Yet another thread about Ted Greene

[enalnitram]

I'm not a pro musician. I tried to be one in the 90's, and went the tech route instead. Over the years, I've accumulated method books. I have a large mound of them. And about a year ago, I shelved all of them and started only working out of the Ted Greene Single Note Soloing Vols 1 & 2 books.

I think I love these books above all others, for fundamentals.

And since doing this, my playing has improved. I'm playing much better now and with motivic clarity perhaps than I ever have.

The thing I like the most about these books, are the examples he gives. They have a cohesive "flavor", throughout. An openness. And there are a gazillion of them, on of all the most common chord qualities. They don't sound like the bop patterns nor like excerpts from Charlie Parker heads or Coltrane solos or anything iconic or recognizable. They are not the kinds of things that if you practice them in your lines, any fan or player would notice that you lifted it. Greene's examples don't sound like cliches. This, to me, is the crowning achievement of Greene's teaching legacy: the gazillion melodic examples he wrote for those two books on chord qualities that you find throughout standard tunes. Playing thru the books is almost like meditation. And the way they are ordered and all very short, nothing but 8th notes, and are all very pleasing, inviting you to build, to find your own ways of phrasing.

Lately I have been marveling at how he must have thought these little short blips of potential single note solos, hundreds of them, were going to be helpful. And he organized the book that way. Playing through them routinely has gotten more good stuff into my playing than anything else available (except my own transcribing). Ted was fantastically brilliant.

[Cunamara]

Yeah, Ted Green's output is pretty remarkable. I've got his instruction books but have never made much headway with them, partly because of how they're laid out. The logic of the Chord Chemistry book has always eluded me, plus so many of those voicing are basically unplayable. and perhaps he didn't even intend it to be a logical discourse from beginning to end, sort of like the George Van Eps Harmonic Mechanisms books. George's advice was to dive in where you saw something that looked interesting rather than starting on page 1 and going to page 300.

We have to bear in mind that Ted was not particularly aiming towards sounding like "jazz" in his playing. He was as much or more influenced by baroque music, classical counterpoint, movie scores (he used to watch movies with his guitar and work out the soundtrack score while watching the movie), etc. I am sure that he listened to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, et al, and understood how it worked. But his interests were much wider than playing bebop.

[wolflen]

We have to bear in mind that Ted was not particularly aiming towards sounding like "jazz" in his playing. He was as much or more influenced by baroque music, classical counterpoint, movie scores (he used to watch movies with his guitar and work out the soundtrack score while watching the movie), etc. I am sure that he listened to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, et al, and understood how it worked. But his interests were much wider than playing bebop.

His chord melody-harmonic structures-had many tunes of Cole Porter..Gershwin and writers of that period. Many standards of the 30s..40's that are in the early "real" books.

In my first lesson I said I wanted to learn jazz..He smiled and asked "..what do you mean by jazz?.."

I am still working through some of the practice material he gave me after each lesson.

His website is now managed by a dedicated group of his students that have taken many of his hand written lessons and organized many of them in digital formats. It is
an ongoing project. The amount of material Ted produced is amazing.

Many have said a certain teacher or player or even a book changed the way they play/ study music. The one word that Ted repeated in his lessons..and I thank him every
time I discover something new..Experiment!

[deacon Mark]

Just reading the book Chord Chemistry is great. All the examples you don't have to do but he breaks it all down quite nicely. To me it is a landmark book on the order of some of the best ever. His single note soloing is good too but rather than go through pages of it the best is to try a few things at a time.

Finally, my own observation of his playing is that it is fine, but he is not by far one of my favorite chord melody players. He moves chord sequences smooth but the rhythmic and dynamic content are not enough to grab me entirely.

[PB+J]

I've gone to the Ted Greene site many times and have always had a hard time with it. So many of his voicings seem really hard to play and the ratio of pain to gain seems poor. But I see people play his arrangements and they sound great. I feel like a lot of it required personal instruction

[Tal_175]

I've gone to the Ted Greene site many times and have always had a hard time with it. So many of his voicings seem really hard to play and the ratio of pain to gain seems poor. But I see people play his arrangements and they sound great. I feel like a lot of it required personal instruction

Many of the more awkward voicings in his chord chemistry book aren't used much in the actual arrangements. Most of the voicings in the arrangements are fairly standard:
https://tedgreene.com/images/lessons...1990-05-06.pdf

[mr. beaumont]

Ted's stuff is fantastic.

It's not a method book, it's a book of possibilities.

If a chord is too difficult, try leaving a note out. Your choice.

[Tal_175]

Did Ted Greene explore improvising in the chord-melody style? His arrangements seem to be mostly (re)harmonizations of the melody. The most common texture he uses is moving voices in blocks and creating interesting inner voice movements sort of like Bach Chorales. Most jazz guitarist who improvise in chord-melody style tend to resort to alternating chords stabs and single lines or more "right hand heavy" ideas where single chord voicing is animated by different picking patterns. Improvising in this block moving voices is less common. Wes Montgomery comes to mind but his chord solos often employed simpler techniques like moving up and down by alternating two chords (alternating Dmin7-Emin7 voicings over Dmin or Cmaj for example). Did Ted Greene improvise in this more complex style of moving chords?

[wolflen]

Did Ted Greene explore improvising in the chord-melody style? His arrangements seem to be mostly (re)harmonizations of the melody. The most common texture he uses is moving voices in blocks and creating interesting inner voice movements sort of like Bach Chorales. Most jazz guitarist who improvise in chord-melody style tend to resort to alternating chords stabs and single lines or more "right hand heavy" ideas where single chord voicing is animated by different picking patterns. Improvising in this block moving voices is less common. Wes Montgomery comes to mind but his chord solos often employed simpler techniques like moving up and down by alternating two chords (alternating Dmin7-Emin7 voicings over Dmin or Cmaj for example). Did Ted Greene improvise in this more complex style of moving chords?

Ted did study Bach and has several lessons on his site for Chorales. There are some vids of Ted playing Bach in an improvised way.

Check his site. Contact someone there that may help you find some of Teds lessons or vids that can answer your questions more directly.

Tedgreene.com

[Cunamara]

It's not a method book, it's a book of possibilities.

Nicely phrased, possibly the best description of Chord Chemistry I've ever heard.

[Cunamara]

Did Ted Greene explore improvising in the chord-melody style? [...] Did Ted Greene improvise in this more complex style of moving chords?

Yes, there are videos of him on Youtube doing that, plus his official solo album and the recordings available on tedgreene.com. For example:

We haven't mentioned Tim Lerch, who was a student of Ted's and has integrated Ted's approach into his own style along with other things. To my ears, Tim has made Ted's approach more performance-oriented; as I understand it, Ted played out relatively little and made his living teaching and from his books.

[Flat]

To that point, I find Tim's Melodic Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary to be better organized and easier to read than Ted's Chord Chemistry...at least for me...although I feel sure it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Ted lighting the way.

[Beats_and_Guitars]

I’m a huge Ted fan. I dedicated myself to Single Note Soloing for about a year and a half and worked out of that book exclusively. I took it nice a slow and within that time I’ve made it through the Altered Dominant section. I’ve taken a detour recently and jumped into Randy Vincent’s The Cellular Approach and I’ve been in Randy’s book for about a month. I feel that now in Randy’s book, with the “foundation” of Ted’s book I’ve 10x my playing just within a month. Ok that may be a slight overstatement but The Cellular Approach has been incredible coming out of Ted’s SNS Vol. 1. I learned so much in that year and a half in Ted’s book and I do plan on going back and finishing it but right now Randy’s book has my absolute full attention. I’ll finish this book and hopefully jump back into Ted if I don’t get into another one of Randy’s book. …but yeah Ted is amazing.


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[dasein]

Yes, I got way more out of Ted Greene's "Single Note Soloing" books than his two chord books. Especially Volume 1, it is systematic and step-by-step in a way that his other books are not. I don't always agree with his fingering choices, but that's a matter of taste.

For chordal stuff, I got way more out of the student lessons on the Ted Greene tribute site. Seeing how he approached actual tunes was revelatory. So much knowledge in there.