The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I often hear (understandably) that the guitar is a very hard instrument for improvisation compared to, say, the piano or sax, because (a) nearly every note can be played in 3-4 places and (b) you need two hands at work to make one note (excluding hammering on). Both true, but I propose that an advantage for guitarists is that we collect and know chord shapes all over the neck. This is great because:

    a) Most of be-bop, which is foundational to modern improv, is about decorating chords with various approach notes or playing chord tones themselves (including extensions). So you can take your chord shapes and build lines on them with neighboring notes.

    b) Chord shapes can also get you "modern" by superimposing them where they don't traditionally belong. Sometimes I'll play a few bars of random triad shapes totally intuitively at some place in a standard tune before getting back to the "changes" and, if I relax, it works.

    c) Because we know the same chords (or their inversions) in many places on the guitar we can apply the same musical idea over a chord shape in multiple places up and down the neck, extending our reach.

    I haven't seen any work exploring this in an organized way. Has anyone?

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rsilver View Post
    I often hear (understandably) that the guitar is a very hard instrument for improvisation compared to, say, the piano or sax, because (a) nearly every note can be played in 3-4 places and (b) you need two hands at work to make one note (excluding hammering on). Both true, but I propose that an advantage for guitarists is that we collect and know chord shapes all over the neck. This is great because:

    a) Most of be-bop, which is foundational to modern improv, is about decorating chords with various approach notes or playing chord tones themselves (including extensions). So you can take your chord shapes and build lines on them with neighboring notes.

    b) Chord shapes can also get you "modern" by superimposing them where they don't traditionally belong. Sometimes I'll play a few bars of random triad shapes totally intuitively at some place in a standard tune before getting back to the "changes" and, if I relax, it works.

    c) Because we know the same chords (or their inversions) in many places on the guitar we can apply the same musical idea over a chord shape in multiple places up and down the neck, extending our reach.

    I haven't seen any work exploring this in an organized way. Has anyone?
    there are books, but they tend to be old. I think Herb Ellis had a book?

    for me, Charlie christian solos

  4. #3

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    Chord Tone Soloing for Jazz Guitar, Joseph Alexander, is OK, I do have it and got an idea or two there.
    Try searching on Barnes and Noble for chord soloing, there are other choices but I don’t know them personally.
    Christian has a good point about Charlie Christian, he really did a lot of playing around chord forms. Play along and you can see the chords pop out.
    good Luck!
    jk

  5. #4

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    Gosh, I thought we all do this! I mean, how the heck else can you Bop on the guitar?

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rsilver View Post
    I often hear (understandably) that the guitar is a very hard instrument for improvisation compared to, say, the piano or sax, because (a) nearly every note can be played in 3-4 places and (b) you need two hands at work to make one note (excluding hammering on). Both true, but I propose that an advantage for guitarists is that we collect and know chord shapes all over the neck. This is great because:

    a) Most of be-bop, which is foundational to modern improv, is about decorating chords with various approach notes or playing chord tones themselves (including extensions). So you can take your chord shapes and build lines on them with neighboring notes.

    b) Chord shapes can also get you "modern" by superimposing them where they don't traditionally belong. Sometimes I'll play a few bars of random triad shapes totally intuitively at some place in a standard tune before getting back to the "changes" and, if I relax, it works.

    c) Because we know the same chords (or their inversions) in many places on the guitar we can apply the same musical idea over a chord shape in multiple places up and down the neck, extending our reach.

    I haven't seen any work exploring this in an organized way. Has anyone?
    Joseph Weidlich, The Guitar Chord Shapes of Charlie Christian (Centerstream) is pretty good although the synthesized audio on the accompanying cd is horrid. He also has a book of Bird lines with some useful ideas and similarly nasty audio.

  7. #6

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    Jerry Bergonzi has tons of writings on this, as does Hal Galper. These patterns are “visible”to all musicians but the clarity of this varies to each based on one’s instrument of choice. We “see” things as the fretboard because we know it so we’ll. The saxophone keys are an opaque mystery!

    Guitar is unique in the sense that there’s a great many of us that are self taught and can play by ear with minimal knowledge of “the notes” wither in the staff or the fretboard. I came up that way with a direct “finger wiggle to sound” connection to the instrument that still serves me well to this day. And it wasn’t diminished by study one bit.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet View Post
    Gosh, I thought we all do this! I mean, how the heck else can you Bop on the guitar?
    Right but you can also use it to play “outside” which I don’t think is explored as much. Sometimes I take a chord shape (or a pair of chords) and move it around the neck intuitively while arpeggiating it. Logical and yet outside results follow. (this is best done sparingly.)

  9. #8

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    You know, seeing this topic again got me thinking (we know a somewhat frightening thought). I have a very supportive thought, and a very non supportive one. First the good news.

    Tal tought me to look at the neck as a series of interlocking “pictures”. (Now remember he was a graphics artist before a famous jazzer.) Into the pictures he also superimposed the key leading tones like the flat 5 going to 1 of each picture, the bop ‘landing notes’ as well as extensions (9/11/13 etc) to move between pictures. Result was an ability to play quite comprehensive bebop solos within four frets. He also interlinked pictures up the neck allowing a quick run up and down using the same concept.

    As a transition to the next point, he was well and totally aware of the musical theory behind the pictures. I.E. he wasn’t just using the pictures as patterns to follow, but rather as a help in matching the notes to the melodic and harmonic flow. He could read quite well, and knew the theory behind his choices. Ive always been curious as to why the one Tal Farlow ‘lesson book’ out there has no mention of this! Also wonder now if he thought this way in the 50’s recordings, or did he develop this in his fishing/sign painting Jersey Shore days in the 60’s. Dunno.

    But I will say that i do not think the guitarist is served by an approach as the OP suggests, nor do i think its absence on a wind instrument is a liability. If you have a firm grounding in music theory the scale, chordal relations, use of extensions, leading tomes, etc should be locked into your music brain regardless of the instrument you play. Are you thinking consciously of all this while playing? Of course not, but the study and knowledge of them will let you execute while improvising. According to Tal, Bird, Miles, Young, Mingus et al were all equally excellent in their theory.

    Yes, TL/DR, but In summation, i think in general many a guitarist does not get the grounding in theory that main line musicians seek and do. Its far too easy (and effective!) to learn blues, modal scale patterns or chord shapes and play. And since you cant have that crutch on a sax, you must put the time into theory. I believe its why we see the ‘how do i follow this 13th?’ Or similar questions here that indicate no solid understanding of what’s going on underneath.

    Enough jk, get away from the phone.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rsilver View Post
    I often hear (understandably) that the guitar is a very hard instrument for improvisation compared to, say, the piano or sax, because (a) nearly every note can be played in 3-4 places and (b) you need two hands at work to make one note (excluding hammering on). Both true, but I propose that an advantage for guitarists is that we collect and know chord shapes all over the neck. This is great because:

    a) Most of be-bop, which is foundational to modern improv, is about decorating chords with various approach notes or playing chord tones themselves (including extensions). So you can take your chord shapes and build lines on them with neighboring notes.

    b) Chord shapes can also get you "modern" by superimposing them where they don't traditionally belong. Sometimes I'll play a few bars of random triad shapes totally intuitively at some place in a standard tune before getting back to the "changes" and, if I relax, it works.

    c) Because we know the same chords (or their inversions) in many places on the guitar we can apply the same musical idea over a chord shape in multiple places up and down the neck, extending our reach.

    I haven't seen any work exploring this in an organized way. Has anyone?
    I guess I dispute the premise that improvisation is hard on the guitar. Executing certain things is difficult because of the way the instrument is laid out, reading can be tricky, and the shape-based approach to thinking of chords can be an impediment to the kind of harmonic fluency pianists have (the old joke: what does a piano player call 'chord-melody'? Playing the piano). But I don't think improvisation per se is hard. If improv is baked into the way you learn to play music it's easy, irrespective of the instrument you play. I do agree, though, that the shape mode of thinking does give you kind of a framework for things like transposition, chord substitution, and triad superposition that is helpful.

  11. #10

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    I think using chords as a basis for improvisation, substitution, etc, is pretty much common in most instruments, and a big part of bebop improvisation.

    Particularly for guitar, the book work of Mick Goodrick on chords is great, and very thorough, although not only about bebop.

  12. #11

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    There are many options for looking at shapes on the fingerboard, finding sounds by using interesting shapes and superimposing them in unexpected places. Howard Roberts used to write a regular column in Guitar Player magazine and I don't know if he ever republished those monthly articles separately, but I remember he devoted several very interesting articles, concise and usefully demonstrated, wherein he showed how using inside shapes (shapes of chords we know: grabs) could be combined with shapes that are based on creating literal physical shapes (diagonal lines, straight lines, geometric shapes) on the fingerboard. If you can find these little gems somewhere, it's a cool way to augment the lines you're familiar with.

  13. #12

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    When you're learning, you need some way to find the notes you want.

    Chord shapes can be very helpful in that regard. And, if I understand it correctly, that's how Joe Pass thought about the guitar. So, clearly, it's an effective approach.

    OTOH, it can often be helpful not to think about chord shapes, but to think directly about the notes you want at the moment. Often, you can find yourself playing fragments of chords that thinking about chord shapes would not be likely lead to.

    I suspect, without really being sure, that one difference in approach is whether or not the player has learned the notes in the arps and scales s/he uses and where they all are on the fingerboard -- to the point where it's all automatic. Or, is the player playing more out of patterns, or intervals or some other approach (tbh, I don't feel that I know much about how other players think about this stuff).

    Eventually, players get past struggling with the mechanics and are able to play by sound with their fingers finding the right notes on their own.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note View Post
    There are many options for looking at shapes on the fingerboard, finding sounds by using interesting shapes and superimposing them in unexpected places. Howard Roberts used to write a regular column in Guitar Player magazine and I don't know if he ever republished those monthly articles separately, but I remember he devoted several very interesting articles, concise and usefully demonstrated, wherein he showed how using inside shapes (shapes of chords we know: grabs) could be combined with shapes that are based on creating literal physical shapes (diagonal lines, straight lines, geometric shapes) on the fingerboard. If you can find these little gems somewhere, it's a cool way to augment the lines you're familiar with.
    that sounds like a lot of fun; love to know if they are floating around on the interwebs

  15. #14

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    Herb Ellis purportedly said this:

    "The 'Shape System' relates melodic ideas to basic chord shapes instead of relating them to endless scale patterns, modes, and arpeggios. In addition to being an efficient use of practice time, this system allows the player to sound more natural and musical instead of sounding like somebody playing scales."

    But I don't know if he published a book elaborating on it.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Karol View Post
    Herb Ellis purportedly said this:

    "The 'Shape System' relates melodic ideas to basic chord shapes instead of relating them to endless scale patterns, modes, and arpeggios. In addition to being an efficient use of practice time, this system allows the player to sound more natural and musical instead of sounding like somebody playing scales."

    But I don't know if he published a book elaborating on it.
    He published three books using his “shapes system,” one on blues, one on ATTYA and a third that I can’t recall at the moment.

  17. #16

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    That is absolutely an advantage of guitar. I try to apply this thinking to my keys playing even though you only shape and sound the chord with 1 hand. Trying to think of a sequence of notes is inefficient. Instead I try to think of and form the shape and then sound my desired notes like guitar, even though it's only done with 1 hand.

  18. #17

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    Reviving an old thread but JK do you have a diagram of Tal's shapes?

  19. #18

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    [QUOTE=jazzkritter;1210342]You know, seeing this topic again got me thinking (we know a somewhat frightening thought). I have a very supportive thought, and a very non supportive one. First the good news.

    Tal tought me to look at the neck as a series of interlocking “pictures”. (Now remember he was a graphics artist before a famous jazzer.) Into the pictures he also superimposed the key leading tones like the flat 5 going to 1 of each picture, the bop ‘landing notes’ as well as extensions (9/11/13 etc) to move between pictures. Result was an ability to play quite comprehensive bebop solos within four frets. He also interlinked pictures up the neck allowing a quick run up and down using the same concept.

    Sorry to revive an old thread but JK do you have a diagram of Tal's shapes? Sounds interesting.

  20. #19

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    I can't believe I missed this thread the first time around!

    I'm huge on shapes, and very big on HR's idea of finding ways to connect them that are purely visual. In fact, that's where anything remotely "outside" I play comes from.

    It's ok to take what the guitar gives us, I say.

  21. #20

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    [QUOTE=Sam b;1323532]
    Quote Originally Posted by jazzkritter View Post
    Sorry to revive an old thread but JK do you have a diagram of Tal's shapes? Sounds interesting.
    I'm sorry to be the bearer of sad news but JazzKritter passed a short time ago. I'd communicated regularly with him because we'd both spent time with Tal and he was an Ibanez fan and I shared a lot of information with him because I worked for Ibanez.
    When he died, his daughter handled his possessions and she said if she ever came back into possession of his materials from his studies with Tal, she'd send them to me so I could share them up on a website or something publically accessible. I have a prototype Ibanez guitar he played but his treasured Gibson Tal Farlow is on consignment at Guitars and Jazz in Summit NJ.
    I'll let you guys know if those papers come my way.

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller View Post
    that sounds like a lot of fun; love to know if they are floating around on the interwebs
    Re: Howard Roberts' Guitar Player magazine articles; I remember them, may even have saved a couple (I'll look). However, he covers chordal/intervallic shapes, and everything else you can think of, in his Praxis System books (3 Volumes). I found them online not too long ago. They are put of print so it would be perfectly legal for me to share them. I'll upload them to Mediafire later on.

    Today I found a great trick for remembering passwords, phone numbers, etc., in one book: Turn them into a melody! That is, think of the digits as scale notes in a key: Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, etc. Never occurred to me to do that, I may never forget a password or phone number again!


    P.S. - I have shared Howard's Praxis System books plus two more here:

    20 weeks to a higher level of proficiency: Howard Roberts Super Chops one more time.
    Last edited by Mick-7; 03-16-2024 at 12:34 PM.

  23. #22

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    Oh, I'm sorry to hear that about JK, Jimmy, thank you for passing on the sad news.

  24. #23

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    I use chord shapes all the time simply because, let's face it, there are the notes right under your fingers. But be not fooled, I also know all the scales around that shape too. Soloing is always a combination of all of that.

  25. #24

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    Sad news. Thanks for letting us know.


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