The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #501

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    Thanks you David for your time and efforts on this thread! It has been very helpful (even if I haven't absorbed it all in this first pass) and will make a great resource going forward.




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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #502

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    The teacher appears when the student is ready.

    This thread seems to be exactly what I need so I will try to follow closely.

    I'm actually studying Trinity grade 7 classical guitar but jam a bit of jazz most Friday mornings so this thread will definitely help with that.

    Currently I'm trying to play changes using the material from An Introduction To Jazz Soloing by Joe Elliot but using Leavitt fingerings. I'm getting the concept of mixing comping and solo lines etc so it will be interesting to record each song and listen to myself improve with creating lines etc over time.

    I won't do an hour per day but I'll do what I can as it will be a late night project when the rest of the family is in bed.

    I'll be starting with Autumn Leaves and am excited to see where this will go.

  4. #503

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    Quote Originally Posted by ibnrushd
    Truth Hertz,

    I tried the descending whole step exercise, but I don't quite understand what you mean when you say it's a step toward outside/inside playing over standards.
    I see the changes of a given piece as being informed, and restricted by the melodies and implied melodies of the piece. In the weekly running of this thread, I've tried to encourage the possibilities of diverging from the more traditional way of fulfilling harmony (strictly diatonic) and a more open ended treatment of the solo space.
    So I've used pieces as ways to find larger tonal areas and dropped the hint that within those spaces, you could use harmonic ideas "outside" of the given harmonies. If you take the A section of Miss Jones, and establish your soloing course so the first measure is of "peak importance" and again you deem measure 5, the A- (III VI II V) is what defines the personality of the piece, you can use measures 2-4 as a passage in whole tone (one example) that includes an E. Those ideas, imparted life through chromatic tension, rhythmic phrasing and note choice will make a nice lead in back to the A-. There's one example.

    The chord scale approach over changes is only one way to solo. What I've outlined above is another. It was an approach I'd learned where the emphasis is on tension and release through phrases of differing length. You hear this in post Coltrane and vamp based improvisation. It also allows for your your own harmonic structuring that, from a stricter adherence to the changes, can be seen as "outside".
    That's how you might think of interpreting a standard.

    The B section is a great and quite unique opportunity to take structures, and change them progressively by whole tone. If I were to arrange some scales I'd practiced, y'know really gotten to know melodic potential within major and minor families, I could progressively introduce phrases that evolved in tension and complexity within each root area.
    Bb major triad
    Ab- triad with maybe a b6
    Gb major scale
    E- minor phrase with chromatic approach
    D augmented triad ending in an augmented scale
    G lydian scale (substituting for the Ab-) as a step down to
    Gb major scale...
    See how you can step outside of the given harmony, play phrases that sound "outside" the given changes and solo in a way that is creative and satisfying, still working within the structure of the piece? Now to make these musical, use rhythm, motif, alternating ascending and descending, successive directional motif, wide vs narrow intervals, quoting phrases from elsewhere in the piece, consonant progressing to dissonant, dissonant leading to consonant, two lines converging, oblique or parallel movement (you've got a guitar, you can do that), playing with dynamics-question pp and answer FF, superimposing odd meter... all that is stuff we've encountered through previous songs in this thread and these are all treasures of construction that you can employ on the forms you yourself dictate. See? This gives you an ENORMOUS amount of creative freedom on a given songform. But the obligation to assemble a working vocabulary of colours is up to you. This thread has focused on song form as the primary step.

    Of course to think this way, you need to practice ways of thinking, patterns of phrases that are not based on inside harmony (diatonicism) but rather have constant and moving structures.
    Symmetric harmony is good for this. Synthetic scales are good for this. Simple triadic structures with complex approach strategies are good for this.

    All these things can take you to a zone where your playing is full of surprise yet very much reverent of the given harmonies. If you want to go in that direction.
    I personally find it a great way to play. I listen to people from Sonny Rollins to Kurt Rosenwinkel, and I hear the facility that comes from mastery of small structure vocabulary applied to a given harmonic framework, but not held by those changes. It's a different way of thinking, and a deep level of freedom.

    Does this make any sense? I wish you'd brought these things up earlier in the tunes we looked; there are many different things to try on any of these tunes we've looked at. It all depends on what you want to do and how you use your practice time.

    David
    Last edited by TH; 09-24-2018 at 05:36 PM.

  5. #504

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    TruthHertz,

    Wow...thank you for taking the time to explain your thoughts. I've never considered this type of approach. I've just been going off the melody and voice leading, plus a lot of trial and error. I'll give this stuff a try and see if I can figure it out. Now that I look back on your posts, I see that you were talking about these long tension and release patterns. I was just too ignorant realize 2 and 2 were in front of my face, let alone put them together.

    I hope it's not impertinent to ask, and of course feel free to ignore this question, but do you have any recordings of your music available for purchase?

  6. #505

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    Quote Originally Posted by ibnrushd
    TruthHertz,


    I hope it's not impertinent to ask, and of course feel free to ignore this question, but do you have any recordings of your music available for purchase?
    No, not at all. It's a personal philosophical choice but I have a love/hate relationship with recording. I have heavily documented others (around here, I've been a documenter and archivist of the scene for a long time) but I don't record myself. It's distracting from the process of the lost moment for me. I play a lot with people though, and if you by any chance live or study by my town here, Boston, hit me up and let's play.

    It's really the way to bring the lifeblood to all these ideas.

    David

  7. #506

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    One of the best farewell songs written.
    Commit to a song a week. What could a serious student hope to learn?-screen-shot-2018-09-28-8-22-08-am-png

    I'll leave the analysis of this wonderful gem to you guys, except to say that duality between Eb and C- is a potent one. Use it to create solos that embody a larger sense of composition. Go beyond running changes and think with a sense of perspective and scale (the other sense of scale).
    For instance, you might set yourself a three chorus solo scheme. The first one plays with melodic ideas that allude to the head, the second takes a motif and develops it with figures of your own vocabulary, the third combines patterns of a denser nature that set up and highlight melodies that return you home to the head that close out. Thinking on a larger scale holds its own set of considerations that require thought and practice. Use your practice time to think in different ways too. Expand your awareness.

    Personally, I'm going to spend the next year on an ongoing exploration of Tune a Week part 2. This one I'll do on my own.
    One thing I've decided to do is set up a weekly regimen wherein on the first day I'd look at essential elements of the piece, melody, chordal structure and topography, and understand the form.
    The second day I'll create diatonic phrases with embellishments (pickups, approach notes, passing tones... the bebop vocabulary).
    The third day I'll begin chord substitutions and harmonic approaches that use tritone substitutions, sequences, secondary dominants.... This is where I'll combine patterned sequences with melodic destinations.
    The fourth day I'll focus on creating melodic and rhythmic ideas that diverge from the form yet converge at important points in the form to create alternative melodies working independently but bring you home in a very recognizable way.
    The fifth day I'll just see how all these things fit into some two or three chorus scheme I plan out ahead of time.


    This is my own personal plan for the coming year. I'll be doing my own tune a week; I really enjoy this "immerse and swim" way of learning and though this thread is now at a close, I'll be listening. And I'll be seeing you.

    I'd love to hear about your own strategies and goals for continuing your own awareness to the next level, whatever that might be.

    Play like you mean it. Be playful

    David



    Brad Mehldau's with notes



    And Brad's teacher, the master himself, Fred Hersch, with notes



    For the Julian Lage fans


  8. #507

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    David,

    thanks so much for all the effort you put in to this- the generosity is humbling. It has been a real highlight for me to see new message alerts and the thought provoking content. I never really commented that much, partly out of modesty/shyness, with so many seasoned players around here. In hindsight that was a mistake, it’s leeching off you without giving feedback to interact with. Sorry.

    You’ve taught me so much about what makes music musical, and tasteful phrasing. In development terms i’m still internalising mechanical facility on the instrument. Your language of contours, landscapes and how to approach tunes takes me beyond that and lays a roadmap ahead for quite some time. That material is going to live well beyond these 12 months.

    cheers
    Richard

  9. #508

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    David, thank you so much for your hard work with this thread. I have been following this since beginning, but the new tune per week turn out be too much for me to take on. I do think there is a lot of valuable information in this thread and your analyzies of these songs have brought lots of new ideas for my own practising. Thanks again and all the best for you.

  10. #509

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    I've just done my first week of this study group with Autumn Leaves. This week has definitely helped me get around the changes all over the fingerboard which was my primary aim.

    A nice surprise was that I was improvising mainly with chord tones from arpeggio shapes that I made up from Leavitt scale fingerings and the results sounded mediocre to be honest. However yesterday I bought a Frank Vignola's Essentials Jazz Standard Soloing course on TrueFire which I thought was below my level of playing......however Franks lines are extremely tasty. They are very melodic and used things such as rhythmic displacement etc. The feel of his lines are great.

    So my aim for All of Me is to simplify my lines and make them really melodic......can't wait.

    Ps David, thanks for all your work on this thread. It's appreciated and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that hopes that you'll change your mind and continue with part 2 of a tune per week on this thread.

  11. #510

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    Quote Originally Posted by Liarspoker

    So my aim ... is to simplify my lines and make them really melodic......can't wait.
    .
    Beautiful.
    I think about how challenging it is to make things simple. Really, the goal of everything that's within this thread, is to make everything simple so the feeling of creating can always be honest and natural.

    No matter where you are in the development of yourself as a musician, an artist or most challenging, an improvisor, I know that being honest with what you know and do will inevitably lead to becoming extraordinary in what you create.

    For everyone that's curious about what can be accomplished in a year of pieces, or anyone who feels overwhelmed by what it takes to take a step for one day, I have a thought exercise: Don't let what you learn get in the way of what you can imagine.

    David