The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #226

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    Quote Originally Posted by FwLineberry
    In my opinion Pat's instructional materials are not designed around learning everything he does note-for-note. There is value in doing that, but it is not the aim of the books/videos. Instead, the aim is to give you ideas of things you could do in certain situations....
    I'm not familiar with all of Pat's instructional materials and I know many (if not most) appeared as videos rather than books. But I think he expects students of "Linear Expressions" to master those "activities" as written.

    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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  3. #227

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    I'm not familiar with all of Pat's instructional materials and I know many (if not most) appeared as videos rather than books. But I think he expects students of "Linear Expressions" to master those "activities" as written.

    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."

    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.

    .

  4. #228

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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!

  5. #229

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    Quote Originally Posted by FwLineberry
    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.

    .
    I'd agree with this.

    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.

  6. #230

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    Quote Originally Posted by mnorris777
    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.
    I wonder if anyone has compared Pat's "cells" to the bebop teaching of David Baker and Barry Harris...

  7. #231

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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

  8. #232

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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.


  9. #233

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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.


  10. #234

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    Quote Originally Posted by podink
    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
    I’m not a hundred percent sure I’m following (might be my poor english skills) do you have a video of you doing this?

  11. #235

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    Quote Originally Posted by ErikWasser
    I’m not a hundred percent sure I’m following (might be my poor english skills) do you have a video of you doing this?
    Sorry I do not have a video. I'm not sure how useful doing what I do actually is beyond what I explained previously. I had a job with a lot of spare time...
    Larry

  12. #236

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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
    Attached Images Attached Images

  13. #237

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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?

  14. #238

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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.

  15. #239

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    Quote Originally Posted by podink
    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.
    I gave that a go the other day. (Not all five positions for all lines but at least two positions for each line.) Requires shifting. Not a bad thing, and I find it a good exercise to transpose them by ear (rather than following the musical notation) and see if I can.

    Thanks for the suggestion!

  16. #240

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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

  17. #241

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    Quote Originally Posted by Moonray
    One day [er.... book] at a time people.


    But this one is something special I reckon.

    When you get to Phase III you get the biggest pay off...

    A work still in progress I might add.
    But I've only been working on it for around 10 years....I'm not kidding...To this day I play the Phase III Line Studies [A & B progressions] every day as a warm up.Beats scale and arpeggios any day...eternally
    grateful for his inspiration, and this book.


    Time is of the essence.
    I absolutely agree that significant time - years! - spent on this book will transform most guitarist's playing and approach.

  18. #242

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    Quote Originally Posted by geoffsct
    I'm still referencing those minor forms and attaching them to the 7th chords derived from the parent diminished chords (a major concept in Creative Force). I'm enjoying this so much. Sometimes whilst learning these licks I think "...that's awkward...not for me". Then after a while it's in my vocabulary.
    Exactly describes my experience and encourages perseverence with this seminal book.

  19. #243
    I've just finished phase one of the book, I'd like to share the results before starting phase two next week.


  20. #244

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    Quote Originally Posted by MAURICIO SOUZA
    I've just finished phase one of the book, I'd like to share the results before starting phase two next week.
    Well done!

  21. #245
    I just finished phase 2. In fact, I believe phase 3 will take longer...


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  24. #248

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    You’re the best, thanks for doing these. I’m going to pick them back up.

  25. #249

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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?

  26. #250

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    Quote Originally Posted by MAURICIO SOUZA
    I've just finished phase one of the book, I'd like to share the results before starting phase two next week.

    Hi Mauricio! Apropos of my question above regarding optimal tempo for the activities, your video says you're playing the Phase 1 Activities at 85 BPM. However the Activities are notated as eighth notes, whereas you're playing 16ths. In which case, wouldn't that double the tempo you're playing them, to 170 BPM? And then at 200 (vs 100) later on?

    Thanks in advance!