The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #951

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    Professor Goodrick sent me here. Not personally, but a couple months ago he posted a comment on Mikko Hilden's YouTube review of Volume 2 of the Almanac, indicating that the books are being republished, and that in the meantime someone wishing to obtain the materials could come here and obtain the books in PDF files.

    I've been studying this thread, and thanks to all the forum members who have posted so much valuable information here, I've been able to start working with the cycles (on piano - I played guitar and piano concurrently for several decades, but eventually piano won out and I hardly touch the guitar any more).

    This material and this thread have rekindled for me what has been a long-term project of developing a contrapuntally oriented alternative approach to jazz harmony on the piano.

    Incidentally, for anyone merely wishing to see some sample pages from the books, an easy way to find them is by searching in google images. Search terms like "Goodrick almanac" would probably pick up most of what's available. Many of the images are are from postings in this thread, but there are others, including copies of some of the introductory text pages.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #952

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    Hi J. Lee
    Thanks for your post. Even though this thread has been quiet for a while I'm sure quite a few of the people posting here are still working regularly on this material. I know a couple of people who are, for sure. Recently I'm enjoying working with the three-part fourths in Vol. 2.

    Getting 'off book' was mentioned up-thread a while ago and, though it seems daunting at first, even a single page of cycled fourth voicings provides many fascinating hours exploring new shapes and harmonic sounds. As with all of the cycles, these always connect with the beautiful musical logic that makes the Almanacs unique - I mean uniquely systematic - while also in the great tradition of harmonic researchers such as Thomas Campion, Bach, and their successors.

    If you're using a keyboard approach to the Almanacs, I expect you'll already have read the two articles from Keyboard magazine (Jan 2004), 'Mr Goodchord Goes Keyboard I & II?

    All the best
    Mick W

  4. #953

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    Even though this thread has been quiet for a while I'm sure quite a few of the people posting here are still working regularly on this material.
    I am still working on this material, although I've started going back to improvisation.

    I have started my project of working on the Hungarian Minor scale starting with 4 part 7th.

    And also I have been contemplating the 840 chords you must know in book 3. Working on cycles I have played
    all of them and "know" a lot of them. These chords are supposed to be all the chords from the 3 scales in the books.
    I am wondering what chords (halfway usable) are missing from this list?

  5. #954

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    Hi JohnoL,

    You're in deep — the '840 chords' section in Vol. 3 is a book-within-a-book! You say that you're 'wondering what chords (halfway usable) are missing from this list?' Wayne Krantz's book 'An Improviser's OS' lists 165 possible four-note combinations from the chromatic scale.

    I suppose 'u
    sable' depends upon personal taste (context, register choice, tone etc.). Krantz's outside-sounding four-semitone clusters such as 1 b2 2 b3 (e.g. x 6 0 5 2 x, or x 4 0 5 4 x) or 1 b2 2 7 (e.g. x 4 0 4 1 x ) sound useful, to me.

    All the best
    Mick W

  6. #955

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    Hey'all. Gosh, it's been 11 years since I began this thread! During this time, there has been an amazing discussion on this work and for my part, I can certainly say my perception of the voice leading almanac has changed radically.
    During the pandemic shut down, I began a FaceTime group with some fellow guitarists, all of whom had studied with Mick, all of whom are serious advancing guitarists, all of whom lived lives profoundly effected by the three volumes and all of whom had promised themselves for years to really immerse themselves in the voice leading bible "when we finally had the time". It was the yearlong lockdown that gave us the doorway that opened to this world and through our weekly get togethers, I can say most profound and unexpected changes occurred. None of us had the slightest idea how our perception would be altered, no less the revolution that would happen in just how different the guitar landscape could become.
    So I thought I'd try to recap just some of these life changers.

    Why have SO many guitarists gotten the books only to be among the 99% who wind up with three telephone books on a forgotten corner of a shelf?

    These books provide more questions than answers. Not a good selling point, I know but there is a purposeful paucity of guidance in the laying out of this material. We'd get together each week and wonder over "How could Mick not mentioned THIS ...[...]" in applications or practical uses." But after two months of weekly revelations (I'm using this instead of a turnaround, or Check this application of the cycles using alternating diminished scales as the basis, or This chromatic alteration when used within a cycle gives an amazing forward propulsion, or So THAT's what Ben was doing!) we realized that personal revelations are what the book is about. It's like the head of the tune, the real mastery is what you yourself make from it.

    So I think of the Almanacs as the third leg of an olympic relay race. You don't start at the starting line here, and you're not even at the second leg, but you are passed the baton by a moving hand and one should only open up these pages when you're able to run, have mastered the first legs of knowing the instrument, fingerboard and know how chord families and inversions work and most importantly until you ask yourself "Where can I go on the instrument to get me out of the restless sense of comfortable mastery I'm trapped in?" Yes. This is a baton that is passed to you when you can already run, sprint and pace a good race.

    Some observations.

    There are a LOT of pages in these volumes. Each one is a little etude in finger movement, ear training and unexpected root movement. Individually, they address a specific sound of movement and the fingerings to accomplish that (up the neck, traveling down the neck, with fast movement, or subtly with slow blending textures). The first ones I worked with I'd spend weeks on each, but each subsequent cycle or chord grouping took less time, as the commonalities and fingerboard mapping and ear voice awareness became greater. I was amazed a long time ago when Ben would tell me he was reading these through like you'd read a newspaper, or doing a Bach Chorale a day, but as I spent time on the cycles, I saw myself anticipating voice and root movement in a way I'd never experienced.
    I was being re-wired internally to perceive harmony as a horizontal experience. It took time of course but here's another observation. All of us went through stages: 1) Impossibly awkward and intimidating. 2) Becoming comfortable and smooth. 3) Wow! That's cool and beautiful -playing a cycle off book and seamless string set switching. 4) I was playing a tune and all of a sudden my fingers were doing stuff and my ears were hearing stuff I didn't know WHERE is was coming from.
    Neural re-wiring. Allow time and patience to get there. It comes with persistence and dedication. No other way.

    I'll post more observations in my next post.

  7. #956

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    More observations

    We are traditionally trained to perceive of harmony as a succession of tertiary 3 or 4 part chords going from one "change" or "grab" to the next. Melody is based on hearing and making linear these structures in a scale manner.
    One thing about the Almanacs, tertiary harmony (1 3 5 7 and inversions) are only one of many different permutations of 4 scale tones, each of which can be treated as a unique entity and voice led. So in the chords we know, there's still the types of 7th chords at the heart of our approach.
    In the Almanacs 1 2 3 5 is a 4 part chord. 1 3 5 6 is a 4 part chord. 1 3 4 5 is a 4 part chord. etc.
    Each of these chords has a unique sound, some other worldly, some a challenge to find an application for, some impossible to play on guitar as written but all of them opening up a new and untapped system of sound. Systems of sounds. That's what the Almanacs offer you. The voice leading in cycles shows you how to combine those sounds to negotiate harmonic movement you encounter in playing over a piece.
    These non tertiary chords are called Triads over Bass Notes, Spread Clusters and other varieties of chords with no names but well defined sounds and rules of movement.
    Chaotic? You bet, but it's all worked out and ready to be explored and assimilated by you. It's all in there waiting for your desire to tap these previously unheard sounds (considered by many impossible for guitar).

    Beyond

    What is written in the pages of the three volumes is huge. But it's only a springboard. All of us who were changed by work within, very rarely use any of the material as written, but in what it does to us with the ear and finger skills it imparts allows the player to play by ear in four voices moving at once, to apply tension and resolution on a chromatic level on the fly, to play things that were previously the exclusive realm of only the highest level of piano mastery.
    I look at chord soloing as I would writing, or painting: Seeing the theme or subject and having the tools to formulate an eloquent and elegant course through the form with a very personal style.

    Beyond that, it's really hard to describe, but the more I work with these books, the more I learn about harmony, the guitar, the sound and my self.

    I'll post more observations as they come to me and my Almanac colleagues.

    How about you guys? What's YOUR personal book that comes out of this exposure?

  8. #957

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    How about you guys? What's YOUR personal book that comes out of this exposure?
    My personal book precedes exposure to the almanacs, since I don't have them, but for years I've been working with some analogous procedures (at the piano):

    1. Splitting a single open voicing (e.g. drop 2 and 3) into a pair of dyads in separate octaves, consisting of the two highest notes of the voicing and the two lowest, then working with (1) alterations produced by raising or lowering the notes in one dyad or the other, or both, and (2) integration of the notes of one dyad into a melodic phrase and completing the harmony by playing the other dyad in another octave. On the piano this develops into playing a phrase in one hand, knowing what chord tones are contained within it, and accompanying it with complementary chord tones in the other hand.

    (I first conceived of this procedure as a way to get away from the most hackneyed and "grabbed" left-hand piano voicings, and as a way of relating jazz chords to the four-part harmony prevalent in baroque and classical composition, e.g. the Bach chorales.)

    2. Learning to play a Bach fugue from memory, and then playing it by ear in a all keys (from memory). The transposition to different keys changes the geography of the piece enough to defeat muscle memory, forcing me to aurally recall/reconstruct all the voices of the fugue, which mostly depends upon recalling the harmonic and melodic context of each voice.

    Over a number of years these practice procedures have brought about a much greater awareness of chords as individual voices that move, and an increased ability to distribute harmonic material between the right and left hands while integrating it with improvised melodic material in either or both hands.

    Experimentation with the Goodrick almanac material available to me indicates an opportunity to improve and expand what I've already been doing, and to move into new uncharted (by me) territories (such as the quartal and cluster voicings).

    In George van Epps' interview with Ted Greene, he said something like 'one lifetime is not enough to become a musician.' A jazz guitarist once told me "A person should spend at least one lifetime studying the Bach chorales." So, here I am doing what I can with the time that remains.

  9. #958

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    That the voice leading almanacs seem mostly only to deal with staggered parallel motion and that in itself is enough to fill years.

    Some of it seems a slightly roundabout way to avoid consecutives.

    Not sure how important ‘name that chord’ is but we are dealing primarily with inverting pitch sets, which is not a precondition of common contrapuntal patterns such as suspension chains, even though the MG cycles can appear contrapuntal (and avoid consecutives); although we may no longer ‘name that chord’ by the time we get to the quartals and clusters we are still dealing with chords with a theoretical root. Which is different from pure counterpoint.

    Anyway, it’s interesting to contrast this to a more pure counterpoint approach.

    Conditions set on the voice leading of these cycles are more complex than in many real
    world applications in trad harmony.

    Jazz guitarists, especially contemporary ones seem very concerned with inverting pitch sets. I wonder how abstract inversion becomes - how hearable it is, once we move away from conventional triads etc. Even triad and 7th chord Inversions do not sound alike, so what’s the important thing here? (Dunno just asking the question.) Obviously some of the movements you get that way sound really good. But it’s also of course not the only way to move.

    If the past few years means anything much, i think my personal book will lead me away from chords in general. I’m more interested in the intervallic side of things. MG does have something to do with that - from chords into voice leading. I do wonder how important the conception of nameable chords is to start with but that’s a bit of a moot point.

    Anyway the stuff itself is fun to practice now I have practiced practicing things like this (if that makes any sense.)
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-14-2022 at 02:48 PM.

  10. #959

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    Will you be starting anymore facetime sessions David? I'd certainly be interested.

    My summers are about revisiting repertoire and playing out but I'll be back teaching from September onwards so should have more time to revisit the MG books.

    I did a zoom call with David a while ago and dug back into the books then. What I found that although the examples don't come out in my playing they can affect my thinking when writing which is a pretty cool thing especially since I'll be focusing on writing more from September onwards. Can't wait. Totally in love with music.

  11. #960

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    Would anyone be interested in writing some stuff using this material and maybe sharing what you've come up with, maybe, once a month or so?

    It can be a bar of music, 2 bars, a head, a complete tune...anything goes as we are all at various stages of ability and busyness.

    It doesn't even have to be cycles as such but it would be nice to start writing with cycles at least. I know that when I write my ear often pulls me in different directions than intended.

    Maybe, and I'm sure there'd be less participation, we could play the little bits that we write live on zoom or FaceTime etc.

    What say ye?

  12. #961

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    Quote Originally Posted by Liarspoker
    It doesn't even have to be cycles as such but it would be nice to start writing with cycles at least. I know that when I write my ear often pulls me in different directions than intended.

    Maybe, and I'm sure there'd be less participation, we could play the little bits that we write live on zoom or FaceTime etc.

    What say ye?
    Sounds cool! Of note, when I'm working on this stuff, it's visual and aural more than it is literate. Meaning, I don't work this stuff out on manuscript paper but rather with chord grids and a full fingerboard 'map' in Roman numerals. It was going to be one of my subsequent posts.
    I do this because it models my actual thought process when I'm playing: A visual navigation of harmony on the landscape of the fingerboard. The Almanacs give me alternate root routes through changes. It's one of my own interpretations of the material.

  13. #962

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    I remember seeing the Goodchord books around the time they came out. Though I had done a good deal of work with The Advancing Guitarist over the years, I just didn’t grab onto the Goodchord books at the time - who knows what I was focused on then.

    Then they were gone. When I thought about them at some later point I looked around for the books and they were gone.

    Two years ago I was taking composition lessons with Russ Ferrante. He’s a fantastic teacher and among the many great concepts and sources of compositional
    inspiration he suggested was Mr. Goodchord Volume I. He had some specific sequences to recommend and I ended up writing a few original pieces right away, based on those pages.

    I’ve gone down some other paths since, but I definitely need to get back to the Almanac…

  14. #963

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    This person wrote to me to discuss things he's doing with the Almanac material.
    Very impressive. Here some things:



    Last edited by Jimmy blue note; 08-16-2022 at 09:54 PM.

  15. #964

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    Here is a short example of what I have been working on these last few days. It's all arpeggiated but I'm also doing some block chord and solo line stuff with the cycles

    The timing changes a bit throughout but I've just written it as 4/4. You can see where some chords cross the bar line.

    By playing the cycles in an arpeggiated style I don't get a sense of individual voices as such. Rather it's all lines to me.

    However I can see that you can add diminutions to any of the notes which would definitely make it more linear as it would be moving into a contrapuntal direction.

    Lots of exploring to do anyway and I'll get deep into it until the end of the year.

    These little pieces make for good etudes so I should really put them down on paper for reference later.

    My main aim with these, apart from finding cool voicings, is to let all this material seep into my writing of original pieces.

    Ben is my favourite solo player atm and since he owns these books (as in that he knows them inside out) it would make sense for me to follow the same path (with vastly different results of course).

    Anybody use the Goodchord Voice Leading Books?-img20220818180818-jpg

  16. #965

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    Mick and I have been working with a few others on the republishing project, but the new edition will have a lot of material from well known colleagues and former students (you know who they are) on what THEY found in the cycles.
    This is old news (Dec. 2021) but is still good news. The republication of the (expanded) almanacs promises to be well worth waiting for. I will plan on buying copies when they become available for purchase.

    I had considered requesting PDF copies of the existing books in the meantime, but eventually concluded that copying the whole documents onto my computer would violate my own policy regarding nonduplication of copyrighted materials.

    My understanding is that copyright protection does not apply to facts, ideas, procedures, algorithms, recipes and so forth, but may apply to a particular way of expressing such things provided that there is some degree of creative authorship in the expression.

    This leads me to believe that there must be many ways to express in print the core materials of the existing almanacs without violating the copyrights. But, I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, and this is not a legal opinion!

    I've given some consideration to what might be the minimum amount of information a person would need to produce the chord sequences presented in the almanacs. I don't know the answer, but I think it wouldn't be much. It has already been noted on this thread that once one has a close-voiced chord sequence based on one of the three scales, it is a trivial undertaking to generate all the chord voicings on all the scales. With a sufficient statement of the cycles and the voice leading rules that apply for a particular type of cycle and chord, one can even generate the initial sequence of close-voiced chords.

    From the breadcrumbs (clues) previously dropped in this thread and in other freely accessible places on the web, I think I've accumulated enough understanding of the system to be able to produce most if not all of the sequences contained in the first two volumes. Certainly enough to keep me busy until the republished almanacs become available!

    I've read through this whole thread a couple of times. It contains much useful information, insights, and enthusiasm. Thanks to everyone for their contributions!

  17. #966

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    It's always difficult to gauge how much explanation and just how much an individual brings to the collective useful application of this material. This coming week I'll spend at the Alternative Guitar Summit where there'll be a number of Mick's students (John Scofield, Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, among others) and I'll be bringing my Almanac to have a discussion and material exchange. In particular, I've been having an ongoing how-to of my personal way of interpreting these things with Mike Stern. I'll have a bunch of visuals with me. If an elegant approach emerges, I'll share it with you guys here on the forum in a post with some comments, especially from Julian, who used this stuff regularly.
    If anybody from the forum is attending, PM me or look for me there. I'm the video documentarian. You'll see me.

  18. #967

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    It's always difficult to gauge how much explanation and just how much an individual brings to the collective useful application of this material. This coming week I'll spend at the Alternative Guitar Summit where there'll be a number of Mick's students (John Scofield, Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, among others) and I'll be bringing my Almanac to have a discussion and material exchange. In particular, I've been having an ongoing how-to of my personal way of interpreting these things with Mike Stern. I'll have a bunch of visuals with me. If an elegant approach emerges, I'll share it with you guys here on the forum in a post with some comments, especially from Julian, who used this stuff regularly.
    If anybody from the forum is attending, PM me or look for me there. I'm the video documentarian. You'll see me.
    Looking forward to hearing about it!

  19. #968

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    For my own experience with the almanacs so far, I find I learn best by almost deriving the voice leading cycles myself from first principles and only consulting the book when I’m stumped about something. The logic isn’t hard to follow

    There’s also cycles missing from the book too, and of course there’s near infinite variations you can run on them.

    The cycles themselves can all be summed up on the back of an envelope. The Ben Monder handout that was doing the rounds a few years back is a good example of the sort of terse document that could easily be expanded into hundreds of pages.

    The process of inversion itself is trivial on paper (or keys), but can be a real brain teaser on guitar for instance.

    The bottom line is for any intense fretboard mapping like this, you have to get it on the guitar neck sooner or later. I prefer sooner.

    I do appreciate the work of writing all the blinking things out (presumably in an era before since a task was easily automated), and maybe some people find it better to work from the books directly.

  20. #969

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    The Ben Monder handout that was doing the rounds a few years back is a good example of the sort of terse document that could easily be expanded into hundreds of pages.

    The process of inversion itself is trivial on paper (or keys), but can be a real brain teaser on guitar for instance.

    The bottom line is for any intense fretboard mapping like this, you have to get it on the guitar neck sooner or later. I prefer sooner.
    I wonder how many on this forum know how to play their major, melodic minor and harmonic minor closed and spread triad cycles without thinking about it?

    And that's only the start of volume 1 and also the start of Ben's teachings.

  21. #970

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller

    There’s also cycles missing from the book too...
    Hi Christian, it's interesting to hear your contrasting viewpoint. I can see how your classical training in counterpoint and partimento might make Almanacs vols 1&2 look very repetitive and reductive, although I'd also argue that Vol.3 is very different, even as if pursues the same voice-leading investigations further.
    Can you give us one or two examples of what you mean by 'cycles missing', please?
    All the best, Mick W.

  22. #971

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    The cycles themselves can all be summed up on the back of an envelope.
    That's more or less what I was thinking.

    Would you (or anyone) be so kind as to summarize on the back of an envelope just the information essential for generation of the cycles contained in Volume 3, and post a scan of it here? That could be very helpful as so little information from or about Volume 3 has been posted anywhere that I can find.

  23. #972

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    Hi J.Lee,
    Vol. 3 doesn't really follow the format of the two earlier ones: although much of the time it's still looking at sequences of three and four part voicings, it also reads like a sequel to MG's 'The Advancing Guitarist'. There are sequences based on different scales (harmonic major, and Hungarian minor), and also on the '4-tonic' minor thirds axis and '6-tonic' whole-tone axis. (Maybe these are some of the cycles Christian says are missing?) There are also cycles that alternate different voicings or chord types, and three other important 3-note chord-types are used (as seen in Goodrick and Miller's 'Creative Chordal Harmony for Guitar'), 'diatonic' 3-note clusters, sevenths-omit-3rd, and sevenths-omit-5th. Also includes some great examples of uses. Phew! Next up, paraphrasing Proust!
    All the best, Mick W

  24. #973

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    voice lead any 3 and 4 note structures (common and less common) derived from 7 note scales through these progression sequences in all inversions/voicings.

    ||: I II III IV V VI VII :||

    ||: VII VI V IV III II I :||

    ||: I III V VII II IV VI :||

    ||: I VI IV II VII V III :||

    ||: I IV VII III VI II V :||

    ||: I V II VI III VII IV :||

    This is an envelop sized starter kit.
    To describe all the places Mick goes in the 3 books and
    the many possible detours might venture requires
    more surface area.

  25. #974

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mick Wright
    Hi Christian, it's interesting to hear your contrasting viewpoint. I can see how your classical training in counterpoint and partimento might make Almanacs vols 1&2 look very repetitive and reductive, although I'd also argue that Vol.3 is very different, even as if pursues the same voice-leading investigations further.
    Can you give us one or two examples of what you mean by 'cycles missing', please?
    All the best, Mick W.
    Sorry I mean voice leading possibilities.

    Btw I’m not criticising the almanacs at all - it’s just worth bearing in mind that however exhaustive something appears there’s always stuff left out. so the terrifying fact is one can put in the hard graft to master the first half of the first volume and not have mastered all of the common voice leading possibilities in tonal music. Which is not tbf what I think the book is intended to do.

    Cycle 4 is obviously a big one. There are a few beautiful and idiomatic ways to voice lead this progression that don’t necessarily fall neatly into the cycle system; play around with Cycle 4 enough and study Bach etc and you’ll find them. I don’t know Ted Greene’s teaching very well but he certainly plays them and no doubt taught them too.

    But mostly it’s a philosophical difference because the partimento stuff is all based on the bass lines not root movement. What are cycles of root movement to MG are suspension chains to this way of thinking. It’s not so important if a set of notes are an inversion of another; what’s important is the constituent intervals and how they prepare and resolve. Classical moti de basso will also often use two intervals in a cycle, up a third, up a step, that kind of things (which makes a cycle 4); you see that in the two part inventions, lute suites etc

    But in terms of the harmonic process Bach will often write quite diverse chords over the same bass - the crucifixus from the B minor Mass is a masterclass in this. CPE Bachs collection of harmonisations of a ascending and descending scale bass are also a fascinating example of the same technique - you can find them in Mortenson’s book. Because of this a functional root based approach might miss the process by which this harmony was arrived at. It just works differently.

    In jazz we are obviously working from chord symbols much of the time, and may have a bass player so it’s not the same thing really. The reduction of everything to ii V I that occurred in the 60s really gets rid of the emphasis on pre composed melodic bass lines that we see in original songbook harmony and so on and outs the emphasis more on basic chord functions.

    That said I find it interesting how many post modal composers started writing bass line oriented progressions to get away from ii V I harmony. Metheny is a case in point. His process seems more similar to the baroque approach sometimes, and you obviously also see that in Jobim etc. (And there’s also the influence of 60s pop/rock which is often very bass line oriented.)

    Anyway coming back to MG. There is overlap but it’s interesting how they are different. Not all the voice leading and bass line possibilities are present in 18th century music either; they weren’t going through mathematic possibilities, rather it was more like chess or something where the Knight can only move a certain way.

    MG is coming more from a place of; here’s a mathematical construct, let’s see how it sounds. Some of them sound like trad progressions but some really don’t. Because of that I think it will be most useful in the long run for non traditional harmony, which is no surprise. I like the non tertial stuff a lot, but it’s very hard on the brain at first. Good for me.

    Anyway, it’s all good practice. For where I am in my life atm I actually really like the schematic aspect of the almanacs. It feels like doing a session in the chord gym, but I don’t have to get too involved conceptually, just crunch through the cycle until it becomes easier, and build muscles that will be useful further on down the line.

    I need to feel more comfortable with the first two volumes before moving onto vol3, but I’m looking forward.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-23-2022 at 05:57 AM.

  26. #975

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    Christian, I think the almanacs were never meant to be a practical set of passages to be referenced in playing or even meant as a guide book to counterpoint, but rather a frank and exhaustive treatment of intervallic movement based on possible 4 part chords.
    This exploration, although ostensibly opaque and impractical, is one complete approach to linear harmony. These are cannonic cycles based on harmonic movement and intervallic (and ultimately aesthetic) groupings.

    For an improvising musician in the jazz tradition, where the thought process is traditionally instilled in a vertical process (how many players see a solo as the leapfrogging from one chord to another?) to a horizontal one where melodic content can defy and eventually transcend the restrictions of chart reading.

    For me, they were the training ground for asserting melodic content in 3 or 4 voices so the compositional process in the moment can be intelligently line oriented and horizontal in respect to that boundary of the bar line.
    For me they were ear etudes that taught my fingers to sense and travel horizontally through the ear.

    It took a lot of time and work, but I would not have been able to do it without my immersion in the almanacs.

    Cycle 4 is not merely root movement up a 4th, but rather a relatively slow moving (2 voices staying, 2 voices stepping down) descending morphing of harmonic sound, and often in a cycle, when played within a piece, one doesn't hear the next chord as a 'new chord in an inversion' but rather a set of tensions of the underlying given harmony (much in the same way that a cycle 3 chord following a I chord can sound like a 9 chord where the root was asserted previously).

    To hear play reharmonizations is an ability that comes with time and training, but to play the many possibilities was largely the realm of the composer. Almanacs can be used to impart that thinking through a large body of exhaustive possibilities. Take them as you will.