Randy Vincent's Cellular Approach (and other books)

[Doublea A]

Spent some time shedding Jordu these past weeks, putting the Randy Vincent stuff to use as much as possible. Here's a clip of me taking a few choruses, mixing the melodic cells in with general improvisation following my ear. Makes for a good combo.

I went through the entire first chapter again last night and took note of all the cells Randy outlines. Moving on to another tune, one which doesn't feature rapidly cycling dominants, my plan is to pick a cell for each chord type and run it, much like I'd do when working on arpeggios. I mentioned Mike Steinel's "3 In, 2 Out" stuff in an earlier post. Looks like all of those patterns are mentioned in Randy's book too. Starting to see the utility of this stuff and hearing it come out in my playing. We'll see what happens next.

Great stuff!!
I think you are right on the idea is to apply the technique to tunes.


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[matt.guitarteacher]

Spent some time shedding Jordu these past weeks, putting the Randy Vincent stuff to use as much as possible. Here's a clip of me taking a few choruses, mixing the melodic cells in with general improvisation following my ear. Makes for a good combo.

I went through the entire first chapter again last night and took note of all the cells Randy outlines. Moving on to another tune, one which doesn't feature rapidly cycling dominants, my plan is to pick a cell for each chord type and run it, much like I'd do when working on arpeggios. I mentioned Mike Steinel's "3 In, 2 Out" stuff in an earlier post. Looks like all of those patterns are mentioned in Randy's book too. Starting to see the utility of this stuff and hearing it come out in my playing. We'll see what happens next.

I have very very few hours into that book , but it has had a significant effect on my playing and the way I hear legato phrasing on the guitar ever since. I had thoughts at several points of skipping ahead to the 2-5 sections , simply because they might be more applicable to more tunes etc.

[princeplanet]

Why did every one stop? Can someone point to an etude style solo that's made 100% of these cells? Just to see how they sound in practice? I get that they're meant to be blended with other material, but maybe it's tje best way to show people why (or not) this approach is worth investing in. Seems to me that peeps put in some early yards, but then lost the faith ...?

[matt.guitarteacher]

Why did every one stop? Can someone point to an etude style solo that's made 100% of these cells? Just to see how they sound in practice? I get that they're meant to be blended with other material, but maybe it's tje best way to show people why (or not) this approach is worth investing in. Seems to me that peeps put in some early yards, but then lost the faith ...?

The book is sequenced kind of funny. The beginning cells are 2-beat dominant lines resolving cyclically. Says that he basically developed the material out of trying to needy that need: fast cycling dominants. So, you run into that stuff in tunes etc, but it's a little too specific to immediately apply to entire tunes. In later sections of the book, he kind of expands I think.

Anyway, I never did it with the group. I played with it sporadically over a couple of weeks. It's really great material. Initially, I got it, hoping for more of a "things to play "/vocabulary type book. I'm sure that's an eventual byproduct of really working through it, but if anything, especially short-term, it's a really nice technique book for legato on guitar and making it really swing.

[Kommetjie]

A question if I may . . . how does one convert a 2 beat cell into a 4 beat cell? I've been working on Autumn Leaves for about a year now and it only has one spot where the chords last for just two beats.

[matt.guitarteacher]

He has things in that book about combining cells to make longer ones etc.

[dingusmingus]

A question if I may . . . how does one convert a 2 beat cell into a 4 beat cell? I've been working on Autumn Leaves for about a year now and it only has one spot where the chords last for just two beats.

I believe Chapter 3 is devoted to that.

[corpse]

Are these like the small phrases Barry Harris teaches?

[Chris Matt]

Can anyone tell me what the well known jazz tune that is the changes to exercise 1-93?

Thanks!

[xavriley]

Can anyone tell me what the well known jazz tune that is the changes to exercise 1-93?

Thanks!

It's called "Jordu"! -

It's famously challenging for the B section which has a lot of dominant chords lasting two beats each. You can hear in that video that Barney mostly treats the A section as a C minor blues and then uses repeated sequences for the B section.

A few thoughts on this book in general - I've had it for a while and I've been wanting to dip in again recently.

The idea of improvising using small "cells" probably goes back as far as Bach - when you're trying to outline harmony, the note that gives you the most "information" is the 3rd so it's common to hit that on the first beat of a chord (assuming that a bass is already providing the root). The other things to include in a cell are some chord tones (i.e. roots, fifths, sevenths). With those constraints, there are only a limited number of ways to construct, say, a four note cell. This is one of the main ideas from Bert Ligon's books.

A slightly different idea of cells emerges with John Coltrane. When he was looking to push the boundaries of playing over changes on tunes like Giant Steps, the thirds of the chords don't necessarily have strong voice leading into the next chord. Also, in Coltrane changes the 4ths of the moving key centers sound particularly bad if you hit them late and run into the next key center. To solve this problem he started using a lot of cells that avoided the 4th of the major chord e.g. 1-2-3-5 in major, 1-b3-4-5 in minor and their inversions. This idea is taken up by Jerry Bergonzi in his books. It's a slightly different approach to what Bert Ligon and Randy Vincent are suggesting. For my ears, you end up with a slightly more ambiguous sound in terms of harmony (not a bad thing) - a bit more modern perhaps.

Where this really gets hard on the guitar is that each cell is mutliplied by a number of possibilities in terms of fingerings, and then to link the cells you need to be on the right fingers to start the next cell! If you were to write all the possible ways to link just two cells on the guitar it would run into the hundreds I'm guessing. In maths this is called a "combinatorial explosion" which means you get a really big number.

What I also find is that not all of these combinations are comfortable to play on guitar, which makes the idea of being able to improvise freely with them seem like it would be a stretch too far. So, what are we supposed to do? Well, taking some inspiration from Ted Greene we can think about how he approached chords.

Ted would first try to draw up a big list of chords, attempting to cover every possible inversion and voicing. This sounds insane, but he actually managed it - it's called his "V system" and a few of his students have written about it. This resulted in thousands and thousands of chords. The next stage is really important - Ted would play through them all and *curate* the ones that he liked, and put a star next to them. Putting a star on a chord might have been because the sound was good, or because it was comfortable to play. In any case it was because he thought it would be useful in a musical situation.

I haven't managed this myself yet, but I think it would be a good idea to treat this book (A Cellular Approach) in a similar way. Try to run all the possibilities at least once, and then if you find a cool line or combination make a note of it and focus on that. Finding fingerings that work on guitar is so important and in my view, overlooked. The other option is that you go for complete fretboard mastery so that you can play anything - a couple of players have managed this (Mike Walker in the UK is one) - but it's a long, long road that many of us aren't really setup to travel on.

Just my two cents...

[bobafifi]

[GuyBoden]

I've just got Randy Vincent's 'All instrument' book, it's the same exercises as the Cellular Approach book, but for 'All instruments'.

I'm finding that rhythmically, the phrases sound better when I start before the bar.

Connection notes b7 to 3.


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