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Originally Posted by FwLineberry
From page 10: "The following activities (line forms) should be associated with their respective chord inversions. They should be thoroughly understood and memorized before moving on."
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05-14-2019 03:54 PM
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I agree, but not as licks to be recycled whenever you see a ii V I but as training exercises to learn the principles behind the activities.
I think there's a lot of value to be had by thoroughly learning each exercise. I don't think there's any value in thinking the licks should stay the same in each section. The expectation I've seen here and elsewhere is that you'll be shown a lick and then be shown what to do with that lick. That's not really how this book works.
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I've been working with this book for a while now as a bit of a warm-up/technique thing (i.e., a more musical way of getting into a practice session than scales or finger exercises). Right now I'm in Phase III, and just starting on the second line study. I'm really digging it.
I still start every session going through the five activities. As you'll see, everything builds on those or is a variation on those. I think the variability was intentional on Pat's part: The activities are starting points, ways to visualise or approach that area of the fretboard on that particular inversion, but flexible enough to be altered to suit the context of what has come before and what comes after.
I thought about starting (or rekindling) a thread about this book, but in the end I don't think there is a lot to say about it. It is one of those things that you just do, you get the material under your fingers, and eventually it just begins to spontaneously come out in your playing. That's what I'm starting to see happen, anyway... not that I'm blazing through changes like Pat!
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Originally Posted by FwLineberry
I think initially, yes, you have to really know each of the 5 activities as written. But as you learn them, as you pointed out earlier, you notice that each long line is made up of multiple 3 to 6 note 'cells', many of which crop up multiple times in different activities. Same cell, different position.
So as the material becomes really ingrained in your playing, you can start to just combine these little cells on the fly and take the line in any direction you want - shifting through positions but still keeping that cool 'bop' flavour of the line.
I think that's why the lines later in the book make all these slight changes to the direction of the line - it's a demonstration of the above.
In parallel to this, the book is also concerned with being able to use these lines to follow the changes, based on the 'minorisation' concept. The ability to both move through changes and constantly re-combine the 'cells' on the fly gives you a ton of material that you can kind of use as 'glue' to transition between ideas as you improvise.
Sheryl Bailey covers some quite similar concepts for creating lines in her 'Family Of Four' tutorials.
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Originally Posted by mnorris777
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I play the 5 activities almost every day as a warmup. I also decided to learn each activity transposed into all five positions. Nuts, I know.
So in position 1, I'll play activity 1,2,3,4 and 5. Same with position 2-5. I transposed the phrases to fit where it made sense to me. Some work better than others but they all can be arranged to fit. So if I'm playing in Gm, I'll have 25 patterns to play. It actually goes faster than you would think.
One benefit of transposing one activity over 5 positions is it helps to break up my habitual way of seeing those boxes/positions.
I also like to play these activities over different chord progressions just to see how they sound. Vamping over Gm7 endlessly gets boring. I also take the activities apart when some aspect strikes me as interesting.
The activities start on the first beat of the measure but it's fun to explore how the phrases work when you start them on different beats.
Larry
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Been lurking this thread, very inspiring, but I’m afraid it’s dying out, so it’s time I start contributing myself!
I recorded Line study 1B, since that’s as far as I’ve come, and then stitched in an older video of some work on Phase 1. The video format looks strange, because my editing software was set to an instagram layout.
I’ve only just started, so any feedback or tips is much appreciated.
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Here’s 2A. Any tips or criticism welcome. When I work on these, sometimes it makes all the sense in the world and sometimes it feels like I’ve just started learning about music yesterday.
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Originally Posted by podink
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Originally Posted by ErikWasser
Larry
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During quarantine days I've analyzed all the lines from the LE book and grouped them into 4-note cells related to minor7 chord. The first table shows all the lines with times they appear in brackets. Arrow indicates a possible direction (up or down) of the phrase. I then put the most frequent cells into the second table. No surprise that the most frequent cells are 12b34 and 35b79 and their variations like permutations or upper extended arpeggios.
Hope this could be useful for someone else than me
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just created an account to thank all those who have contributed to this thread! I have been working on LE lately, and had many of the same questions that have been brainstormed here. Pat is one of the greatest hard bop guitarists ever, and although it's a little frustrating to work through this book compared to something like Randy Vincent's Cellular Approach book, you can't help but feel a little more connected to him and his music for your trouble.
Magerlab, are you still working on this after 6 months more of quarantining?
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I play lines from LE on a regular basis, combining them with Garrison Fewell's lines and some of the Randy Vincent lines (from "Unaltered II-V" part). Thus I get a strong framework for minor/major or dominant lines based on minor chord shapes and phrases.
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Originally Posted by podink
Thanks for the suggestion!
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Well, I just bought all of Pat Martino's instructional materials (except Creative Force II, waiting for an affordable one to pop up). I am focusing on the TrueFire course, The Nature of Guitar, but I would be happy to work on Linear Expressions. I'll read through the thread for starters.
Jim
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Originally Posted by Moonray
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Originally Posted by geoffsct
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I've just finished phase one of the book, I'd like to share the results before starting phase two next week.
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Originally Posted by MAURICIO SOUZA
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I just finished phase 2. In fact, I believe phase 3 will take longer...
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You’re the best, thanks for doing these. I’m going to pick them back up.
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For the Phase 1 Activities, what tempo are you getting them up to before moving onto the next Activity? And then the next Phase?
I'm topping out at 130 BPM, which seems respectable but I've seen videos of players just shredding them at much faster tempos. At some point it seems like there would be diminishing returns.
Thoughts?
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Originally Posted by MAURICIO SOUZA
Thanks in advance!
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