I'm starting lessons with Tony Monaco

[Jimmy Smith]

I can't wait! I have the base knowledge to really learn from him and he is a living legend. He was a protege of Jimmy Smith.

[wintermoon]

Nice, best of luck, one of the best organ players out there

[ledocs]

I heard Tony Monaco in a trio setting, Paul Bollenback on guitar, don't know who the drummer was, in Marciac, France, because I live not too far from Marciac. I did not know who Tony Monaco was at the time, but Marciac is a well-curated place, generally. Had never heard of Paul Bollenback either. Tony Monaco is based in Columbus, Ohio, of all places. I grew up in Columbus, my father taught at Ohio State. Then Monaco told me that when he plays in Columbus, he has/had a guitar player who is a philosophy professor at OSU, Robert Frank is his name, I believe. I was interested in that. Bollenback blew me away with his ability to solo in harmonics, I had only heard Tal Farlow do that., Then I watched a live-stream that Bollenback did through Mike's Master Classes, and I asked him how he learned to do that in a live chat, and he told me that it just came naturally to him and it was not difficult for him.

So I don't know if you live near Columbus or are studying with Monaco online, but have fun, he seemed like a great guy. I forget the exact context of this, but he was describing to me his musical journey and said, "Lots of bad notes." I just went up to him after the gig and engaged him, I guess I wanted him to know that there had been Americans in the audience and I like to talking to jazz musicians. I also talked to Bollenback a little, I thought at the time that it was very strange that I had never heard of such a great player, but with the pandemic I now learn via this thing they've got called the internet that there seem to be zillions of very accomplished guitar players on the planet, it's frightening. A few days ago, I had the idea of finding out what a guitar teacher I sort of had in Berkeley before I moved to France was doing, Brian Pardo is his name. He's got an album on Spotify that gets a whopping seven listens per month, but the album is quite good. Check it out.

A few days ago, I watched Mike Moreno's video interview with Mike Stern. They do a "blues jam" at the end, that was a little heartening, because parts of it weren't so great, in my opinion, but it was a real jam.

I had heard the name Mike Moreno, but he was just a name to me. But then he was praised in a Barry Green instructional video I watched recently on youtube, so I searched on youtube for him and discovered that he, like Josh Smith, is conducting interviews with other musicians, though Smith pretty much confines himself to interviewing guitarists, while Moreno does not. Barry Green has chops.

You said the magic words, "Tony Monaco."

[blille]

Awesome! Grats!

[Jimmy Smith]

Thx all. Yes he seems like a funny guy. I will be doing online lessons with him.

[Jimmy Smith]

I had my 1st lesson and already got several things to work on. He was nice and funny. I learned stuff about organ sounds, melody phrasing, chord melody and background comping ideas. I'm glad I decided to go ahead with the lessons because I'm still a noob intermediate, but I'm good enough to be able to grasp what he's doing and learn from him. Pretty pumped, gonna go every 2nd week to have time to practice.

[Jimmy Smith]

1 thing that I thought was interesting was he told me that he likes to be clear with his melody phrasing. He told me to start and end my phrases clearly by using a chord tone. I thought that was very interesting because in my bird study I noticed that he ends phrases on extensions. But Tony told me to be sure to end my phrases clearly on a chord tone as well as begin them there. I thought that was very helpful.

[Jimmy Smith]

Me entranced from his Misty demonstration lol.



Another thing I thought was interesting which he taught me was he approaches chord melody diatonically, he just doubles the melody with his left hand below his chord in the right hand and melody on top. I took this as what made it pop off. He does do interesting stuff, but for the most part it isn't a bunch of shenanigans of different chord for every melody note. I was hung up on chord melody because I thought it had to be a separate chord for every melody note, but he doesn't play it that way. I'll bring it up with him to clarify. Anyway, it has helped me because I know I can either do chord melody diatonically, just have the melody in the outside voices, or do the Barry Harris thing of main chord, dim, main chord inversion, dim, etc.