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Thank you to everyone. This was very educational. One thing it shows is how individual our brain wiring is and how we all learn with slightly different approaches. We each need to find out the way our brains learn, and honor that process. There are also studies the shine a light on the basics of human learning. I'll investigate that topic.
I will probably add all of your recommendations to some multilayered process i use. I'm going to start learning all the C notes on the fingerboard. Then all the F notes. Then all the Bb notes. I'll continue with the cycle of 5ths / 4ths. I'll add some review. At the very beginning of my learning process I need to learn one thing at a time.
I'm using a Traveler Ultra-Light Nylon string guitar so I have access to the entire fingerboard.
Traveler Guitar Ultra-Light Nylon
Hopefully I will have a success story to report in a few months.
Ed
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12-17-2016 01:37 PM
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I think it's been mentioned upthread but learning to read standard notation almost forces you to learn the fretboard.
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I began with the first two Mel Bay books.
Then, I went to Rhythms by Colin and Bower, which I still think is a great book.
It starts simple and you play the parts in the first position.
The early stuff is in the key of C.
Then, you learn to play the same thing an octave higher, being care to read and not just play it by ear.
The lines are old fashioned swing syncopated and were fun to play.
So you play in 5th position and then 8th or 9th. As you progress through the book, it starts adding sharps and flats.
In a few months you know the fingerboard and you can read music
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Learn to sight read.
work at it for 1 year, at least one hour a day. Sight read all kinds of stuff (violin/clarinet/saxophone etudes, levitt sight reading books, classical guitar music, solo transcriptions, guitar chord solos, the omnibook, melodies from fake books, atonal etudes, etc). Read in position, read in octaves, read up an octave, read on one string. Use a metronome and go slowly enough that it is not a constant fumbling, but rather smooth.
You'll learn the fretboard cold, but in addition there are a million other benefits for the aspiring jazz guitarist.
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The beauty of sight reading is that it offers an endless source of new material.
Driven by a rhythmic time frame, we are impelled to move past processing this
note moving to that note and take in larger groups of notes in at a glance.
Reading creates necessity to instantly find the notes and this necessity drives
our learning curve forward.
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I found a very simple sight reading app but it was too limited. So I wrote this thing:
http://noodid.ee/noodiprogramm/noodilugemine_eng.html
It works very well for learning notes on any desired position of the fretboard.
Should add some buttons instead having to push keys to tweak it some day.
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The one drawback with attempting to learning the fingerboard with sight reading is that guitar has lousy track record with pedagogy. I can sight read multiple moving lines on a guitar treble clef because I play classical guitar. But I only learned small areas of the fingerboard based on the pieces I played. There really are no dedicated books that use sight reading to really learn the entire fingerboard. We have to cludge a personal process with violin books, cello books, etc. Compared to classical instruments, guitar pedagogy is primitive.
Here is how I have to learn the notes on the fingerboard: First, just learn the notes names by string/fret; Second, learn the standard notation of every note.
Thank you,
Ed
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If you already know the notes on treble cleff, learning fretboard by sight reading stuff is so easy. If the single goal is just to learn the fretboard notes, there is no better way than sight reading.
I completely agree that classical guitar rep at intermediate level is not enough for jazz. Most of that stuff is on 1st position and goes up on 3 solo strings.. hm.. mostly. And when being in upper positions and the open strings come to play (that makes many pieces playable), it takes a decade or two to get it fluid.
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I don't think I'd recommend classical guitar works as a way to learn the fingerboard as fast as possible, although I'm sure that classical players manage just fine.
They key to it, in my opinion, is to learn to play whatever you're doing in the first position - an octave higher.
So, instead of playing C on the first fret of the second string -- that note is going to be on the 8th fret of the first string or the 13th fret of the second string. It will still look like the third space on the staff -- but you'll play it an octave higher.
This way, you learn the fingerboard, and you develop the skill to read anything in any octave, which is useful.
This is going to work better with single notes. Classical pieces, with double and triple stops and open strings would have to be refingered in the higher octave and might be impossible to play. Not a bad thing to look at for an advanced reader, maybe, but not the way I'd suggest a beginner try to learn the fingerboard.
I mentioned learning with Mel Bay (1 and 2) and then Rhythms by Colin and Bower. I also recall having a book called Advanced Dance Rhythms and a clarinet book. Clarinet has about the same range as guitar. That book had Paganini's Moto Perpetua sp? and things like that.
That was enough to allow me to read fake books and the Omnibook (hard to get those up to speed). Took about 2 years from the first time I picked up the instrument to being able to do that at least slowly. Two hours practice per day.
But, the next level was playing with a horn band where the guitar was often used as a fifth horn. Those guys can read! I found out pretty quick that getting close isn't close enough. It takes some work!
The negative is that you can overfocus on it and be reading new solos when you might be better off figuring them out by ear (because of the ear training inherent in transcribing). But, the positive part is that you'll be in demand. There are lots of groups that require reading and you get a leg up on those chairs.
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Slowly, that's how :-)
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rpjazzguitar got me thinking about reading in general.
You need to read music that is the music you are going to be playing. If you are a classical guitarist, you read classical guitar works. If you play jazz, you need to be able to read jazz solos, heads etc, or big band charts with rhythm hits and a mix of chords and notation. Very different.
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12-18-2016, 06:24 AM #37joaopaz Guest
+1 for reading/sight reading.
Whatever you do, do it daily. Whatever exercise you choose, go through the 12 keys, the cycle of fifths.
This is not like learning, for instance, what a major 7th chord is... note names require regular practice. Like reading, you get better at reading by reading regularly.
Assign a small part of your daily routine to this subject and it's just a matter of time
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Something I've noticed from playing in a jazz band with 4 horns and more than 100 arrangements in the book ...
A mediocre reader for a horn player is a better reader than almost any guitarist I know.
An example: we recently played a chart of My Favorite Things which repeatedly changes from 3/4 to 4/4 and 5/4, with plenty of hits. The solo section is in 5/4. The reading is hard enough. Soloing in 5/4 on a tune you know this well in 3/4 -- well, it gets confusing.
And, all the horn players just read the thing and soloed with hardly a change in their bored expressions.
Some of these guys are pros, some are dedicated amateurs.
And when you have to play a line with them, suddenly you find out about rhythmic accuracy and articulation marks.
Not just when you hit a note and how long you hold it, or even how loud. It's also when, exactly, you release the note.
Knowing the fingerboard absolutely cold is essential if you're going to read and if you're going to approach the guitar without relying on a pattern based approach. You can live without patterns, at least at moderate or slow tempos, by knowing the notes in the scales and chordsyou want and knowing where they are on the fingerboard.
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I've long thought that section playing is one way in which horn players develop their sense of swing.
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Position studies did it for me. There used to be a series of books by, forgive my guessing at the spelling, Emille Scholle? Start with simple melodies and force yourself to play them in other positions.
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Practice your scales, any given scale you practice, practice it over the entire fret board, don't worry about phrasing until you really know the scale over the entire fret board. Do this for lots of scales and what you seek will just come to you.
In the end when you site read a solo? The scale knowledge becomes way way more important than calling out each individual note. You eventually get to where you can play pieces 1st try well / correctly and not read every note which is a major pita in my opinion.
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Obviously, hands-on exercises on the guitar are best for this, but there's a great iPhone program called Fretuoso that has definitely helped me. It lights up a random fretboard location and you have to specify the note.
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The Leavitt books are organised according to position. Originally Posted by mwcarr
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I'm going to check it out. Worth buying the premium version? Originally Posted by darby
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Although the books might not exist in Classical guitar pedagogy, they do exist. Originally Posted by edspyhill01
There are books out there that are appropriate for learning to sight read for jazz guitarists. Some of the ones I use are
Tom Brunner's book : a great "no position but rather region" approach
Fred Hamilton's book: on sight reading he has a bunch of "on one string" exercises
The three Levitt books: these go methodically through positions and so open up the fretboard as "one big position"
Joe Allard Advanced rhythms: the rhythms aren't really advanced, but they do go through most of what you'd run across in jazz, and their atonality means you can't fake it.
Of course, any violin, clarinet, or saxophone etudes also works. The violin etudes with double stops are particularly fun to work through, and adress a notable weakness many jazz guitarists have.
For chord melody sight reading, there are tons of books with chord-melody arrangements.The Joe Pass chord solo book is great, but even better are all the books which Bill McCormick wrote.
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Originally Posted by pkirk
By the way, I'd guess that any classical guitarist interested in jazz would love the McCormick books, especially the blues and brazilian books. I think these could provide a clear path from classical to jazz.
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responding again to my own post: the "real book" people just put out a 400 page book of transcriptions which also provides a huge amount of sight reading fodder. Not a great sub for doing the transcriptions yourself, but a great sight reading resource.
The Real Jazz Solos Book: Hal Leonard Corp.: 0884088066512: Amazon.com: Books
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Fretboard warrior. Thats a tiny program, which helped me a lot.
Try it (its totally free):
Fretboard Warrior guitar lesson
MrBlues
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Looks like they've got something new called Sight Warrior as well. Originally Posted by mrblues
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A teacher taught me an exercise called ‘cogs’, named for its interlocking nature.
Take any chord quality and divide it up by chord tones and available tensions.
For example: Cmaj7 = C - E - G - B - D - F# - A (F# being the available tension on a Cmaj7 chord)
Starting on the 6th string, play them in order up then down on one string. Use any fingering, at any speed you like. Go up the string and back down.
For the 6th string you’ll have:
E (open) G (3rd fret) B (7th) D (10th) F# (14th) A (17th) - and back down, A - F# - D - B - G - E
Now for the cogs part. Again on the 6th string, start at F# (2nd fret), then A (5th fret), then C (8th), then E (12th), then G (15th), then B (19th), playing all the 'in between' notes missed the first time around.
Do this for all strings in all keys and all chord qualities.
Optional: Do this over a loop or drone of the chord you’re working on. Helps to ‘tune’ the ears to each note quality.Last edited by Dana; 01-13-2017 at 08:15 AM.
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