Jody Fisher Jazz Books Series

**ChrisDowning** · 01-05-2014, 10:12 AM

I've just been posting in the Fisher v Baker thread and of course wondered whether anyone had done a study group for the Jody Fisher four book series he wrote for Alfred Publishing (Beginning Jazz Guitar, Intermediate, and Mastering [two books]). I know there is one for Mickey Baker's book and another here for Joe Elliot's. But has a Fisher one ever seen the light of day?

These threaded study groups seem like a great way to get though a book and have fellow studiers to chat to and sort out issues.

**AlsoRan** · 01-05-2014, 11:00 AM

I would have love to have been involved with one years ago, but my life is too busy now.

A study group would have been awesome with this series because there is so much information. I especially loved the Chord Scales section in the back of book one.

But alas, I have gone in a different direction and don't want to change horses in mid stream. I still use the series as a reference/enhancement to the methods I am using, but will always have a fond place in my heart for this method because it was my first.

**ecj** · 01-05-2014, 11:10 AM

I worked through it long ago. If you want to start a study group, I'll be happy to post in it and make suggestions about what helped me.

It can be kind of confusing to go through. Fisher left out a lot of little bits and pieces that will be helpful to cover in a group (how to handle position shifts during melodic patterns, how to absorb voicings, etc.).

**ChrisDowning** · 01-05-2014, 12:37 PM

ecj - if we start one up I'll shall have to do it as a learner like everyone else. After teaching guitar for the last ten or eleven years full time, I felt pretty jaded and stopped playing completely since last Easter. Just starting to get back into it. It's like a know a lot of stuff, but it's just not in my hands right now.

Let's see if there is any interest - but it would be a great idea as everyone doing it would end up as pretty well rounded players - especially if we get right through to the final two books on chord melody and single note soloing! Quite a 'journey' of discovery and learning.

**ecj** · 01-05-2014, 01:21 PM

Keep me posted. I'd definitely be interested in going along for the ride.

**ChrisDowning** · 01-05-2014, 03:03 PM

Will do.

Anyone else up for some studying Jody Fisher thro 2014?

**Rob MacKillop** · 01-05-2014, 03:25 PM

One of my students has just bought volume 1. He won't show up here, as he hates the internet! LOL. But I might pop in ocassionally.

**dberrysr** · 01-05-2014, 05:00 PM

I'd like to give it a go.

**Stu Foley** · 01-06-2014, 05:17 AM

I'd be in. But my ineptitude and time budget may push me to the back of the class. Plus, I've got some separate sight-reading and repertoire stuff that I'd be doing in parallel. I'd definitely be interested in how it goes though.

As an aside Chris, maybe the internet isn't so vast- I've picked up a couple of your golf book recommendations on Amazon as well. I'm not a stalker. Honest.

**ChrisDowning** · 01-06-2014, 07:40 AM

Haha Stu - you found out how I spent my non-guitra-playing Summer post retirement. It has been hugely interesting taking lessons and comparing how golf is taught compared to Guitar. Golf teaching is much less developed. And the sort of practice regimes we develop are pretty much non-existent with most golf players.

I will be working on repetoire and some flatpicking/bluegrass material like you Stu, so the pace won't be fierce! I'll be doing a bit of Mickey Baker and Joe Elliot in the background as well. Pace of posts and progression shouldn't be a problem. I just need to take a close look at how the other guys have proceeded doing study groups through this forum.

**ecj** · 01-06-2014, 09:03 AM

Hey Chris - I'm going to start moving through it this week and doing some refresher practice for myself. I actually just started reworking my picking hand (again!), so it'll be nice to play through some simpler exercises. I'll post vids of some exercises with tips about my thoughts and try to explain how I used/use the book.

Hopefully it'll help you guys. The first time I tried to work through those books, I had no idea what I was doing and they can be tough to interpret.

Might as well just make this the thread.

**Stu Foley** · 01-06-2014, 10:57 AM

Just having a flick through now. I think really only that major scale pattern 5/1 seems to overlap the caged ones. Those extended chords come at ya thick and fast considering it's all diatonic soloing in the first book.

**wiscart1900** · 01-06-2014, 10:59 AM

im up for the jody fischer study group. i actually have really enjoyed what I have used of the books so far. Lets get rolling...

**jazznewbie1319** · 01-14-2014, 04:25 PM

First post but i found this site based on searchign for more information on Jody's books so i am definitely interested i have all four books of his and in my own study i have been supplementing them with Jimmy bruno's lessons as well as Matt Warnock's - however i am very interested to see how this type of study would work so count me in.

**BobbyD** · 01-22-2014, 02:10 PM

Greetings. It's my first post as well.

I'm extremely interested in a study group. I've tried a ton of books to get started with jazz and find that they always lose me somewhere. This forum has so many great players that I'm sure that a group could get through any tough spots.

**D.R.22** · 04-14-2014, 05:28 PM

I'd also be interested in a study group for the Fischer series! I'm going through the first one at the moment and I am struggling a bit with all the chords but I'll see it through for sure!

**matt.guitarteacher** · 04-14-2014, 10:05 PM

Originally Posted by D.R.22

I'd also be interested in a study group for the Fischer series! I'm going through the first one at the moment and I am struggling a bit with all the chords but I'll see it through for sure!

I don't think its you. It's the book. The chord section makes no sense for beginners. William Leavitt or Mickey Baker are much better sequenced for learning jazz chords in my opinion. They have at least a basic level of voice leading and the chords go together well.

Its pointless to learn 6 versions of the 9ths, 6 versions of an 11th chord etc when you haven't learned major7, minor 7, minor 7b5 etc. If you work fisher's method from the beginning, you'll be months in before you can ever play enough chords to work a basic tune.

A lot of players credit Mickey Baker and Leavitt with teaching them a lot at the beginning. I never hear the same for Jody Fisher. It's a good reference book but it is not a method for learning to play.

All of these method books have weaknesses, but the Fisher book has the most and is the least helpful for beginners IMO.

**D.R.22** · 04-16-2014, 08:39 AM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

I don't think its you. It's the book. The chord section makes no sense for beginners. William Leavitt or Mickey Baker are much better sequenced for learning jazz chords in my opinion. They have at least a basic level of voice leading and the chords go together well.

Its pointless to learn 6 versions of the 9ths, 6 versions of an 11th chord etc when you haven't learned major7, minor 7, minor 7b5 etc. If you work fisher's method from the beginning, you'll be months in before you can ever play enough chords to work a basic tune.

A lot of players credit Mickey Baker and Leavitt with teaching them a lot at the beginning. I never hear the same for Jody Fisher. It's a good reference book but it is not a method for learning to play.

All of these method books have weaknesses, but the Fisher book has the most and is the least helpful for beginners IMO.

So which one do you recommend I delve into first?

**Kiefer.Wolfowitz** · 04-16-2014, 10:10 AM

Leavitt.

**matt.guitarteacher** · 04-16-2014, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by D.R.22

So which one do you recommend I delve into first?

If you're just talking about chords I'd go with Baker, then Leavitt.

Baker gets you playing and immediately gives you an ear for moving voices within the chord. Lesson 2 (I think) has that simple Maj7 - Maj6 movement which is just basic and great to learn. If the only thing you get from that book is an aural intolerance for chords remaining static for more than a beat or so, it's worth it. Also, these beginning exercises sound great as stand-alone music in a way that you don't find in just about any other book. The ease-of-playing to musical-enjoyment ratios are higher on the chord section of this book than just about anything else published. Simplistic beauty...

But I wouldn't necessarily wait until you've done that entire book before looking at something like Leavitt's modern guitar method too. (Baker is $8 on amazon and Leavitt vol. 1 is $11. You can get a lot out of that $20 in my opinion.)

Just work Leavitt's chord exercises at first and try not to be distracted by all of the note reading if you don't know basic chords yet. Mickey Baker is more about chord substitution than just playing the changes which are present on the chart. (This was extremely helpful back in the days when most charts were "vanilla". It really helped answer the "What do you do with 6 bars of G7?". Honestly I would just play the Baker stuff and not ask "why" too much. Once you've got it in your ears and fingers, there's a lot of discussion on the boards here about the "why's".)

Very early on (unlike Fisher), Leavitt's book will teach you one or two basic ways to play all the basic chord types found in a Real Book (Maj7, Dom7, min7, min7b5 and dim). These chords are grouped in exercises based on fingering type and voice-leading. For example, he actually shows you how a min7 is altered to make a min7b5, and then, has an exercise incorporating a complete ii-V-I which voice leads beautifully. (He then builds on these in succeeding exercises, and it's very logical - cognitively, aurally and kinesthetically. Later, there's a lot of inner chromatic movement, moving bass, CESH etc.)

This will get you playing out of a real book and looking at the way players in the past have used chord progressions. You see, the Real Books are not "vanilla". The chords are kind of already subbed in and embellished from the original changes. So the Baker stuff applied to a real book is kind of overload. Leavitt will get you playing the chords you need to play in a basic way off a standard, modern-day leadsheet or real book.

All of these method books have weaknesses and problems. Nothing's perfect. I just bought these books at the beginning and actually used them as a beginner. Fisher's is the most illogical. It probably has the best content, in terms of basic improvisation work, but then again, he uses an arbitrary, non-system of scale fingerings which is asinine.

https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/getting-started/13214-mickey-baker-vs-jody-fisher.html#post119496

Again, I'm constantly confounded by Jody Fisher's book being at the top of the polls of best methods (above William Leavitt even). As far as I've ever seen, on this forum at least, nothing about its status on these lists is based on the actual experience of beginning players or teachers of beginning players.

As a still somewhat-beginner myself, I feel compelled to challenge this.

**D.R.22** · 04-16-2014, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

If you're just talking about chords I'd go with Baker, then Leavitt.

Baker gets you playing and immediately gives you an ear for moving voices within the chord. Lesson 2 (I think) has that simple Maj7 - Maj6 movement which is just basic and great to learn. If the only thing you get from that book is an aural intolerance for chords remaining static for more than a beat or so, it's worth it. Also, these beginning exercises sound great as stand-alone music in a way that you don't find in just about any other book. The ease-of-playing to musical-enjoyment ratios are higher on the chord section of this book than just about anything else published. Simplistic beauty...

But I wouldn't necessarily wait until you've done that entire book before looking at something like Leavitt's modern guitar method too. (Baker is $8 on amazon and Leavitt vol. 1 is $11. You can get a lot out of that $20 in my opinion.)

Just work Leavitt's chord exercises at first and try not to be distracted by all of the note reading if you don't know basic chords yet. Mickey Baker is more about chord substitution than just playing the changes which are present on the chart. (This was extremely helpful back in the days when most charts were "vanilla". It really helped answer the "What do you do with 6 bars of G7?". Honestly I would just play the Baker stuff and not ask "why" too much. Once you've got it in your ears and fingers, there's a lot of discussion on the boards here about the "why's".)

Very early on (unlike Fisher), Leavitt's book will teach you one or two basic ways to play all the basic chord types found in a Real Book (Maj7, Dom7, min7, min7b5 and dim). These chords are grouped in exercises based on fingering type and voice-leading. For example, he actually shows you how a min7 is altered to make a min7b5, and then, has an exercise incorporating a complete ii-V-I which voice leads beautifully. (He then builds on these in succeeding exercises, and it's very logical - cognitively, aurally and kinesthetically. Later, there's a lot of inner chromatic movement, moving bass, CESH etc.)

This will get you playing out of a real book and looking at the way players in the past have used chord progressions. You see, the Real Books are not "vanilla". The chords are kind of already subbed in and embellished from the original changes. So the Baker stuff applied to a real book is kind of overload. Leavitt will get you playing the chords you need to play in a basic way off a standard, modern-day leadsheet or real book.

All of these method books have weaknesses and problems. Nothing's perfect. I just bought these books at the beginning and actually used them as a beginner. Fisher's is the most illogical. It probably has the best content, in terms of basic improvisation work, but then again, he uses an arbitrary, non-system of scale fingerings which are asinine.

https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/getting-started/13214-mickey-baker-vs-jody-fisher.html#post119496

Again, I'm constantly confounded by Jody Fisher's book being at the top of the polls of best methods (above William Leavitt even). As far as I've ever seen, on this forum at least, nothing about its status on these lists is based on the actual experience of beginning players or teachers of beginning players.

As a still somewhat-beginner myself, I feel compelled to challenge this.

Great analysis thank you! I'll look into Baker's then because the Leavitt book seems to have too many "tacky" exercises . This and my lack of discipline will probably result in me not trying going through any of it and chuck the book out the window. I also have a hard time reading chords in musical notation (Leavitt's book should be help with that). As far as the Fischer book I thought it was a lot to take in at the beginning but the diagrams are a bit more user friendly to my eye, this could be because I went through Cooker's "Improvising Jazz".

**matt.guitarteacher** · 04-16-2014, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by D.R.22

As far as the Fischer book I thought it was a lot to take in at the beginning but the diagrams are a bit more user friendly to my eye, this could be because I went through Cooker's "Improvising Jazz".

Both Baker and Leavitt use chord grids as well. Leavitt has other notated exercises that incorporate chords, but everything isn't notated at the beginning in terms of chords.

As to the "tacky" exercises, a lot of Leavitt's chord etudes deal with technical aspects of playing jazz harmony that I haven't really seen anywhere else. (I'm sure they're out there. I just don't know of them.) The fingering protocols required to play some of the chromatic movement within and between these jazz chords is quite different from anything you see in classical playing, and Leavitt's book is excellent for illustrating those aspects of playing.

The etudes are a means to an end not an end product in themselves. Basically a lot of chord-melody with chromatic movement in inner voices, bass movement etc. Good technical work for playing jazz harmony beyond just chord-chord-chord...

Leavitt gets criticized for having the exercises but not really teaching you to improvise jazz, and I understand this with the single-note part I guess. It's just working the scales. There aren't improvisation "assignments" per se.

But as far as the chords and the chord etudes, it's jazz guitar 101 - basic stuff with good voice-leading. For me personally, there are just so many things that are just more difficult to play, especially in chord melody or movement of inner voices within chords, without the kind of technical practice in those exercises.

Just my opinion...

**D.R.22** · 04-16-2014, 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

But as far as the chords and the chord etudes, it's jazz guitar 101 - basic stuff with good voice-leading.
Just my opinion...

That just won me over. I'll try to get a "hard-copy" because reading PDFs off the computer is really bothering me. I also fear that the picking exercises and duets to be "too easy for me to bother with". That being said I do want to learn how to read notation better and improve my playing but I don't want to run through endless scales again and again...

**matt.guitarteacher** · 04-16-2014, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by D.R.22

That just won me over. I'll try to get a "hard-copy" because reading PDFs off the computer is really bothering me. I also fear that the picking exercises and duets to be "too easy for me to bother with". That being said I do want to learn how to read notation better and improve my playing but I don't want to run through endless scales again and again...

Resist the urge to get the 3-volumes-in-one edition if you haven't already pulled the trigger. Not a biggy either way, but if I had a do-over, I would buy separate (even if getting all three) just for the binding. It's huge. There's a DVD for vol.1 BTW...

**monkmiles** · 04-17-2014, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by D.R.22

That just won me over. I'll try to get a "hard-copy" because reading PDFs off the computer is really bothering me. I also fear that the picking exercises and duets to be "too easy for me to bother with". That being said I do want to learn how to read notation better and improve my playing but I don't want to run through endless scales again and again...

I think I have 2 of the Fisher books at home sitting on my shelf. If you're interested in buying them used from me (or trading other books for them), shoot me a PM. Would need to confirm the two I have.