number of revisions from 1E, and that some of them are definitely improvements. I don't know that all of them are. If someone who has already worked through the book in its entirety wants to weigh in on how many corrections they had to make to the second half of 1E, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.
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Good luck...I bought his books as a young teen many years ago. Never got beyond half those chords, then HS, college, VN, grad school, marriage, kids, tuitions, etc., etc. took foremost attention.
Time now to find those books ... they're around somewhere(!) ... and see what these arthritic fingrs can attempt.
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I hope you enjoy it. I always like to point on this website, it's like a study guide to go along with the book. I didn't do the TablEdit part of it, just read the lesson analysis and extra exercises. Originally Posted by Picker
Mickey Baker
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Thank you for your reply and for the study guide link. Just read the intro now and it will obviously be a big help. I really appreciate your input and your time in replying. Thanks again.
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Here's a video I made 8 years ago. I did videos all the way through the harmony section. If this is useful let me know and I will take them off "private" so that they are viewable.
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