The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Thanks Mark! I'll be way behind the actual solos but I'm in!

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #52

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    I don't have the book, but I'll definitely be looking in on this thread.

  4. #53

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    I'm in. I will order Swing Blues tonight. I ordered Rhythm Shapes earlier today.

    Steve

  5. #54

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    edh and Steve: excellent. I'll try to keep posting my progress (think snail's pace)

  6. #55

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    Up to page 6....

  7. #56

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    Quote Originally Posted by Slide
    I'm in. I will order Swing Blues tonight. I ordered Rhythm Shapes earlier today.

    Steve
    I love "Rhythm Shapes." Lots of great lines in there. But I see "Swing Blues" as the foundation. (The three books can be read / studied separately but I think "Swing Blues" is the natural place to start, and "All the Shapes" is the mountaintop---the full flowering of the shape system.)

  8. #57

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    I'm in, the book arrived today.

  9. #58

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    I'm a bit stalled on page 6 already. I'm trying to memorize what is on that page, and I have a question: keep trying to memorize it or move on? Thanks

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by andyb
    I'm in, the book arrived today.
    Great! Do yourself a favor and don't rush! (I made that mistake the first time around. And the second...)

  11. #60

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    Quote Originally Posted by angelpa
    I'm a bit stalled on page 6 already. I'm trying to memorize what is on that page, and I have a question: keep trying to memorize it or move on? Thanks
    You don't have to memorize it. You eventually will but the main thing now is to play it slow and get it right, appreciating the shapes.

  12. #61

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    Thanks Mark!

  13. #62

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    My Swing Blues book arrived today and I am in. First thing I did was read through the entire book, sans guitar. Now I am about to start memorizing the chord shapes. So I am probably quite a days behind you guys.

    Rich
    Last edited by richb2; 02-18-2015 at 06:28 PM.

  14. #63

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    Don't worry richb2, I'm only on p. 6 and you might fly right by me

  15. #64

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    Quote Originally Posted by richb2
    My Swing Blues book arrived today and I am in. First thing I did was read through the entire book, sans guitar. Now I am about to start memorizing the chord shapes. So I am probably quite a days behind you guys.

    Rich
    Great, Rich! Welcome.

    I first bought this book when I lived in New Orleans. I rushed through it and that was a mistake. It is not a difficult read---Herb keeps things simple---but it is so important to take things slow and learn them right. Otherwise, you'll end up like me: having to go back and correct things that you "learned wrong" the first (or second) time around.

  16. #65

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    Quote Originally Posted by angelpa
    Don't worry richb2, I'm only on p. 6 and you might fly right by me
    Take from an old guy: it ain't about getting there first. It's about learning things that you enjoy playing and having fun playing them.

  17. #66

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    Well, I recently (about 4 months ago) took Les Wise's Workshop on Trufire which was all about being able to play arpeggios all over the neck. So a lot of this is very familiar. The main problem with the Les Wise course (which btw totally changed my playing) was that all of the exercises start on the root. I mentioned that to Les at the start of the workshop and he said that the goal of the workshop was to learn the neck really well, rather than how to play the arps from any note. Anyhow, it is nice seeing how Herb played the same stuff, but not from the root.

  18. #67

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    Great to see the life here on this one. I've gone back to Swing Guitar now with renewed interest. I sort of went through the shapes and pages to the first Blues in C solo which I've been trying to get down note for note. I am not a huge fan of learning complete solos but I think there's a purpose here which Herb intended so am sticking with it. For me, seeing the shape is easier for some parts than others, so what I've been doing is trying to get a block of 12 bars down, and concentrating effort on playing the chord changes. So, when the I chord moves to the IV chord, am trying to 'see' the shape change and hit the right notes. Couple of things I've appreciated over the last few weeks on this:

    1) Herb plays 'around' the shape, utilizing passing notes etc that cause me to go back to the various earlier exercises on the shapes so I can better appreciate the use of the major scale, the dom scale etc. OK, I should have put more time in on these bits before going to the solo but now I see why those examples are all there....so it's all good - and yes, you can get stuck on p6 or any other page, and with good cause, but it really all makes sense when you go to the solo, as long sd you go back from the solo to the shape intro pages to tie them together.

    2) His I-V transitions are quite 'ear-opening' to me as they involve lines I'd never stumble upon myself. I've spent some time isolating these so I can play them alone, like an exercise, to better understand how this transition works in terms of shape changing, and to then have some internal map for myself of how to approach the changes through the shapes for my own lines in due course.

    And a third thing -- Herb's timing is such that it really makes the line musical and interesting. That's worth spending time getting down exactly, it can make all the difference between sounding bland and magical. Moreover, when you get a few lines down, you can really recognize something of Herb's style, and hear it distinctly on other tracks if you listen to his LPs.

    If nothing else, this solo breaks me out of pentatonic boxes so quickly that I wonder how I failed to discover these before. In one solo you can really start to appreciate the power of this shapes approach. I'm not rushing anymore, I want to make these shapes part of my automatic response to a twelve-bar blues. Great stuff all round.

  19. #68

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    Quote Originally Posted by odel
    And a third thing -- Herb's timing is such that it really makes the line musical and interesting. That's worth spending time getting down exactly, it can make all the difference between sounding bland and magical. Moreover, when you get a few lines down, you can really recognize something of Herb's style, and hear it distinctly on other tracks if you listen to his LPs.

    If nothing else, this solo breaks me out of pentatonic boxes so quickly that I wonder how I failed to discover these before. In one solo you can really start to appreciate the power of this shapes approach. I'm not rushing anymore, I want to make these shapes part of my automatic response to a twelve-bar blues. Great stuff all round.
    Herb's timing is good but sometimes tricky----there are a few phrases in "Blues In C" that I never seem to get just the way he does. I figure that either I eventually will or else the way I do it is just the way I do it and that's okay too (-provided the timing doesn't fall apart!)

    Yes, I agree that Herb's lines get you out of the pentatonic boxes.

  20. #69

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    Quote Originally Posted by richb2
    Well, I recently (about 4 months ago) took Les Wise's Workshop on Trufire which was all about being able to play arpeggios all over the neck. So a lot of this is very familiar. The main problem with the Les Wise course (which btw totally changed my playing) was that all of the exercises start on the root. I mentioned that to Les at the start of the workshop and he said that the goal of the workshop was to learn the neck really well, rather than how to play the arps from any note. Anyhow, it is nice seeing how Herb played the same stuff, but not from the root.
    I sometimes wonder how Herb himself learned....

    I learned arpeggios (-seriously; I knew some before) from Mimi Fox's "Arpeggios on the Jazz Standards." It's good to know some of them, but I have found it more useful to know how to play good jazz lines----which aren't just scales or arpeggios----and Herb teaches a boatload of those. (Mimi Fox plays good lines too. I am not dissing her here. At all. I'm a fan.) And learning how to move from one shape to another makes for a handy way to get around the fretboard.

  21. #70

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    OK. Thanks. I appreciate that answer. I know those 5 shapes pretty well but really only use them for the dorian and the ionian.

  22. #71

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    Hi. I've just ordered the Swing Blues book too, but as its a birthday present I won't be able to open it until next month
    In the meantime I thought that I would try and create backing tracks for the book (now that I know one set of chords) as a way to get back to playing after a break of 20+ years. It looks like this website has a mass of great resources on chords and comping for me to start with. But as I've never really played any jazz it looks like I've got a lot of work/fun ahead.

    Good luck to everyone else following the book.

  23. #72

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    (The red dots are the root notes.)

  24. #73

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    Mark -- that's great -- thanks very much. I am also getting the Blues in C solo down by playing it in Bb, just because...this diagram is really useful for figuring out the various tones.

  25. #74

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    Quote Originally Posted by odel
    Mark -- that's great -- thanks very much. I am also getting the Blues in C solo down by playing it in Bb, just because...this diagram is really useful for figuring out the various tones.
    I play that solo in Bb too.
    I've been working on Wes Montgomery's "D-Natural Blues," which is a slow(er) blues and this morning I played the first chorus of Herb's "Bay Blues" (-in Bb in "Swing Blues") over it. It's great to be able to move the solos around the neck for use in different keys.

    Those who go on to "Rhythm Shapes" will learn lines that combine two, sometimes three, shapes....

  26. #75

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    I am not sure why you put all three of those on the same neck? To me those are three types of arpeggio shapes, one based on an open D chord shape, one based on an open A chord shape, and one based on an open F chord shape. Of course he shows the fingering of both maj7 and dominant for all three of these. So say you are playing blues in Bb the 1 4 5 is Bb, Eb, and F. I guess you would find where these chords are by using the roots or as some people call them, post markers.

    Doing this generally leads to starting on the root (the place where the post marker is). Starting on the root is bad (they tell me) and that is the habit I am trying to break.
    Last edited by richb2; 02-21-2015 at 06:02 PM.