The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    From now on most of my posts on the forum may be succinctly replaced with ‘what Richie Hart said.’

    with a link to this interview.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    So much great stuff here. Hopefully this thread will be a good space for elaboration and constructive discussion of the ideas in the interview.
    It's amazing that Richie Hart's ideas of music and education aren't more obvious in the world we live in and need to be stated.

    Some of the points he discussed:

    - The importance of using the head and knowing the lyrics in the improvisation.
    - Learning tunes as a counterpoint of the root movement of the harmony and the melody. Then filling in the middle voices, perhaps, by feel and taste.
    - Working out the harmony of tunes by paying attention to the smooth individual voice movements.
    - Embellishment of these voice movements as a resource for developing the melody in the improvisation.
    - Listening to a lot of jazz and extracting language from transcriptions.
    - Rhythmic phrasing as the first thing to understand from the transcriptions.
    - Superimposed harmonies as another important thing to learn from the transcriptions.

    Also Nikhil Hogan is as good an interviewer as it gets.
    Last edited by Tal_175; 10-26-2020 at 10:46 AM.

  4. #3

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    Wonderful conversation. Thanks so much, Christian.

  5. #4

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    Almost everything he said is stuff that I had to puzzle out myself over the years, a slow period of disillusionment when I realised about 75% everything I'd read or been told on jazz courses was complete bollocks.

    It's so much faster to just listen to this interview. Plus he's properly respected big cheese jazz guitar player and educator so maybe people might listen to him instead of dismissing these ideas as the ravings of an internet idiot (which is of course fair.)

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    So much great stuff here. Hopefully this thread will be a good space for elaboration and constructive discussion of the ideas in the interview.
    It's amazing that Richie Hart's ideas of music and education aren't more obvious in the world we live in and need to be stated.

    Some of the points he discussed:

    - The importance of using the head and knowing the lyrics in the improvisation.
    - Learning tunes as a counterpoint of the root movement of the harmony and the melody. Then filling in the middle voices, perhaps, by feel and taste.
    - Working out the harmony of tunes by paying attention to the smooth individual voice movement.
    - Embellishment of this harmonic movement as the resource for developing the melody in the improvisation.
    - Listening to a lot of jazz and extracting language from transcriptions.
    - Rhythmic phrasing as the first thing to understand from the transcriptions.
    - Super-imposed harmonies as another important thing the learn from the transcriptions.

    Also Nikhil Hogan is as good an interviewer as it gets.
    Thanks for posting this.

    I'd add, to the foregoing:

    He talked about Lester Young and Charlie Christian as developing the idea of playing a chord over a different chord. That concept has always struck me as under-discussed. When I transcribe I tend to do short things that catch my ear -- and oftentimes it's exactly that.

    He took a nuanced view of metronome practice. I haven't often heard a discussion of pros and cons in different situations.

    I came away with the impression that he thinks song, rhythm, vocabulary -- in that order. I didn't hear much positive about CST type analysis. He did talk about learning sounds.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    He talked about Lester Young and Charlie Christian as developing the idea of playing a chord over a different chord. That concept has always struck me as under-discussed. When I transcribe I tend to do short things that catch my ear -- and oftentimes it's exactly that.
    This is what I meant by "superimposed harmonies" in the post above but it's probably not a good term to use for this. Upper extensions or diatonic subs are better terms may be.
    Garrison Fewell's "A Melodic Approach" book covers this concept in detail. He calls these melodic extensions.
    Last edited by Tal_175; 10-26-2020 at 07:12 AM.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    This is what I meant by "superimposed harmonies" the post above but it's probably not a good term to use for this. Upper extensions or diatonic subs are better terms may be.
    Garrison Fewell's "A Melodic Approach" book covers this concept in detail. He calls these melodic extensions.
    I think upper extensions is an unhelpful term, because you end up relating everything to the chord root which is just cumbersome. The ‘chord symbol becomes god’ as Richie puts it.

    Superimposed harmony much better. Or ‘invisible paths’ to use Steve Coleman’s term.

    Don’t think Dm9 G13b9 Cmaj9 -

    Am E G or Fmaj7 E7 Em7 is better.

    See also functional relations

  9. #8

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    Also as Jordan Klemons/Stephon Harris points out you hear these ‘upper extension’ tones not as ‘tensions’ but as resting tones.

    C sounds dissonant on Cmaj7, but not the Em triad.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    From now on most of my posts on the forum may be succinctly replaced with ‘what Richie Hart said.’

    with a link to this interview.
    I've aways agreed with almost all of what Richie espouses, he is able to more eloquently describe the "process" than those he learned it from (GB for instance).

    However, I wouldn't say his is the last word, or even the most eloquent description. TBH, I find your own explanations of these topics to be more informative and probably more compelling, not pulling your chain here.

    The best teachers ain't always the best players! (I hope that doesn't come across as a backhanded compliment...)

  11. #10

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    Well thanks very much. (I think haha.)

    I do feel though that there is a lot more clout behind this stuff coming from someone who is a world class player was on the NYC scene etc.

    Not that Richie is by any means the only person from that scene who would tell you this, but yes he is unusual in his ability to put together into a coherent argument.

    But then nothing I say here is my idea really; it all comes from somewhere, and a lot of working it out for myself. The way I think we all have to learn in the end.

  12. #11

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    Also if Berliner’s book is anything to go by, there’s always been a tension between the NYC situated learning environment and the pedagogy focussed environment at Berklee.

  13. #12

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    There's a long thread on the Gear Page by a guy named Tag who studied with Richie Hart. He talks about what Richie taught him. (Which is what Richie learned from Benson.)

    Nothing that is at odds with what Richie says in the interview but this thread comes from the perspective of learning to do this---it's more bottom-up, which may be easier for less-schooled / advanced players to digest.

    https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...prove.1849640/

  14. #13

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    Big fan of Richie...whole lot of TRUTH in this interview.

  15. #14

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    I haven't accumulated too many guitar instruction books.

    My preference for tomes with 'lurid covers' partly explains this.

    Without this thread I wouldn't have discovered Johnny Smith's method as a special aid to learning to read for guitar.

    Thank you, Christian.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    There's a long thread on the Gear Page by a guy named Tag who studied with Richie Hart. He talks about what Richie taught him. (Which is what Richie learned from Benson.)

    Nothing that is at odds with what Richie says in the interview but this thread comes from the perspective of learning to do this---it's more bottom-up, which may be easier for less-schooled / advanced players to digest.

    https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...prove.1849640/
    Yes, I learned a lot from the original thread from 10 years prior to that one. It was the first time I learned about the whole T / D thing. I think I recall the last dozen pages regressing into a pissing contest where some guy was refuting T /D and insisting that this generalized approach lacked much needed nuance when expressing the intended harmony. Actually he made some good points, and to this day I still have his doubts in the back of my own mind when I come across parts of tunes where T/D is found wanting (in my experience, pretty rare). So yeah, thanks Tag!

  17. #16

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    My take on the tonic/dominant thing is that its a little more advanced...or rather, you can go there once you get some other basics down.

    Like I've said before, I think first get yourself to where you CAN chase every change...and then don't do that

  18. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    This is what I meant by "superimposed harmonies" in the post above but it's probably not a good term to use for this. Upper extensions or diatonic subs are better terms may be.
    Garrison Fewell's "A Melodic Approach" book covers this concept in detail. He calls these melodic extensions.
    I think "superimposed harmonies" is a perfect term. Better than the one I use which is "phantom chords".

    There may be, but I've never seen, a kind of fakebook that has two sets of chords for a tune. One, the original harmony. Two, the chords you use while soloing. The solo changes would be all simple chords or triads. I've seen some things close to this in Mimi Fox's arpeggios book for example, and I've seen books of reharms, but not exactly what I'm talking about. It may exist though.

    So, for example, All of Me would start with Cmaj7 as the original harmony, but, right above it, there would be a different chord. Maybe more than one. So, it might be Am7, Em7, Gmaj7, Bm7 etc. Then, the next chord would be E7 (original) and, above it, would be Bm7, Bm7b5, E7b9, D-something etc.

    I got this idea while playing a chart of Desifinado and suddenly playing the best sounding line of my life. It turned out, I was reading a different chart. At that point in the tune, the chords were different. I played my usual simplistic s*** and it sounded terrific.

    It could even extend to very outside sounds, from the point of view that every good outside line is a good sounding inside line on some other harmony.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Also if Berliner’s book is anything to go by, there’s always been a tension between the NYC situated learning environment and the pedagogy focussed environment at Berklee.
    For those unfamiliar, this is Berliner's book, "Thinking in Jazz." Long, thorough, and worth the time.

    This may save time and verbiage-berliner-thinking-jazz-jpg

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    There may be, but I've never seen, a kind of fakebook that has two sets of chords for a tune. One, the original harmony. Two, the chords you use while soloing. The solo changes would be all simple chords or triads. I've seen some things close to this in Mimi Fox's arpeggios book for example, and I've seen books of reharms, but not exactly what I'm talking about. It may exist though.
    Dick Hyman’s books show the original composer’s changes along with commonly-played alternative changes, some of which are reharms or subs. The Colorado Cookbook offers head changes and solo changes for a few tunes, including Stella.

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by pcjazz
    Dick Hyman’s books show the original composer’s changes along with commonly-played alternative changes, some of which are reharms or subs. The Colorado Cookbook offers head changes and solo changes for a few tunes, including Stella.
    Thanks for these references. If the alternate changes are simple chords that are intended to be overlaid on the original changes, then, that's exactly what I was writing about.

  22. #21

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    If anyone can claim the title of a living Jazz encyclopedia that would be Richie Hart...!

  23. #22

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    This may save time and verbiage



    I doubt if it'll stop the verbiage :-)

    But it's a very good video. Another college survivor

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by pcjazz
    Dick Hyman’s books show the original composer’s changes along with commonly-played alternative changes, some of which are reharms or subs. The Colorado Cookbook offers head changes and solo changes for a few tunes, including Stella.
    I have Hyman’s book. It’s a useful text.

    The real hardcore standards guys go to the original sheet music, but Hyman is a good source too....

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Thanks for these references. If the alternate changes are simple chords that are intended to be overlaid on the original changes, then, that's exactly what I was writing about.
    Well they're more like alternative changes that fit the melody.

    When you solo, you don't necessarily have to choose alternative changes that fit the melody, although you can if you like.

    A book of 'invisible paths'/'superimposed changes' would be quite cool actually.

    But what I suggest doing as an exercise is take a transcription and work out what changes the line describes while ignoring the written changes of the song, pencilling in the chords above the music.

    Then when you've done that, compare what you have written down to the song's changes.

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    This may save time and verbiage



    I doubt if it'll stop the verbiage :-)

    But it's a very good video. Another college survivor
    Thank goodness!