The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    Okay, is there something else going on here that might help me bridge the divergence between Haque's invitation to add even more chord changes and Harris's encouragement to eliminate some of the ones that are already there?
    Just different ways of thinking. Harris teaches the fundamentals of bebop. Haque comes from a different palate.

    Seen The Advancing Guitarist yet? Mwaah-ha-ha-ha!

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    Worked beautifully. Albeit slowly ;-)
    Everything was just like the Matrix

  4. #28

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    Getting back to the OP - sometimes it looks like teachers are contradicting each other.

    - Sometimes there’s a deeper synthesis it takes time to see
    - And sometimes they are just contradicting each other.

    life is messy!

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Everything was just like the Matrix
    Excellent :-)

  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    Then you have someone like Christiaan van Hemert saying that if you want to get good fast then don't do music theory



    Instead learn/transcribe a lot of solos and categorize and applying licks from those applying them in different settings.
    Your time is certainly better spent using your ears. Barry doesn't talk much about that process, probably because it would never occur to him that people are misled to the point where they would try to play music from theory.

    Theory should be descriptive of actual music you have encountered.

    And licks are great to get started. (Traditionally, that's how you would learn until your elders would start to tell you off for copying other peoples shit - they don't do that enough these days.)

    For the more advanced student, I think there's room for a much more organic and individual process... licks are a way in, and the ear is always necessary, but collecting chunks of material is just one thing you can do. Barry can show you a way to be highly idiomatic without being a mere imitator. The Tristano school is also interesting from that perspective.

    So, I don't think the 'licks' thing is the be all and end all for me, but I see it's value. Most gypsy style players tend to be lick based improvisers, but answer me this:

    Whose licks was Django playing?

    But in the end most of my real world concerns as a teacher are with beginner to intermediate jazz players and those who find it hard to get started with the music itself. Hemert is great for that, never found myself disagreeing with any of the videos I've watched. Dude can certainly play.

  7. #31

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    I’ve listened to a lot of Django and I would say he was one of the most creative and inventive improvisers of all time. While he certainly has licks he goes beyond them. And he has licks that I’ve heard no Gypsy style player play.

    One influence was Louis Armstrong, and we can certainly hear that.

    Similarly, whose licks was Charlie Parker playing? Or Wes?

    With Parker we can actually map the transition; from playing Prez licks joined together to being Charlie Parker.

  8. #32

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    If your aim is to play, it’s more important to play than to understand.

    Also people who are experts in other fields often assume that the mindset that is successful in that field will be helpful in music.

    Understanding music has never been a focus of musicians but more of intellectuals who are interested in music.

  9. #33

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    BTW listening to Django’s contemporaries such as the Ferret brothers, Oscar Aleman and all on reveals there was very much a style of playing in Paris at that time.

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    ... Understanding music has never been a focus of musicians but more of intellectuals who are interested in music.
    Not quite sure how to digest this. Perhaps it hinges upon what you mean by "understanding music"?

  11. #35

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    I think learning licks and playing them rote is definitely the path for many musicians. I also know that it is de rigueur to dismiss all things intellectual as effete masturbation of people who can’t actually perform. But it isn’t the way for everybody. The problem is that too many people think their way is universal.

    I play/practice two to three hours a day, and have done so for thirty years. For the first decade or so I played classical guitar. It was all rote memorization and no theory. Then I became interested in the blues, which I also learned as grips and licks. I could play my pentatonic licks, but all my solos sounded the same. I couldn’t tell you what a triad was or what people meant when they said “1-4-5”. One what?

    After twenty years of playing I was incapable of composing anything, let alone improvising on the fly. Then I discovered jazz and the intellectual music theory of bebop and modern jazz players. I feel my playing improved more in ten years than the previous twenty once I began to understand the music.

    Perhaps real jazz scholars can tell me that Dizzie Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, et. al., didn’t know theory. That they just played licks until, by devine inspiration or accident, new licks were born. Perhaps, but my brain doesn’t work like that. The more I understand what they are doing and why they made their choices the more tools I have for composing my own lines.

    There is no doubt that music is a physical sport. You have to actually do it —a lot— to be able to do it well. Without playing and practice you will never progress. But practicing and playing doesn’t imply rote memorization over theory. I can listen to a lick, nod my head, and say “cool, I get it.” But if I don’t practice it and use it in my playing I really haven’t added anything to my playing. Likewise, you can explain the theory of functional harmony, or the melodic minor scale, but if I don’t practice applying it to real music knowing about it doesn’t do anything.

    Theory isn’t the opposite of practice, and licks alone are not music. They are not even mutually exclusive. There are many paths along a musicians development. The only constant is that you have to keep pushing yourself down your path.


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  12. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by rlrhett
    ... Theory isn’t the opposite of practice, and licks alone are not music. They are not even mutually exclusive. There are many paths along a musicians development. The only constant is that you have to keep pushing yourself down your path.
    This makes clear sense to me.

    My path: When I hear something new to my ears that I really enjoy, I often wonder: "hey, what was that? what did he just do there?" For me, the most satisfying insights usually take shape from a theoretical answer. Then I can integrate it into my base of understanding ... transpose it into other keys, work it into other contexts, make it something I can enjoy over and over again.

    Without some grasp of theory, I'd have a much harder time getting anywhere. Instead, I'd find myself just flailing away for a while until I lose patience or interest.

    Related to this, musical "cross-training" has been a phenomenal eye-opener for me. The more instruments I learn to play, the more I see both the differences and the similarities. For me, it makes theory come alive.

  13. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    Not quite sure how to digest this. Perhaps it hinges upon what you mean by "understanding music"?
    Asking why something works is less important to a musician that just doing it.

    This is often very hard for people to accept. Please understand that my background is in the sciences, so it also took me a long time to get it. Doing what I did I tended to look for cleverness and down value the importance of embodied knowledge... And it's that embodied knowledge that makes one a good musician. Nothing else. Sorry if that's quite obvious to you, it wasn't to me.

    It doesn't mean also you can't understand music in a more intellectual way; provided you don't confuse this with the actual process of being a musician. I think I've got quite good at spectating the two.

    So a concrete example:

    It is less important to understand 'why' a II-V-I works the way it does, than to be able to recognise it on the page, know many ways to play one, know lots of things one can do on it as an improviser and above all, know how it sounds.

    Knowing a lot of stuff about functional harmony, analysis and so on is really not that relevant; and I say that as someone who is interested in all that stuff.

    It' snot even helpful to know you are playing a #9 or whatever over the V7 chord. That stuff is really for the exam papers, not the bandstand. In fact, even learning to hear a #9 in isolation over a V7 chord - the musical equivalent of individual vowel sounds or something - is much less important than hearing musical 'words' and 'sentences' - these could be at first licks, snippets of language, common voicings and so on. The stuff Hemert advises you to do, basically.

    You may gain a degree of theoretical knowledge and understanding through learning music, but might well be more rules of thumb, guidelines and idioms than anything resembling 'musical physics.' Or you might abstract general rules and principles which you can publish in a book as the 'secret' of playing music and confuse the bejeezus out of beginners.

    Walk the walk, don't (just) talk the talk...

  14. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Asking why something works is less important to a musician that just doing it.
    Speaking as a musician: Not sure I accept this universal claim.

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    This is often very hard for people to accept... '
    Speaking as a people: Agreed! ;-)

  15. #39

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    Speaking as a musician: Not sure I accept this universal claim.


    Speaking as a people: Agreed! ;-)
    I think it's a complete distraction, or to be fair, a separate area of study. As I say, I'm interested in this stuff. And people spend a lot of money and time on it in the belief that it is important to becoming a musician.

    It's like the way Mozart and Bach were able to write all these works of functional harmony without having a clue what 'functional harmony' was.

    Don't mistake music practice for music theory. One seeks to do, the other to understand and justify.

    As Barry says 'you don't have to understand everything you play.'

  16. #40

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    Perhaps a more palatable way of putting it, is this:

    I've met and played with great musicians who know ALL the theory, and ones who know NONE. The thing they have in common? They have great ears.

    Ergo, theory is optional, playing by ear as much as possible is not.

    It's interesting that I think that would be a fairly mainstream opinion (perhaps I'm wrong), but as soon as I start talking about the limited utility of 'understanding' music to the musician compared to simply noticing and categorising patterns through experience, people find that harder to swallow. One really follows from the other. (Which is not to say music theory isn't interesting for its own sake.)

    It's my belief that every musician who composes or improvises has some sort of practical 'theory'; this might be derived from school learned theory or it might be something very personal and idiosyncratic. It might be based on something very wide ranging and generalised like Chord Scale Theory or something entirely practical and rule of thumb-ish. I actually think the latter describes Barry's way of teaching much more. But in all cases this working body of helpful knowledge has to be based on real musical experience.

    If they aren't teachers they may keep their ideas private, but as it is a feature of human intelligence to recognise patterns, this certainly happens whether or not a player is versed in 'theory.'

    For instance, in the way the progression IV Ivm I in Gypsy Jazz cycles is called 'Christophe'; it's enough to categorise that common chord progression with a memorable name. According to Jimmy Bruno older jazz musicians often had funny names for musical objects they found it convenient to label, such as Honeysuckle Rose bridges and so on (which many older players call 'Montgomery-Ward.')

    Note that the gestalt - the musical 'word' is named, not each chord as in Roman numeral notation. More efficient, and practical.

    Barry uses this approach to generate bebop lines; 'scale down to the 3rd' 'up the chord of the 7th' 'down the scale with rule 3' 'arpeggio down on 2' and so on.
    Last edited by christianm77; 10-22-2020 at 03:25 PM.

  17. #41

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    ... It's like the way Mozart and Bach were able to write all these works of functional harmony without having a clue what 'functional harmony' was.
    I beg to differ.

    Bach and Mozart clearly were not "able to write all those works of functional harmony without having a clue what 'functional harmony' was."

    Quite the contrary.

    They knew exactly what they were doing and were masters of music theory.

    The etudes they composed were designed to illustrate and expand upon the concepts of functional harmony - concepts learned from the masters of functional harmony before them. And, in turn, concepts they passed on to those who studied under them.

    In my OP I wondered aloud about the contrast of Haque's chord addition and Harris's chord subtraction and invited comment and correction if I were misunderstanding their points of view. You've offered some intriguing ideas for which I'm appreciative.

    But to suggest that Bach and Mozart didn't understand the functions of harmony found in the well-tempered Western scale is a bit silly.

  18. #42

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    I beg to differ.

    Bach and Mozart clearly were not "able to write all those works of functional harmony without having a clue what 'functional harmony' was."

    Quite the contrary.

    They knew exactly what they were doing and were masters of music theory.


    The etudes they composed were designed to illustrate and expand upon the concepts of functional harmony - concepts learned from the masters of functional harmony before them. And, in turn, concepts they passed on to those who studied under them.
    This is unlikely as the concept of functional harmony was invented in the late 19th century by Hugo Reimann.

    In fact at least some experts on 18th century music seem to agree that even Rameau's concept of fundamental bass (which would seem basic to us - the idea that 5 3, 6 3 and 6 4 chords are all inversions of the triad) was not widely accepted among musicians even after the publication of his music theory. Rameau's concept is typical of a music theoretic observation - seeking to unify diverse phenomena under one simpler principle.

    Musical physics if you will... They called Rameau the Newton of music, right?

    But as anyone basically familiar with classical harmony knows, of course, this is a simplification because all the inversions behave differently.

    BWV posted this interview elsewhere, which is interesting. Gjerdingen is a professor who has researched 18th century music education in some depth, and wrote a very interesting book called 'Music in the Gallant Style.'

    I like the bit where he calls music theory 'useless'

    But I'll add in Robert Levin, who is obviously a leading authority on Mozart, student of Nadia Boulanger, who both hold up as an example of a continuation of that 18th century tradition through the Paris conservatoire.


    According to this, the way Mozart and Bach wrote- as with all of their professional contemporaries was based on... a huge number of stylistic and idiomatic rules of thumb, particular cases and a lot of experience. We encounter these still in things like Bach chorale harmony; prohibitions on consecutives, to avoid chord iii, not to double the leading note, and so on. Obviously I haven't done that depth of research, but given the time line of Western music theory, I find it convincing.

    In my OP I wondered aloud about the contrast of Haque's chord addition and Harris's chord subtraction and invited comment and correction if I were misunderstanding their points of view. You've offered some intriguing ideas for which I'm appreciative.

    But to suggest that Bach and Mozart didn't understand the functions of harmony found in the well-tempered Western scale is a bit silly.
    If you mean by that they intellectually understood the concept of tonic, predominant and dominant, for instance, apparently, no, they didn't. They couldn't possibly have because that music theory did not exist at that time.

    Did they write music that was later analysed that way by third parties after they were long dead? Yes.

    If you want to hand wave that they understood it on an intuitive level, it's kind of similar to saying a tennis player intuitively understands Newton's laws of motion.

    OK, maybe... but we don't send the tennis player to study physics, do we?
    Last edited by christianm77; 10-22-2020 at 07:30 PM.

  19. #43

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    BTW there's a lot of stuff on Barry Harris on that podcast as well. I think the bloke who runs it has the exact same weird obsessions as I do

  20. #44

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    Clearly, the musical genius of Bach and Mozart blossomed through their firm grasp of theory - more precisely, how harmony functions.

    Herr Reimann composed more terminology than inspiring music. Moreover, labeling stuff after the fact should not be confused with creating underlying concepts.

    Today, 300 years later, Bach's 2- and 3-part inventions and Mozart's concerti bring me to tears. I don't have a favorite Reimann tune.

    Though we disagree, I continue to respect your point of view.

    Peace.

  21. #45

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    Quote Originally Posted by rlrhett
    The problem is that too many people think their way is universal.
    Well, that just about sums up most of society's problems, doesn't it?

  22. #46

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    My two cents. Bill Evans really knew his theory very well and he contributed more than anyone to te use of modes in jazz, except perhaps Debussy, the study of whom gave Evans his way. Dizzy and Miles, and I think Monk too were experts in theory. But they could hear what they -and others -were playing at practically every note.
    To regard a ii-V as a V in soloing is just saying they share the extensions. But I’d definitely stay away from the 7 in the ii chord as it would set you up for resolving to the VI or the vi. Even in comping it’s quite nice to play an ii9 and a V13 changing only the 5 in the ii chord. Depending on the context of course.


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  23. #47

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    Quote Originally Posted by OneWatt
    Clearly, the musical genius of Bach and Mozart blossomed through their firm grasp of theory - more precisely, how harmony functions.

    Herr Reimann composed more terminology than inspiring music. Moreover, labeling stuff after the fact should not be confused with creating underlying concepts.

    Today, 300 years later, Bach's 2- and 3-part inventions and Mozart's concerti bring me to tears. I don't have a favorite Reimann tune.

    Though we disagree, I continue to respect your point of view.

    Peace.
    Well of course, because they were above all musicians. They weren't theorists. Theorists will try to explain why Mozart brings you and I to tears, and what makes 'good music' and they will always fail (Kant realised this), but that's another thread haha.

    This is getting into the woods philosophically, but I'm not sure how underlying concepts exist without being named or described. Certainly it seems a stretch to call such intuitive understandings 'theory' in any usual sense. Conversely, to imagine that Reimann had some special insight into uncategorised concepts in the minds of Mozart and Bach credits seems to be to appeal to some sort of Platonic idea that music theory ideas are discovered rather than invented. I don't personally buy this.

    (OTOH, we actually have some idea of the musical upbringing of 18th century composers which seems to me maybe more relevant to that music.)

    Anyway, it's not my point of view; it's my attempt to relate Robert Gjerdingen's professional opinion based on his research of that era. If these ideas provoke you, the interview above might be worth listen. I'd like to know your thoughts.

    I'm neither a classical composer/improvisor, nor an expert on this era of music although I am reasonably familiar with it (but not as a professional performer), but I do find his ideas relate very strongly to what I do as a jazz musician, educator, and as a postgrad student of music education. They have to me 'the ring of truth.' He might be completely wrong of course, or more likely, partially true.

    Over the years I've had a lot of my opinions and ideas about music radically change as I learn more and more.The idea that it may be worth really making a strong distinction between what is useful to a improvisor and composer and what is of more academic interest directly useful is an idea that's been forming in my head for a long time. Partly, because I want to teach in an uncluttered and focussed way.

    My current thinking is that we give far too much theory to starting students of improvisation and composition IMO; what is actually needed is raw materials. Barry provides that, for example.

    Most of my students already know more theory than they will ever need. It's usually the hours of practice and listening that are lacking.
    Last edited by christianm77; 10-23-2020 at 10:36 AM.

  24. #48

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    @christianm77: I appreciate your latest post.

    No doubt, as the thoughtful educator you are, you see up close how theory and practice compliment each other in learning. To quote that great philosopher, Yogi Berra: "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

    On balance I tend to credit practitioners with creating theory. Not the other way 'round.

    Shakespeare's grasp of the nuts 'n bolts of language was deep and wide... yet he toiled away without a copy of the Oxford or Roget's thesaurus on his shelf... because those good folks hadn't come along for a few more centuries. They then looked at what already existed and gave it labels.

    Either we give Shakespeare his due or we're left to embrace the monkey & typewriter theory of creativity. To my mind, same goes for Bach and Mozart.

    Thanks for continuing to add to the discussion in stimulating ways.

  25. #49

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Most of my students already know more theory than they will ever need. It's usually the hours of practice and listening that are lacking.
    I think this is the root of the disagreement. Most of the young musicians/students I come across know no theory. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I can sense your frustration with theory heavy students who haven’t put in the time. But that’s hardly a universal truth.

    As I said before, whether you put in your time applying your theory or put in your time playing licks by rote, you have to put in your time. I disagree that only by copying other musicians licks can you become a great musician yourself.


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  26. #50

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    Quote Originally Posted by rlrhett
    I think this is the root of the disagreement. Most of the young musicians/students I come across know no theory. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I can sense your frustration with theory heavy students who haven’t put in the time. But that’s hardly a universal truth.

    As I said before, whether you put in your time applying your theory or put in your time playing licks by rote, you have to put in your time. I disagree that only by copying other musicians licks can you become a great musician yourself.


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    For what it‘s worth, here is my experience:

    I‘ve tried to learn to play the altered scale for about a year now. From the theory I got (mainly on this forum), I couldn‘t put together a decent altered phrase to save my life. I then came across a video where two dudes were throwing licks at each other, transcribed a few, and - there you go! But what‘s really funny: I used to play the saxophone, put it away for ten years, took it out the other week and found out that without even trying, I was already playing all that altered stuff that decades ago became embedded in my fingers without me knowing what it was - just from listening to Miles, Sonny and Dexter.

    Now if I could translate that to the guitar I‘d be a happy man.


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