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As I work through these, especially the TBN cycles, voices move up AND down and really spread all over the span of the fingerboard. In addition to all of the compositional exercises, these are really excellent vehicles to drill with students young and old alike, to get to know the notes of the fingerboard.
Internalize these shapes, and your ear tells you when you've got it. Ear reading exercises. Yes.
Especially since to play these smoothly, one must by necessity change positions, alternate voices between adjacent strings and employ double stops in some situations. These are amazing dexterity excercises and they sound smooth when you do them right.
Is this not a beautiful workout on all fronts? It ascends, and maybe a descending cycle 6 of some sort in the B section? Oh yeah.
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03-08-2023 09:12 PM
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Not a problem. More to come
Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
And David thank YOU for introducing me to the almanacs.
I really feel like that I am here at the most ideal time in my guitar playing journey. It's like everything that I have done beforehand has led me here
I'm very happy to stay here and very excited about what the future holds
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I had a question but found the answer
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Dang! Some people have ALL the luck. All my questions are hydra's heads. Originally Posted by Liarspoker
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Funny -- WAY BACK when Mick had his web site, there was an "Ask Mick a Question!" link; when you hit it, a robotic voice spoke, "Instead of asking Mick a question, ask yourself the question first, and keep asking until you figure out the answer!" Cursed Mick! Originally Posted by Liarspoker
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I got so used to embracing his brush offs to questions that I never asked him direct questions without telling a story before hand, setting up some narrative conversation so it was real. What I got from that was the precious 5 minutes (He had in internal clock of externalization after which he just merely looked off into space and continued his abstractions in silence) of actual verbalization. Originally Posted by marcwhy
Funny -- WAY BACK when Mick had his web site, there was an "Ask Mick a Question!" link; when you hit it, a robotic voice spoke, "Instead of asking Mick a question, ask yourself the question first, and keep asking until you figure out the answer!" Cursed Mick!
Now that he's gone, I'm thinking of SO many questions I wish I could ask him about the folders full of numbers, letters and arrows I came across. In all honesty though, after the pandemic, he was at peace with what he knew, what the world didn't get yet and that gap between.
He didn't enjoy explanations anymore. I'd come in, he'd be playing something other worldly, I'd quietly push the REC button and sit down. Later, if I asked him what he was doing, he'd point to cryptic non notational notes on the coffee table and that was all he'd offer me.
This thread and the live Zoom group is my attempt to establish some bridge from what he left me...and the practical world he tired of reaching out to.
So honored to work with you cats on this stuff. He was proud and I know it gave him such comfort to know this existed when he wouldn't have been able to do this in his capacity as faculty.
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Almanac Vol.3, p.2 plants a lovely new seed when it emphasises the terms 'event/episode' in relation to the cycles. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
"An episode involves all 7 of the notes in a particular diatonic scale at least once, while an event will involve 2-6 of the available notes at least once..."
There are similarities and differences between these two entities. For example, an episode clearly delineates an entire modal zone, which transposition will then change to the other modes. in contrast to this, transposing an event will sometimes leave the intervalic relations unchanged (while also providing usefully ambiguous harmonic 'wiggle-room' for variation, 'pivot-chord' modulation, pentatonic harmonies, etc.)
One use of both of these concepts is that events & episodes allows us to adopt a fragment of any cycle, and then use these as a musical idea. To state the obvious, we don't have to use all seven steps (or all 14, 21 or 28 steps on a page) in order to invent something musical from the raw data on the page.
I'm getting interested in such 'events' that repeat a 3-note group once or twice, transposed up and/or down the octave before moving to the next group.
I'm reluctant to use the term 'chord arpeggio' because some of these patterns in 2nds and 4ths quickly become melodies as they range across the octaves (but then Villa-Lobos' Etude #2 comes to mind). Any chord with a minor ninth between its outside voices sounds very edgy, but in its arpeggiated form it resolves nicely when we play it across two or three octaves with a 'step-back' of a semitone from the m9 to the starting note of the next octave – see bars five and six in my example, below. (I think bars one and two here would qualify as an 'episode'?).
All the best
Mick W
Last edited by Mick Wright; 03-11-2023 at 09:43 AM.
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Thanks for pointing this out ('event/episode')... This helps a lot in understanding Micks material
I was still a little absolutist on the way
Our Goodchord meeting today, with the focus on teaching was different than expected, but still held some interesting points for me to think about.... David's 11 points in advancing musically and the idea of "purpose" will give me some room for thought.
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There was so much I didn't get to, but I wanted to set up some framework whereby we could address our discussions of specific materials to certain levels of understand, to make sure we're speaking at and to an appropriate level of receptivity.
I'll spend the next flurry of posts talking a little more about triads in 4ths and TBNII. Please feel to post your own takes on these families of chords.
Suggestion: Explore the chord voicing family to determine if that particular cycle is even doable. There're chord groupings and voicings that you have to be imaginative with. I suggested that if you can't play it as a chord, making a chord into a line can be a very effective way to create complex 'lines' that you can then sequence into a phrase.
If you think phrase craft is a worth while topic, we can throw out some ideas here or in our next gathering.
In short, a phrase is a group of notes that might be associated with a sentence in music, or an idea that a horn player might play in a breath. It has a sense of completeness to it.
A phrase has a beginning, some kind of content and an end. We might not be aware of it in this way but not having a solid inventory of say, different ways to start a phrase (Interval, on or off the beat, scale step or approaching, ascending or descending...) can lead to limiting ourselves in our solos. We can create phrase content that has a limited linearity when we play by habit. These cycles allow us to create melodic cells of unusual yet beautiful texture and proficiency in playing these cycles, especially non tertiary ones, can give a player virtually limitless lexicon for weaving great solos every time.
At the end of our meeting, it was suggested that those of us who wanted, could construct anything from a phrase (with harmonic context) to a composition based on a scale, voicing and cycle.
I think this is a great way to push ourselves into familiarity and increasing our exposure and applications for this stuff.
I look forward to anything we come up with.
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Thanks Mick Originally Posted by Mick Wright
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Sorry I had to duck out early last night but I still get a lot from an hour. Some good things to concentrate on for the next couple of weeks. Tbh atm I think I’ve just got to keep plugging away at the cycles. It’s getting easier.
Thanks for the chart mick, I’ll have a read through that this week! More please!
David would it be possible to summarise those (11?) points of development you outlined at the beginning of the session?
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Thanks Christian,
I'll get more stuff like that posted, mid-week.
And may I second the request for the 11 points please, David? (I only managed to scribble 8 or 9 of them down).
All the best
Mick W
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This is a dynamic and changing list of guidelines but it gives me an idea by which we might identify and self-identify where we are along the journey of creators on the guitar.
All with a grain of salt.
13 steps in progression to musical integration
Because the materials within the almanacs is so broad in scope and so far reaching in application, I thought it'd be useful from a teaching and learning perspective, to have some form of metric and guideline by which we can loosely gauge our musical abilities, that this might be helpful in addressing how any particular piece of information can be presented.
This is somewhat loosely progressive and not really linear, by which I mean, these are all things we work on collectively throughout our lives, but personalize through time and practice. I hope this helps.
1) Having some idea of purpose. Knowing why we are making the effort to learn something, no less something that demands time and concentration, and dedication to train our hands, ears, mind, is really important if you want to stay the course. Improvisational composition can be for fun, to find an engaging application for your abilities, or something through which you find a connection with life and the world. Establishing your level of commitment lets you follow through without disappointment.
2) Manual Dexterity. Kinesthetics. Teaching your hands to move confidently with control to get the best sound from right and left coordination.
3) Knowledge of aural patterns. Scales, intervals, chordal elements, all need to be internalized in a way that allows recognition and a visualization-in the abstract and on the fingerboard.
4) Hands, Sound and Time. Time feel and solidity in movement. One way to keep your thinking and moving with a beat is to practice with a metronome during some part of your routine. You need to be able to THINK in time to play true in time. Overcoming hesitation and taming the effects of indecision to work with time… really great asset in playing.
5) Manual dexterity and hearing/seeing in larger blocks. Once you can control the flow of play, and awareness of what you’re playing, the imagination combined with an aural memory allows us to work with larger blocks. We can make words into sentences. This is the art of the phrase. Phrases are the personalization of sound, and this level of playing will continue to define your artistry for life.
-SONG STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPING THE SHAPING FORCES-
6) Knowing where to go, why and using this knowledge to avoid chaos. This is sometimes called theory.
7) Aural shaping. This is the ability to make decisions that elevate one’s playing from reactionary reflexive hand initiated playing and into the realm of hearing the future. It’s a respect for sound and where it can take you. Building a lexicon of sound starts from here.
8) Syntax. There is an order that binds sound, and there are guidelines from which we respect conventions, break them and re-write them on our own terms. Syntax and how firmly and expansively we apply it allows strong growth from solid roots.
9) Ear Training. Knowing intervals, rhythmic space, pitch and harmonic chordal movement in a quantifiable way provides us not only with an instantaneous confidence of the moment but the solidity by which we move into the future. A solid ear must be carefully and very personally informed. It’s a non linear process and there’s never too early to begin hearing. It adds nuance with time and practice and it becomes more articulate in tandem with one’s ability to play.
Training your ear puts the language of sound in the driver’s seat.
10) Song Segments. Each aspect from the micro to the macro adds to the totality of effect and utility. Knowledge of silence forms the basis of knowledge of a sound. Knowledge of a note informs the interval. Knowledge of the interval leads to the phrase. Phrases become systems. Systems contribute to sections. Sections are part of Choruses. Choruses have distinct characters which make up a solo through multiple choruses.
And so on. Each step has considerations an informed player can find options to play with.
11) The Lexicon. Our bag of options. You make yours. You shape it and add to it for as long as you play. The longer you play the more you have to work with. They are the materials and tools of the craft.
They include Motif, Direction, Articulation, Dynamics. Space, Contrast, Texture, Cells, Consistency, Note choices that make phrases, licks, quotes, …
These are the stuff of seasoned players that allow them to create fresh, seemingly limitless, articulate and expressive solos. It’s your language and it’s always kept close to your creative process.
12) Semantic Content. This means after all the notes you CAN play, what are you actually saying? This is what makes a mature player.
13) Composition and Free Improvisations. Freedom and Order. Inspiration and Communication.
This list of guidelines can be helpful when I present any new concept from the Almanacs, from how to finger them (#2) to how to use them in making an etude or composition (13).
I hope this helps.
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That's really great. Thank you. I wrote the points down last night but couldn't get it all together.
And it is worth mentioning that you moved the point "purpose" to number one. To my mind this is so important...
I have so many different students, e.g. children, adults, music students, professional musicians and all of them associate different things with the guitar and have different ideas why they play the instrument...
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If we're going to have any kind of dialogue involved in learning or teaching or even discussing, we need to know where eye level is. I've been in an institutional learning environment where this wasn't even a consideration. And so many students drop out because they felt like what was being taught didn't speak to them. Originally Posted by mheton
I feel a little guilty that we didn't have time to open up more technical discussions, but I did feel it was necessary that we all know that wherever we are on the non linear ladder, this material is relevant, so know you have a place in the dissemination of all that's included within. Something as specific as a triad over bass note can be used as a finger exercise, note identification exercise, ear training exercise or the germ for an alternative linear system throughout the solo on Autumn Leaves.
We're all asking questions.
I'm speaking to you.
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re. 3-part fourths: (we're somewhere in-between the technical and conceptual/abstract/theoretical dept., here)
I played through this chart (below, one of 12 for each note in the chromatic scale) from Almanac 3 again this weekend and found it a very different musical experience from the last time that I explored it. The 3-part fourths are laid out with a C as the top note of each voicing - another way of exploring these – but can anyone else tell me what the boxes are around the pairs of three note structures, please?
Making a connection, I love Mick Goodrick's diagram from his essay in the book he wrote with Tim Milller - Creative Chordal Harmony. I added some colours to the different chord groups, a while ago, and it's interesting that Mick puts the 3-part fourths right at the centre of his diagram.
In a very small nutshell, the lines connecting pairs of 3-note structures combine to make groups of six different notes – which Mick and Tim call Generic Modality Compression – we can then assign the one 'missing' note to the bass (or use a pedal-tone, perhaps).
So there are another 11 diagrams like this one to sketch out now, for the chromatic scale, once again...
There's an interesting difference here, too - The Almanac 3 'What's on top...' chart gives us every 3 note structure with a C, while the GMC book chart offers the opposite, with no C at all ...
Last edited by Mick Wright; 03-13-2023 at 06:04 AM.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Re. my question in the above post (#1191) about the boxes drawn around some 3-note structures in Almanac 3's 'What's on top of three-note chords? section.
— it looks as if the answer is that the boxes simply indicate the repetition of chords that can have more than one name, the duplicates arising from Mick Goodrick's customary systematic thoroughness. I was confused by the frames around such pairs of chords resembling similar boxes drawn around groups of notes in contemporary classical music.
Looking at each box in turn — In the first line of chords, the augmented triad EG#C can be C+ or E+ or G#+ and both repetitions that follow are 'boxed'. Less obviously, at the end of line three, the 3-part spread cluster D#BC is the same (if we allow the enharmonic Eb/D#) as 7th no 5th EbBC. (There the box comes before the repetition.) On the fifth line of chords the 7th no 5th DbEC contains the same notes as the earlier 3-part spread cluster DbEC.
As for a few of the hydra's heads popping up here? How to practice chromatic voice leading using this material? Uses of inverse pedal tones? — and what about the chords (such as DbBC) that lie outside this system?
All the best
Mick W
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I am not quite clear about these two items.Wow, I'm just thinking over the sheer depth and breadth of what we covered yesterday. Here are a few of my favourite takeaways:
Cycles moved non diatonically over diatonic bass notes.
Non diatonic bass note movement over diatonic cycles.
Is this cycles with 3 part voicings (triads,4ths) with a base note played on the guitar?
Or 4 part voicings ? With a 5th note for the diatonic or non-diatonic bass played on the guitar?
What would be some simple examples?
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It's related to the idea of sequencing rather than functional voice leading. Originally Posted by JohnoL
If, for instance you had a descending progression that cycled from a tonic C back to tonic C, you could use a progression like C E- G7 C
But you could also use a sequence that voice led a progression with a bass note movement C Maj7 root in bass, F# Maj7 3rd in bass, C# Maj 5th in bass, G# Major 7 with 7 in the bass and C voiced with the 5th in bass. The movement of the bass note provides the sequence and the inversions lead the voices. Even more interesting is using voices in cycles, but not diatonic but with bass note movement as outlined here.
Hey I have a question for you. I've got another thread on this forum, it's 20 weeks of technique building on harmonic structures (projects) based on common standard forms and Howard Roberts Super Chops book. The idea is to use standards to apply and internalize dexterity and conceptualization, not to mention ear training.
Is there any interest in my starting a thread for a finite number of weeks, say, 16 weeks of standard rehamonization using these ideas?
For instance, I'd post a skeletal chart of All The Things You Are with a loose interpretation of Diatonic, Dominant, modulatory and key areas and you'd come up with an applied superimposition of some Almanac technique to overlay on the form. Since ATTYA is cycle 4, for instance, we can find progressions that double that cycle and we can voice lead that cycle and practice it so we can play that passage in real time.
It's got to be participatory cuz I'm not going to do all the work on this myself.
One tune a week, slow but progressive tempos and maybe one idea of focus per project week. I'll use the outlines written by Howard Roberts.
Weigh in on the idea.
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Combining Howard Roberts Chops with Mr. Goodchord knowledge is an awesome idea ...
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Ditto, let's see some action
Edit: Maybe it might be better to take a common jazz progression per week rather than a whole tune?
Or maybe less experienced jazzers like myself can take a progression from the tune and work on that.
This way it would be accessable to everyone
Last edited by Liarspoker; 03-22-2023 at 09:31 AM.
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I think I'll do it. I'm going to start a thread beginning on Sunday. It'll be a complete song form, but within it I'll outline the key area and the dominant function passages. I do this because that's the way I think of a piece and it presents the most diverse way one can think of and apply the tonal principles within the cycles. Originally Posted by Liarspoker
Ditto, let's see some action
Edit: Maybe it might be better to take a common jazz progression per week rather than a whole tune?
Or maybe less experienced jazzers like myself can take a progression from the tune and work on that.
This way it would be accessable to everyone
In short, any piece has areas of tonal focus, areas that define a sound with which we hear/feel and re-interpret through our improvisation. This is a conscious and unconscious way we impart breath and character to our playing.
I'm going to use a song form, first in chord symbols, then in some interpreted outlining of diatonic tonal areas, then in a graphic that suggests dominant movement and within there, pointing out some common dominant devices.
We can then take any section and work with some aspect of voice leading, as tightly or loosely as we want, and interpret the flow of harmony to re-write the harmonic structure. In other words, this will be a thread who's purpose is to take the sounds that we work on, and learn how they work to EXPAND our practical and functional ears over a conventional song form.
You are free to take any passage out and focus on that.
This is the way you push yourself to know the inner workings of any standard or tonal piece and develop a lexicon of your own. Remember that post where I outlined some steps to mastering your improvisational nature (take a look at #1188)? This is the step we take as we learn to trust our ears, to hear, not read our way through a song, and expand what we can hear through the hand/ear connection.
This thread will be alive with new hidden sounds within Mick's work. That thread will be how to apply it so you can become expressive in a tonal situation. When I begin on Sunday, there'll be a progression based around the standard Angel Eyes.
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Anything to report?
Altered in quartals hurts my brane.
TBN getting easier, which is to say I am now only dribbling out of one side of my mouth as opposed to both.
Give it another decade. I'm dull at music.
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I've been messing with classical devices as usual Christian. Here is one in E harmonic minor mixed with E Aeolian.
https://youtube.com/shorts/fGOiYnKrXfk?feature=share
Edit: David, looking forward
Last edited by Liarspoker; 03-22-2023 at 05:56 PM.
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There is something to report:
I'm doing my "devoirs".... I'm working on cycles with Drop3, Drop2, Drop2&4 and occasionally I try to figure out quartal 3part voicings with bass notes.
But ... I'm more concerned with making things sound good than trying lots of things. I know myself by now. My brain needs time to let things sink in. Also, my hands need to get used to some voicings. And faster tempos seem to be a problem for me, and I need to change all these voicings to 3-note voicings.
Conclusion: A lot to do.
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