Fewell's Melodic Approach - Ch. 1-2

[digger]

It is a great book, but I'm still struggling to ingrain the shapes and ideas into my playing - hence I keep coming back to the early chapters, rather than progressing with the group.

One thing I found is that the shapes did indeed provide an easy structure to finding the interesting colour notes for any given chord, but then the shapes themselves were (are) causing my playing to sound a certain way. And it's not a sound I particular like - I'm a fan of early swing and the lines I've been coming up with based on the early chapters are anything but this.

However, I recently came across the video below, and Evan Christopher is talking about exactly what we're talking about here, but he's talking about how Louis Armstrong / Johnny Dodds used precisely this stuff (for instance playing Am lines over a D7 to get the interesting notes) so I know it can be done...

My ears aren't good enough or quick enough to pick the precise moments out of what Evan Christopher plays, but at least with a bit of transcription work it might open a different door:

Talking Jazz with Evan Christopher and Yaakov Hoter – Part 2. Melody, Chords and Colors - Gypsyandjazz

Regards
Derek

[clebergf]

Hey Derek, my playing is all about swing and trad Jazz too, of course that some influence from Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Grant Green, Wes are inevitable because I hear them a lot, but I try to keep my lines more swing oriented.

I think that something that could help you is transcribe some Charlie Christian solos or just get some solos that are already there transcribed and analyze them. He uses a lot of triads to give different colors to the solos and this is what I'm really expecting from this book, to be able to use triads in a way that Charlie, Wes and Grant used them. (without the genius part, of course.. )
Rose Room is a great start.

[clebergf]

Hello there friends!!

Well, after two hours (one yesterday and one today) studying the book I decided to record an attempt to improvise on Elle.
I have no idea how to solo over Bossa, I'm from Brazil but I think this is the first time that I tried to improvise over a Bossa, sorry. hahahaha

I'm really enjoying it, the concept to combine triads. I think this will increase a lot my playing.

Fell free for any feedback.

[clebergf]

Hello there!!
I did this chart to help me visualize all the triads for all the keys and maybe it can be useful for someone.

[digger]

As mentioned above, I've gone right back to the beginning on this book.

I found I simply hadn't internalised these shapes and triads well enough that when I was away from this book - for example, practicing a tune - none of this stuff was appearing in my playing.

This exercise, and the work I'm currently doing, precedes even Ex. 2.1. I've simply taking the initial set of shapes (page 12) with their root on the sixth string (so this is only half of the job!) and I'm really trying to ingrain them. I'm doing this by playing them over some Jamey Aebersold tracks, each in just one key. Some of the tracks swing, some are in three four, others are more Latin.

I'm trying to find the relationships between the shapes, where chromatics fit nicely, where one shape joins another and so on. It's a long job, and I think I'll be here a while, but I'm the slowest learner I know, and, in general it takes me years to get through a book.

My playing here isn't that good. There are few nice lines, the timing and touch is often off and I'm still trying to get my right hand sorted. But this is really just by way of saying I'm still here! :-)

Derek

[Jehu]

Nice, Derek!

You're pretty well doing a funkier version of my daily warm up along to a backing track. I start each practice spending a few minutes just freely improvising up and down the fretboard and through the shapes, and I think it really pays off over time.

Glad to see you still at it, and of course there's no hurry.

[TOMMO]

Looks and sounds like time well spent, Derek.

[digger]

So today's key was A minor. That staple of thousands of hours of mindless and random playing up and down the blues scale. And it suddenly struck me, that these notes I'm playing from GF's triads are exactly the same notes as in the minor pentatonic with an added 9th, which I tend to add anyway.

So I've sort of done a U-turn.

I was thinking that what GF was having us do was learn certain groups of notes that would lead us to these nice extensions. But I didn't think he wanted to only stick to his given shapes. The reason being, in his very first exercise, in bar 9, he uses an F triad that isn't specifically show in the preceding, and very first, diagram. I simply took this as an indication that we should take the idea of the triads, and learn them not just where GF has shown us, but all over the neck.

So this is what I've been doing.

And yet, in doing this, I've led myself right back to the various minor pentatonic shapes that I already know from years of playing rock and blues.

So now I'm thinking it is the shapes that are important, rather than the notes. That limiting ourselves to GF's shapes will get us playing these extensions more than we would if we stuck to our old minor pentatonic shapes with the added notes.

All good, anyway.

Derek

[Eck]

Shapes provide the link from the sound in your head to the sound on the guitar. They can also lead your playing but that can easily lead to predictable lines... then again shapes allow you to keep playing which perhaps is the most important of all -motivation

[Bilginey]

Hi everyone, glad to see this topic , it is very helpful for new beginners to the book. i have a confusion on ex. 2.1 how to connect fingering sets in the middle? So i can go up and down two sets along the fretboard. Thanks.

[847zebra]

Hello, I just purchased Jazz Improvisation for Guitar: A Melodic Approach that was supposed to come with a CD but quess what, no CD no online access code was included. Seems to be a common problem with this book. Would anyone please provide links to the audio? Thank you, very much.

[digger]

I thought it was time for (yet) another attempt at trying to extract the magic from this book. (Yet) again, I've gone back to the beginning. This is literally page 11 / 12 and no more (i.e. aside from the theory refresh chapter, this is the first two pages of the book) and I've taken the triads in Gm, transposed them to Cm, and am trying to get them under my fingers by playing a simple Gm blues. I still don't find the triad shapes conducive to nice swinging eighth note runs, but I think that's me, not the system. This time I shall take it really slow. Those first few pages of my copy are already covered in questions / thoughts / ideas, and I'm hoping this time I might get beyond the first few chapters to the good stuff :-)

[DevZoo]

Hi Everyone!
I got this book for my winter studies and found this thread and liked it. I know it's old so sorry for ressurecting it but I'd love to share my experience and post some results.

So I come from the Blues/Pentatonic side of guitar and can noodle over any blues jam but I wanted to get into navigating chord changes and so far this book seems to be amazing for what I'm looking for.

@digger : the way I see it is that this approach is ment to help us think more in patterns and sound, not in ABC/123 etc. So I'm practicing the patterns, comparing them to what I know about the pentatonics and chord shapes. With the pentatonics I use anchor points and familliar little licks aroud each root note to navigate the fretboard. So I just shift these patterns to overlap with the next key, so I don't have to know what note I am on and don't have to start on a root. I rather have to figure out where the patterns overlap and where I end up in the new pattern, then I can navigate to the nearest root... hard to explain but I want to make a video soon.

Also, I've been working on a little tool to help visualize fretboard patterns and hope to share it on this journey.

[digger]

Hey DevZoo

Welcome to the site. It's a great place and you should fine all manner of help, assistance, great music, friendliness, immense knowledge and strong opinions!

Be great to get some new life into this thread. I'm still working on this book (still that first proper chapter, believe it or not) but actually listening to that clip I posted I'm not too disappointed. I felt it was a bit mellow, but the more I post things the more I'm discovering that maybe that's just me - Mellow Del, maybe? Perhaps, irrespective of what I listen to, my playing is always going to be laid back.

Derek

[DevZoo]

@digger : I'm with you on the mellow side. Less is more. Playing steady and swung 8th notes did help me to improve my vocabulary and speed but when soloing I look for tiny ideas that I like and then kinda dance around them.

I'm also sticking with this chapter until I get the shapes into muscle memory.

What I noticed with Elle is that you can stick to the pattern of the Am (xx755x) for the A-7 AND the D-7 and for the Eb-7 AND the Bb-7 you just shift the same pattern a half step up to Bb-(xx866).

It's explained with the four areas a page later. If you play the four triads included in each of the chords from the tune you will notice how they overlap in each area of the fretboard. There is an Am triad in the extensions of Dm and a Bbm triad in the extensions of Ebm. That was a lightbulb moment for me.

I still need a while to digest this and I'm traveling atm. but I hope to post some first results soon.

[DevZoo]

So here is my late and wonky attempt at Elle:

It's a one-take, I loved the scenery so I wanted to keep it and I'll do my best to improve in the future.

I still drop into bluesy tones but it was fun and I've learnt a lot.