Anybody use the Goodchord Voice Leading Books?

[Liarspoker]

I'd be interested in knowing international shipping costs for the diad book as well as the actual book price.

[Michael Isbach]

It looks like I might be a bit late to order these books. I just discovered them through some of Tom Lippincott's instructional material and was hoping to purchase them. If any copies are still available please let me know. Thanks!

[yotsn]

Anyone do 7th no 3rd, 7th no 5th chords through the cycles?

Mick mentions that they have been found in the 3 part options of the 4 part chords.

I've been looking at it though, and it makes a 4 part msrp instead of a 3 part if you follow it that way with a parallel voicing in there.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[yotsn]

B A E
G D D
C C B

This is the 3 chord version that I came up with for 7th no 3rd

Going to update this after I finish working on Vol. 3 (see below) - stay tuned...

[yotsn]

stop the presses!

This is covered in vol. 3

Although, in a more complicated way. But it's all there, in GREAT detail!!!

Wondering if he wrote the GMC book in between vol 1 and 2 of the almanac? That would make sense.

It seems like with the emphasis on these chords put in the GMC book, and with the almanac being so exhaustive, he should have put these 3 note chords in Volume 2. I'm not complaining. Mick took years off my life doing this for me, just for further polite conversation, I would restructure it in a way to bring some continuity to the almanac and GMC book.

[jeromesteele]

I think that the revelation that prompted "Creative Chordal Harmony" and the GMC concept is the omission of the root note in any given harmonic context. I think he shares a story in the intro or epilogue about hearing a student land on the root note of a major 7 chord on a downbeat and hang there for a while. His response was something to the effect of "why would you play the root there? the bassist has that covered." He subsequently asked himself "what if i just omit the root?" Then in his singular fashion, extended that fairly simple observation into an extremely rich concept of hearing, playing and relating to harmony.


From what I can tell glancing through volume 3 ,(I'm still dealing with 1 and 2 primarily), he deals with the 7 no 5 and 7 no 3 structures mostly within the context of 7 note scales and applies the cycle voice leading logic to them.

Anyway, all of it so tremendously rewarding to investigate. And I'm just immensely grateful that these materials are available.

[TH]

stop the presses!

This is covered in vol. 3

Although, in a more complicated way. But it's all there, in GREAT detail!!!

Wondering if he wrote the GMC book in between vol 1 and 2 of the almanac? That would make sense.

The almanacs were done as a continuous project over a number of years. The GMC came later. Yeah there's no telling what you can get from them, or what will end up tying into what else at any point.
When he began ordering those books, he had no idea of how big they would be or just what the big picture was. Like Columbus sailing into the unknown. Even up to the conclusion of volume 3, he was close to the end of it before he realized that was it; the exhaustive almanac of voice leading structures.
It's funny because when Mick met with Ben Monder, Ben had been wading through a parallel course of his own harmonic ordering himself. He came to Mick's office with a stack of chordal material with some hope of clarity or insight into putting things together.
Mick said "I'm not going to read these. Just play them." and he did. Mick reached for a page in one of the volumes and directed Ben to it. Ben flipped through the page, the adjoining pages and sight read them on the spot, starting an improvisation on it. When he stopped, looked through the rest of the volume and said "It's all there. Every possibility, right?" and he got it.

Later, Mick commented. "That's why I did this. For few individuals out there who can get it and use it."
So that's why this thread is here. For the few of you guys who DON'T have the volume collecting dust on the shelf.

Hope you'll all post things that come out of it.

I should note that if you're around Boston at the end of this month, there'll be a concert gathering some of Mick's most promising disciples at the Outpost April 30. Kenji Herbert, Mike Bono, Jacob Matteus, Andrew Cheng and more for an evening of duos and trios.
Always great to see what these guys are up to and what direction the art is going in.

David

[Gearhead]

David, any news on the international shipping situation?

thanks,
uli

[JohnoL]

Are there "rules" on how the voices are supposed to move?

[JakeAcci]

Does anybody who is good at programming want to give the master program/sheet idea a shot again?

Ideally we/you/I could create a program (using google sheets or google forms or something more advanced) where the user could input structure type, voicing type, cycle type, key, chord scale, starting degree, starting inversion, and then the material would just clearly type itself out.

I'd imagine that for anybody comfortable programming this would not be a very time consuming project. About 10 different structure types and 7 unique cycles gives us about 70 MSRP line systems and voice leading systems, then arranging the results by the other variables (voicing type, key, chord scale, starting degree, and starting inversion) is very simple math, I just don't personally know how to do that type of programming.

I would be willing to collaborate and/or compensate for this project.

Quasi related, not sure if I posted my fun little "randomizer" here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Hit 'refresh' then wait a few seconds and it will give you a new cycle to work with at random.

[7#5]

Hi,

I looked at the drop 2 cycles from a CAGED perspective to try to link the almanac ideas with my previous knowledge and came up with these tables. I found them useful but visualising the more advanced harmony as CAGED shapes can be tricky...

Rich

Cycle 2
	CmMaj7	Dm7b5	Em7	FmMaj7	G7	AbMaj7#5	Bdim7
	D	E	G	C	D	E	G
	C	D	E	G	C	D	E
	G	C	D	E	G	C	D
	E	G	C	D	E	G	C
Cycle 3
	CmMaj7	Em7	G7	Bdim7	Dm7b5	FmMaj7	AbMaj7#5
UP	D	E	G	C	D	E	G
	C	D	E	G	C	D	E
	G	C	D	E	G	C	D
	E	G	C	D	E	G	C
Cycle 4
	CmMaj7	FmMaj7	Bdim7	Em7	AbMaj7#5	Dm7b5	G7
	D	G	D	G	D	G	D
	G	D	G	D	G	D	G
	C	E	C	E	C	E	C
	E	C	E	C	E	C	E
Cycle 5
	CmMaj7	G7	Dm7b5	AbMaj7#5	Em7	Bdim7	FmMaj7
UP	D	G	D	G	D	G	D
	G	D	G	D	G	D	G
	C	E	C	E	C	E	C
	E	C	E	C	E	C	E
Cycle 6
	CmMaj7	AbMaj7#5	FmMaj7	Dm7b5	Bdim7	G7	Em7
	D	C	G	E	D	C	G
	E	D	C	G	E	D	C
	G	E	D	C	G	E	D
	C	G	E	D	C	G	E
Cycle 7
	CmMaj7	Bdim7	AbMaj7#5	G7	FmMaj7	Em7	Dm7b5
UP	D	C	G	E	D	C	G
	E	D	C	G	E	D	C
	G	E	D	C	G	E	D
	C	G	E	D	C	G	E

[e_del]

Does anybody who is good at programming want to give the master program/sheet idea a shot again?

Ideally we/you/I could create a program (using google sheets or google forms or something more advanced) where the user could input structure type, voicing type, cycle type, key, chord scale, starting degree, starting inversion, and then the material would just clearly type itself out.

I'd imagine that for anybody comfortable programming this would not be a very time consuming project. About 10 different structure types and 7 unique cycles gives us about 70 MSRP line systems and voice leading systems, then arranging the results by the other variables (voicing type, key, chord scale, starting degree, and starting inversion) is very simple math, I just don't personally know how to do that type of programming.

I would be willing to collaborate and/or compensate for this project.

Hi! Maybe you remember my old page about goodchord cycles...
You basically would have a visual representation on the cycle on the fretboard
I started to work on automatic visual representation, but then I got stuck in trying to get an efficient generic data model that worked for any scale...
I think it's not very difficult, but it will need more time than you could expect.

I'm now busy woking on ted-greene-styled fonts for text editors in my spare time, but anyway as far as I can help, I'd like to...
Do you have a clear idea on the "rules" to follow in generating the voicings?

Bear in mind that if it all ends in having a fixed number of schemas, an alternative could be a collaborative editing of a simple document, drawing all the possible voicing by hand...
If the workgroup is big enough, the time spent in writing the document is not much bigger than the time needed to analyze and implement the algorythms...
anyway, let's keep in touch...

Enrico

[JakeAcci]

Hi! Maybe you remember my old page about goodchord cycles...
You basically would have a visual representation on the cycle on the fretboard
I started to work on automatic visual representation, but then I got stuck in trying to get an efficient generic data model that worked for any scale...
I think it's not very difficult, but it will need more time than you could expect.

I'm now busy woking on ted-greene-styled fonts for text editors in my spare time, but anyway as far as I can help, I'd like to...
Do you have a clear idea on the "rules" to follow in generating the voicings?

Bear in mind that if it all ends in having a fixed number of schemas, an alternative could be a collaborative editing of a simple document, drawing all the possible voicing by hand...
If the workgroup is big enough, the time spent in writing the document is not much bigger than the time needed to analyze and implement the algorythms...
anyway, let's keep in touch...

Enrico

Hey Enrico! Good to hear from you. yes I remember your doc...I'd have to go back but I think I remember you had to ditch the project at some point.

Here is what I am thinking

just have a program where you type in the data you want and it shows the cycle in the same form that it is in the books (voicings in letter names stacked from low to high)

My thinking is that I could start with all voicings close, and all notes are represented as "1,2,3,4,5,6,7" as opposed to Mick's use of C major, melodic minor, and harmonic minor. (I suppose we can save scales with a different # of notes for another day!)

setting a switch to turn the numbers into notes of the scale seems very simple as long as the scale has 7 notes. even typing in the scale manually each time is fine by me.

creating the different voicings seems easy too when you start with closed:

For example, cycle 3 closed sevenths chords in C major:

4- B B B B
3- G G G A
2- E E F F
1- C D D D

turning that into different voicings simply means moving the rows around, right?

drop 2:
2- E E F F
4- B B B B
3- G G G A
1- C D D D

drop 2 and 4

4- B B B B
2- E E F F
3- G G G A
1- C D D D

etc, I feel like so far this isn't so bad, right? All those different voicings are just moving around rows, and all the different keys, modes, and chord scales are just an issue of having some swapping function for numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, like a "find and replace" tool.

Ok then we've got 9 different types of 3 note and 4 note structures (triads, 3 part 4ths, seventh chords, 4 part 4ths, etc..I think it's 9 total) and then the MSRP/voice leading rules for 7 different cycles. That's 63 different function-sets to apply to the data already established.

What do you think? What would the work be? The idea of sharing duties works for me. Understanding the those 63 different sets is, I guess, as simple as just looking at the books for his voice leading rules. I just don't know how to make it something where you could just go to a webpage, type in the cycle you want, then see it laid out as clearly as it is in the books themselves.

I know that practically it just takes less time to go into the books but I find making the charts to be a relaxing activity, and I'd have more fun playing with it if it was all on one webpage.

[JakeAcci]

Hi,

I looked at the drop 2 cycles from a CAGED perspective to try to link the almanac ideas with my previous knowledge and came up with these tables. I found them useful but visualising the more advanced harmony as CAGED shapes can be tricky...

Rich

Rich - did you use some sort of formula to create those tables (something with functions that can be modified for different scales, voicings, cycles, etc) or did you put them in manually?

[e_del]

Hey Enrico! Good to hear from you. yes I remember your doc...I'd have to go back but I think I remember you had to ditch the project at some point.

Here is what I am thinking

just have a program where you type in the data you want and it shows the cycle in the same form that it is in the books (voicings in letter names stacked from low to high)

My thinking is that I could start with all voicings close, and all notes are represented as "1,2,3,4,5,6,7" as opposed to Mick's use of C major, melodic minor, and harmonic minor. (I suppose we can save scales with a different # of notes for another day!)

setting a switch to turn the numbers into notes of the scale seems very simple as long as the scale has 7 notes. even typing in the scale manually each time is fine by me.

creating the different voicings seems easy too when you start with closed:

For example, cycle 3 closed sevenths chords in C major:

4- B B B B
3- G G G A
2- E E F F
1- C D D D

turning that into different voicings simply means moving the rows around, right?

drop 2:
2- E E F F
4- B B B B
3- G G G A
1- C D D D

drop 2 and 4

4- B B B B
2- E E F F
3- G G G A
1- C D D D

etc, I feel like so far this isn't so bad, right? All those different voicings are just moving around rows, and all the different keys, modes, and chord scales are just an issue of having some swapping function for numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, like a "find and replace" tool.

Ok then we've got 9 different types of 3 note and 4 note structures (triads, 3 part 4ths, seventh chords, 4 part 4ths, etc..I think it's 9 total) and then the MSRP/voice leading rules for 7 different cycles. That's 63 different function-sets to apply to the data already established.

What do you think? What would the work be? The idea of sharing duties works for me. Understanding the those 63 different sets is, I guess, as simple as just looking at the books for his voice leading rules. I just don't know how to make it something where you could just go to a webpage, type in the cycle you want, then see it laid out as clearly as it is in the books themselves.

I know that practically it just takes less time to go into the books but I find making the charts to be a relaxing activity, and I'd have more fun playing with it if it was all on one webpage.

As I said translating the letters into fretboard fingerings is not that trivial, and makes sense only if you discover a "generic rule" (or mmore than one) that can be applied to the voice movements...
I started, but got bored/stuck/out of spare time .. then the fretboard font came, and I left that page as is now...

Maybe we could try to start from there...

Collaborative editing of a document could be a shortcut to a "brute-force" way of writing down the voicing diagrams without getting mad with software analysis and algorhythms...
And you could see and share the work results as soon as a single page is completed. no need to wait util development ends...

[e_del]

I already made a sample on my font support page using cycle 3...
have a look to my blog and have a peek to the "Made with My Guitar Fonts - Goodchord cycle 3 triads" post

[7#5]

Hi,

I did this manually - I'm not good at programming or Excel!
I was looking for patterns from the CAGED shapes and I found it interesting.
From this you can see that cycle 4 and cycle 5 have two separate loops which alternate between the D and G shapes and the second between C and E.
As the patterns stay the same, it is just the titles which would need to change to reflect different scales.
I don't have the books. I only have an overview of Book 1, so I don't know what is covered in books 2 and 3...
I'd be interested if these tables still worked for drop 2 voicing of other clusters.

Thanks,

Rich

[e_del]

As an example, I manually created this animation by editing the diagrams in a word processor (LibreOffice in my case, but could be any other), then capturing the screenshot of each one and building the GIF animation using a free online tool...

C melodic minor - Cycle 2 - drop 3


or as an alternative can be exported like a video...
It took me about 30 minutes to build everything up, so you can estimate how long it can take to build each of the combinations.
It all adds to quite a long time, but I think not much longer than developing the software...
I think that a team of people that splits the workload can relatively easily produce everything in a reasonable amount of time.
with the adwantage that as long as a single animation/schema is finished it can immediately be published...

What do you (JakeAcci, but actually *anyone* here) think about?
Enrico

[srlank]

Hi all,

Coming from the cheap seats, but would like to share where I'm at in case it can helpful to someone else. About 2-3 months ago I began with closed position triads on one strong set, moving up scale/down fingerboard and then reverse with a metronome at about 50-60bpm...depending on the day. By sticking with this, many of the other voicings have become immediately accessible for voice-leading.

[e_del]

UPDATE: the videos should be ok now... if you spot any other error, please let me know... There's much copy/paste work, involved and if not detected , errors can spread through the various diagrams...
So, until now we have:

DROP 3

DROP2

[e_del]

cut and paste is your friend, and lets you edit diagrams just by modifying only a few things...
So here is drop 2&3 and 2&4

Sorry if I'm spamming, just let me know.
... and double check for errors!

DROP 2&4

DROP 2&3

[e_del]

Here I am again, folks...
After some experimenting with search/replace, here is the MAJOR SCALE fingerings!...

I don't want to bother you in this thread with video overload, so I gathered all the animations in two Youtube playlist, with (at the moment) drop2, drop3, drop2&3, drop2&4 and a couple of quartal tetrads...
(sooner or later it will be the triads turn)

Here is the major scale playlist, and here the melodic minor scale...

as usual, bear in mind that the a big part of work has been done with copy/paste/replace commands in the editor, and although I tried to check each diagram, I'm sure some error is still there... If you find them, please notify me, so I can correct and make it better for everyone...

in the meantime.. enjoy, hope it helps...
Enrico


P.S.: as a reminder, if you're interested in editing your own diagrams with the "Ted-Chemist" font, you can find the files at this blog page and support at the "My guitar Fonts" facebook page...

[TH]

Wow e_del. Great stuff!
Some updates and conversational topics.
I've got news for international orders. Mailing is unfortunately through the US Postal service. I don't have an international mail service easy to me here. That means all international orders are priority and for one or two books (under 4 lbs) the shipping costs are up to $35 for priority media. Once the scales are tipped at three books, it jumps to $55. That's because the class of mail changes and media is not applicable. If that's an acceptable cost, please proceed from there and contact me for me to send books out.

They're running down to the last books but I do still have the full catalogue at this point.

PM me to get books. Sorry for the bad news internationals. These were prices based on shipping to Europe. I'll give specific prices at the weighing if you give me your address.

David

[TH]

I've had the pleasure of working with some very talented students of Mick's here in Boston. It's an amazing experience to gather harmonic explorers and work out new applications to this material.
How are all of you guys using this material?

Some really beautiful applications are:
Triads over bass notes. Take a progression, suspend a note of the progression, then follow it with the resolution. It gives an even more dramatic sense of movement and allows for rhythmic applications. As comping and as solo applications, this creates some beautiful stuff. Try it!

I've been working with cycle three. Trying to experiment with ways to use the almanacs over regular "standards" changes. And here's something that becomes apparent with use but may be helpful:
Cycles are inherently related to one another. If I take my cycle 3, every other chord is Cycle 5. Every 6 chords is Cycle 4. Every 4 is cycle 7. And so on.
Well that means that if my next chord across the bar line is a fifth up, I can use cycle 3 in half notes and there is a nice sense of flow that gets there in two voice led chords.

If I'm working with another cycle, of course the number of chords will be different, giving a different melodic sense but that's the idea.

Anyone else using these almanacs and noticing ways to use them on tunes with changes?

Anyone with questions that we can chime in on and help out with?

Look forward to hearing from you.
David

[mikostep]

Which books are now available, David?