The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 1 of 7 123 ... LastLast
Posts 1 to 25 of 154
  1. #1

    User Info Menu

    Chapter 2 Objective:

    To organize the diatonic arpeggios (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) in pattern I of the major scale to make them more accessible when changing from chord to chord. (Eventually, repeat this process in Patterns II, III, IV, and V.)
    Chapter 3 Objective:

    To organize the diatonic arpeggios (I, II, bIII, IV, V, bVI, bVII) in pattern II of the minor scale to make them more accessible when changing from chord to chord. (Eventually, repeat this process in Patterns I, III, IV, and V.)
    So we’ve got a couple of good assignments of practicing all these arpeggios.

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

    User Info Menu

    I’ve got a whole shelf of books whose subject material is music and playing the guitar. Most of them I haven’t made it all the way through, as a matter of fact I don’t think I’ve ever made it all the way through a guitar method book.

    This year we started another study group on “The Modern Method for Guitar Vol. 1”. In that group some of us are recording our way through the book and posting those recordings to the threads. I can’t say enough regarding how beneficial I think that has been for me. It’s one thing to play the exercises in a method book, it’s a whole different thing to record and post those exercises. For me, this has resulted in me being more motivated, and much more focused. All of which has dramatically improved the learning process. And, it has become a lot of fun.

    I’m planning on recording and posting my way through this book also. I think you all should give it a try too.

    Now I'll step off my 'soap box'.
    Last edited by fep; 04-19-2012 at 12:57 PM.

  4. #3

    User Info Menu

    Edit: Oops, I just realized I used pattern IV.

    In this exercise we are to play all the arpeggios in sequence in Major Pattern I (no I didn't I used pattern IV, I was suppose to use Pattern I).

    I ended each arpeggio on the 3rd and then went down to the root of the next arpeggio. I thought it was a good way to smoothly go from arp to arp.

    Last edited by fep; 04-20-2012 at 05:20 PM.

  5. #4

    User Info Menu

    Here is my understanding of the assignment for Chapt. 2.

    Using strict alternate picking, pick a position, then play arpeggios of the harmonized diatonic major scale* up and down the strings, starting on the 6th string at the lowest scale degree included in the current arpeggio, and going to the highest on the 1st string. Use a metronome, playing 8th notes.

    * IMaj7, iim7, iiim7, IVMaj7, V7, vim7, viim7b5

    I began this last night. The author encourages novices to use "Pattern I" (with scale degree 3 as the lowest note on the 6th string). In the interest of freeing myself from specific favorite positions, I'm going to be working Patterns I-V from the outset. I feel that solidifying my knowledge of the arpeggios from various starting places on the fretboard is really going to help me lock in outlining the changes in my soloing. It is going to take a while (I'm banking on months), but in the end I believe it will be worth it.

    I'll report on my progress after the weekend.
    Last edited by FatJeff; 04-20-2012 at 04:39 PM.

  6. #5

    User Info Menu

    Good stuff - and thanks for the video. I still don't have the book (some time late next week) but am going to try to start working with at least what has been posted in the two threads over the weekend.

  7. #6

    User Info Menu

    Cool Pantz.

    Like Jeff, I'm practicing all the patterns (but I'm only going to post the two videos I've posted). Note that there are really only 5 fingerings. For instance, Major pattern I is the same fingering as minor pattern II. The only difference is where the root is and where you start your arpeggios.

    So on this video I did minor pattern II. To make it major pattern I just start on the Fmaj7 instead of the Dm7. Note that I'm playing this one on the 5th fret.



    Edit: I just read the Chapter. I was suppose to do the V7 arp, not the Vm7 arp. Oops.

    2nd Edit: I removed the video and redid it, it's at post #8 below.
    Last edited by fep; 04-21-2012 at 09:57 AM.

  8. #7

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by fep

    Edit: I just read the Chapter. I was suppose to do the V7 arp, not the Vm7 arp. Oops.
    Oh, no. Now you have to start all over again at the Introduction.

  9. #8

    User Info Menu

    I couldn't live with myself, so I did it again. The V7 not the Vm7. Sorry about the lighting and the florescent light buzz. I usually don't record at night because of that.

    Last edited by fep; 04-21-2012 at 01:50 AM.

  10. #9

    User Info Menu

    Sounds great Frank. You're certainly a lot quicker on the draw with these than I am.

  11. #10

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by FatJeff
    Sounds great Frank. You're certainly a lot quicker on the draw with these than I am.
    I'm working on this new picking technique, which has me changing my hand position, often doing rest strokes on the down stroke, and economy picking. So, while trying to work and focus on that I've been doing a lot of arpeggios.

    Also, when I mindlessly goof off on the guitar I often play arpeggios. So, I have a bit of a head start.

    It seems that I haven't been playing the m7b5 arpeggios much though which I discovered when doing this exercise, the m7b5 are the ones giving me the most trouble.

  12. #11

    User Info Menu

    I've been spending some time today with the arpeggio excersizes. Like you guys I had practised arps a fair bit before (just not in the way suggested by the book) and hence decided to do all five patterns.

    I recorded two bars each chord in BiaB and played each arp up and down using eight notes and triplets (just feels less boring to play triplets) at speed 110. I chose D major quite deliberately because that is a key that i am not too familiar with.

    I first practised each position until it was error free (ahem, sort of) and then moved to the next. After that I tried to change position after each 16 bar cycle and after that felt reasonably good i tried to change position after each chord, but systematically not just playing the given arp in a position that i knew best (i guess we all have some fingerings that we don't like too much). I also find the m7b5 fingerings the most awkward (but i really like the sound of it).

    It needs some more work but i guess it'll be ok. Then move on the minor. The mechanics is quite the same of course but i guess one should pay attention to how each chord fits into context.

    Just wanted to make one more remark - some of you may or may not share similar feelings: almost all books - and this one too - almost exclusively focus on the notes to play and much less so on rhythm. But for me that is the hardest part. I am just not blessed with a great sense of time by nature and to figure out how to make convincingly jazzy phrases is what is missing the most (grew up with rock). Playing melodies and to some extent also the comping works (kind of at least), the missing part is what i'd like to get most out of the study group. Maybe we could include a few rhtyhm excersizes along the way?

    Final remark: fep, you have a really nice tone!

  13. #12

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by FatJeff
    Here is my understanding of the assignment for Chapt. 2.

    Using strict alternate picking, pick a position, then play arpeggios of the harmonized diatonic major scale* up and down the strings, starting on the 6th string at the lowest scale degree included in the current arpeggio, and going to the highest on the 1st string. Use a metronome, playing 8th notes.
    Jeff - I don't mean to nit-pick, and it really doesn't matter, but didn't he say to play from the root of each arpeggio contained in pattern I, to the highest note on the high E, and then back down the arpeggio to the lowest note on the low E, and then back up to the root note? It's the way I did them, i.e., start on F at 5th string, 8th fret, arp your way up to C on 1st string 8th fret, come back down, but bypass the 5th string F "root" and arp on down to play the 5th fret 6th string A note (3rd in F), and then just go C, E, F, and voila! F maj7 arpeggio. Then do Em7 arpeggio the same basic way, continuing then through all 7 arpeggios in that fingering.

    Like I said, it doesn't matter, but just to make sure I'm not using the wrong Google book. <And I just created a new verb: arp: v, to play as an arpeggio. "Arp your way....">

    NOW:

    Amazon and everybody else (except those charging $91.00 per copy for used ones) are out of stock for this book, won't ship until MID-FREAKING-MAY.

    I got the assignments (and can play them!) from Google books' preview copy, which, I think, ends at Ch. 2. So I guess I'm screwed and out of the game now. I *really* wanted to work through this one. I've read some reviews and have learned how Elliot has set up the book to work. Quite smart.

    Am I gonna have to pay $91? (It's the one guitar book I didn't already have.)

    kj

  14. #13

    User Info Menu

    To Kojo and everyone else without the book,

    Don't give up.

    I'm going to record and describe every exercise as we move along. So I think you'll be able to do the assignments. The assignments can take time to get under your fingers and into your ear. But reading the concepts in the book is quick (although I'm sure I'll read them several times as I review).

    So, follow along and do the exercises. When you get the book, you'll be able to catch up on reading the chapters in one night.

  15. #14

    User Info Menu

    Cool, Fep.

    For what it's worth (and I really don't think Mr. Elliot would mind), I'm going to use the fingerings I already know, which are Leavitt's, although I don't use even close to all twelve (shame on me) -- I use probably eight, two of which are identical to the CAGED fingerings. Where CAGED shifts, Berklee stretches -- I think that always holds true.

    Unless one of you tells me that Elliot requires the use of CAGED fingerings, I'll assume he doesn't and go on.

    If anybody finds a copy of the book (used, whatever) let me know, please.

    My Big Question

    From reading (through squinted eyes) the Google book preview of this book, I have taken the impression that Elliot wants "novices" to stick to the first fingering pattern, through, perhaps, the whole book. This seems brilliant to me -- think of all the concepts he can teach without overloading a student with: "Before you go on, learn this in every key, in every possible octave, every register, in all fingerings!" Talk about overwhelm.

    Question is: did I misunderstand?

    kj

  16. #15

    User Info Menu

    I got my copy the other day and have started in the arps. The book's available on UK Amazon. I can order it and send it on if you're having trouble getting it in the US. Shoot me a pm. I think my copy was £11 sterling plus postage.

    I'm sticking with fingerings I'm comfortable with at the moment. Luckily I know each pattern fine I just now need to work up the arpeggios. I'll post a clip when I get a chance. It's good to have some accountability.

    Cheers
    YD

  17. #16

    User Info Menu

    Kojo: I don't recall if Elliot said to start from the root or not. I'm intentionally *not* starting from the root, necessarily - I'm starting from the *lowest note in that position on the 6th string* (or the highest note on the 1st string). I'm mentally trying to break out of the whole "learn by shape" thing, and start using my knowledge of the fretboard and note names to do this. A more advanced concept, of course, since the specific quality of the underlying chord is not quite as apparent. But ultimately this will also free me from novice-sounding arpeggios from the root.

    As far as being able to work out of the book, I'm sure there are ways we can accommodate those in this study group without access to it right now. :-) PM me and I'll see what I can do.

  18. #17

    User Info Menu

    I also started from the lowest note that I can grab on the sixth string. But now I am re-practicing it starting from the root. It is a good excersize for me as it forces me to think about the notes that I play rather than just memorizing the shapes.

    I also stick to the fingerings that I know - sometimes shift sometimes stretch, sometimes mix. For example, the maj7 arpeggio that has the root on the sixth string is, to me, easier to play with shifting on my way up (the may 7th is one fret down) and easier to play with a stretch on the way down - why not?

    this is fun!

  19. #18

    User Info Menu

    This is a minor little thing, but since I've said it elsewhere, I'll say it here as well: I don't much like Mr. Elliot's claim that key-center soloing is like a pointless conversation. I think that, if a musician relies on his ear and lets that guide him, he will, with practice, begin to gravitate toward notes that sound good, and he doesn't have to know an arpeggio from a soap dish.

    I don't mean to say that chord-tone soloing is bad, of course. It's perhaps a quicker way of "sounding good" -- or of not sounding bad. But still, the music we make will depend upon our imagination - "inner hearing" - and our ability to play what we're imagining, as we imagine it. It may or may not be a good thing that we can fall back on fingering patterns and licks (stuff we don't play because it's what we imagined, or created) -- I don't know; I'm not that smart.

    N.B. This is just an opinion, and I have no interest in debating these points here. I'm posting this only because I made the comment elsewhere and thought I might be obliged to state it here, since this is where the action is. I just reverted to the 1960s, God help me.

    kj

  20. #19

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Kojo27
    This is a minor little thing, but since I've said it elsewhere, I'll say it here as well: I don't much like Mr. Elliot's claim that key-center soloing is like a pointless conversation. I think that, if a musician relies on his ear and lets that guide him, he will, with practice, begin to gravitate toward notes that sound good, and he doesn't have to know an arpeggio from a soap dish.
    kj
    In fairness to Elliott, he said:

    The problem with key center soloing is that it doesn't clearly define the harmony (chords). Most key-center solos can be compared to a pointless conversation.
    (I added the bold)

    Quote Originally Posted by Kojo27
    I think that, if a musician relies on his ear and lets that guide him, he will, with practice, begin to gravitate toward notes that sound good, and he doesn't have to know an arpeggio from a soap dish.
    kj
    But relying on ones ear is not necessarily "key center" soloing.

    When playing by ear, one doesn't have to know a "key center" from a soap dish.

  21. #20

    User Info Menu

    Oh, the discipline I'm mustering now to keep from going into old-Kojo mode and debating my ass off. If I just can't stand it, I'll send my rant to Elliot.

    Late last year, Frank posted in one of my philosophical/mumbo-jumbo threads the following: "What are we here, guitar players or guitar talkers?"

    Whoa! That might have been the beginning of Kojo's Big Change. Thanks, Frank. See, now I've posted stuff, actual guitar playing. The rampant rumors that I couldn't play at all are possibly at least confused now. Maybe they'll fall into a sort of dementia and wander off and soon die.

    And man, it's all so much more fun! Can't wait to get my book. (Thanks, Jeff, for the "advance.")


    kj
    Last edited by Kojo27; 04-24-2012 at 07:40 AM.

  22. #21

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Kojo27
    Oh, the discipline I'm mustering now to keep from going into old-Kojo mode and debating my ass off. If I just can't stand it, I'll send my rant to Elliot.

    Late last year, Frank posted in one of my philosophical/mumbo-jumbo threads the following: "What are we here, guitar players or guitar talkers?"

    Whoa! That might have been the beginning of Kojo's Big Change. Thanks, Frank. See, now I've posted stuff, actual guitar playing. The rampant rumors that I couldn't play at all are possibly at least confused now. Maybe they'll fall into a sort of dementia and wander off and soon die.

    And man, it's all so much more fun! Can't wait to get my book. (Thanks, Jeff, for the "advance.")


    kj
    I hope I'm keeping it friendly enough.

    Your friendship is more important to me than anything that happens on the forum.

  23. #22

    User Info Menu

    Thanks for clarifying and reiterating the ARPING process.

    Sorry about the book situation. I think I could well spend the time just on the arps til everybody got the book.



    Quote Originally Posted by Kojo27
    Jeff - I don't mean to nit-pick, and it really doesn't matter, but didn't he say to play from the root of each arpeggio contained in pattern I, to the highest note on the high E, and then back down the arpeggio to the lowest note on the low E, and then back up to the root note? It's the way I did them, i.e., start on F at 5th string, 8th fret, arp your way up to C on 1st string 8th fret, come back down, but bypass the 5th string F "root" and arp on down to play the 5th fret 6th string A note (3rd in F), and then just go C, E, F, and voila! F maj7 arpeggio. Then do Em7 arpeggio the same basic way, continuing then through all 7 arpeggios in that fingering.

    Like I said, it doesn't matter, but just to make sure I'm not using the wrong Google book. <And I just created a new verb: arp: v, to play as an arpeggio. "Arp your way....">

    NOW:

    Amazon and everybody else (except those charging $91.00 per copy for used ones) are out of stock for this book, won't ship until MID-FREAKING-MAY.

    I got the assignments (and can play them!) from Google books' preview copy, which, I think, ends at Ch. 2. So I guess I'm screwed and out of the game now. I *really* wanted to work through this one. I've read some reviews and have learned how Elliot has set up the book to work. Quite smart.

    Am I gonna have to pay $91? (It's the one guitar book I didn't already have.)

    kj

  24. #23

    User Info Menu

    Finally got the book! Read through the intro and last few chapters and played/read through Ch. 2 last night. Good stuff.

    There's one passage to me, I think in the intro, that's interesting and I guess highlights that not everybody learns fundamentals in the same order or same way. He mentions that his readers may have played solos, scales, chords, etc. and now we're going to learn to solo with a focus on arpeggios. For me, arpeggios were one of the first things I started working on when I started playing jazz - arps and common chord grips - and my earliest attempts at improv were basically arps of the chords. I do that one-position arpeggiate up and down the harmonized major & minor scales as far as possible as an occasional practice exercise. So it was nice to see some familiar material, especially since I got home late last night and had limited time for practice.

    Despite my familiarity with that type of practice exercise, I too have some kind of mental block against the half diminished arps. For some reason my fingers always want to play them as minor or diminished. Time to do some re-training.

    Anyway, I think we'll quickly move into some more challenging uses of them, but it was nice to see some familiar scale/arpeggio diagrams and whatnot.

  25. #24

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rmsmarr
    I think I could well spend the time just on the arps til everybody got the book.
    Same here.

    On another note, as I was working through the material last night, a thought struck me that I really should not be only playing the arps either up or down in sequence. That's great for learning where the notes are, but after a while, it just starts to sound so ... obvious. So it got me to thinking that really, I (we?) ought to be making a whole sub-study out of really learning the arpeggios in various places. And instead of playing them sequentially up or sequentially down, we should also be mixing the notes up with simple string-skipping: R-3-5-7 or 7-5-3-1 now becomes 3-R-7-5 or 7-3-5-1, for example. Ultimately, we're looking for nice-sounding patterns to play over the chord progressions of the songs we're going to be soloing on, and adding some intervallic variety like this would not only spice things up, but also solidify our knowledge of where the notes in the arpeggios are.

    Anyone want to comment on this?

  26. #25

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by FrankLearns
    I've been spending some time today with the arpeggio excersizes. Like you guys I had practised arps a fair bit before (just not in the way suggested by the book) and hence decided to do all five patterns.

    I recorded two bars each chord in BiaB and played each arp up and down using eight notes and triplets (just feels less boring to play triplets) at speed 110. I chose D major quite deliberately because that is a key that i am not too familiar with.

    I first practised each position until it was error free (ahem, sort of) and then moved to the next. After that I tried to change position after each 16 bar cycle and after that felt reasonably good i tried to change position after each chord, but systematically not just playing the given arp in a position that i knew best (i guess we all have some fingerings that we don't like too much). I also find the m7b5 fingerings the most awkward (but i really like the sound of it).

    It needs some more work but i guess it'll be ok. Then move on the minor. The mechanics is quite the same of course but i guess one should pay attention to how each chord fits into context.

    Just wanted to make one more remark - some of you may or may not share similar feelings: almost all books - and this one too - almost exclusively focus on the notes to play and much less so on rhythm. But for me that is the hardest part. I am just not blessed with a great sense of time by nature and to figure out how to make convincingly jazzy phrases is what is missing the most (grew up with rock). Playing melodies and to some extent also the comping works (kind of at least), the missing part is what i'd like to get most out of the study group. Maybe we could include a few rhtyhm excersizes along the way?

    Final remark: fep, you have a really nice tone!
    Hey Frank, It sounds like you are doing great.

    I'd comment that we don't have to master these exercises to move on. The reason being is I plan on doing a lot of review of these materials.

    Regarding your talk of playing convincingly jazzy phrases:

    Elliot in that email I quoted did talk about some of his students not having good phrasing until they had listened to a lot of jazz and played a lot of tunes. So I'll say that is one of the ways that phrasing will develop over time.

    FatJeff recently posted a link. I really liked the idea of looping a bit of a solo in Transcribe software and singing along with it. That article is hear:

    How to Completely Learn a Jazz Melody in 30 Minutes | jazzadvice.com

    I think phrasing is fair game for this study group. Record your progress, post some recordings, ask for critiques and help on your phrasing.