The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 28 of 52 FirstFirst ... 18262728293038 ... LastLast
Posts 676 to 700 of 1289
  1. #676

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    Okay, I'll throw out a dumb question. Is There any particular thought and logic as to the arrows showing the voice movements?

    On all but the cycle 2 and cycles 7 arrangements, the arrows show the direction for the least amount of movement for all voices between chords.

    For the cycle 2 and cycle 7 arrangements it's assumed that everybody already knows how to play the diatonic chords in step order up and down the scale, so, instead, those cycles use descending voice motion to go up the scale and ascending voice motion to go down the scale to give you something new/different to work on.

    .

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #677

    User Info Menu

    So for a given cycle starting on a specific inversion/voicing starting point, is there generally only one way the voices can move to have the least movement?

  4. #678

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    So for a given cycle starting on a specific inversion/voicing starting point, is there generally only one way the voices can move to have the least movement?
    Yes, and the movement of the voices is uncannily consistent and predictabe. The fun comes when you can switch chord types, each of which has a sound, and intermix cycles to get both ascending and descending movement. On some groups, triads over bass notes for instance, there's both ascending and descending movment. Some go up and some go down for the smoothest movement. Some of the content in there is a dramatic study in divergence and convergence.
    There are some wonderfully potent harmonic and melodic tools that are buried within a fretboard freed of the conventional limitations of chord shapes. I'm just starting to see that being able to see the full range of notes within reach of a span of frets can hold unimagined intervallic textures, and then move them to resolution.
    Last edited by Jimmy blue note; 05-29-2020 at 05:45 PM.

  5. #679

    User Info Menu

    It's good to see a renewed interest in the Almanacs. I usually find a page I like, and then play it for a week or maybe more. There is so much info on each page, chords, arps, single lines.

  6. #680

    User Info Menu

    A couple of thoughts regarding the Alamanc books...

    Sometimes we can overthink a subject and start to lose sight of it altogether. I think that can happen with these books. To me, these books can be used to stir up creativity without having to analyze everything about what is in them.

    One of the most repeated pieces of advice about creativity is to limit the scope of what you are working with. What better way to do that than to just pick a page in any of these books and just play with what is there, playing with the sounds you get playing the contents in various ways?

    One piece of advice I read somewhere was for the first few minutes of every practice session, play something you have never played before. Just play. Again, you can do that with these books.

    If I have any concern about providing more direction in these books than what Mick Goodrick already provided, it is that such information can steer a person into a direction, rather than just leaving the material wide open to interpretation.

    I am not saying that knowledge stifles creativity, but what I read in these forums is people seriously studying jazz like becoming a math major, all the scales and chord forms, etc. Learning the vocabulary is important if you want to speak the language. But sometimes a break from that can also be a good thing. These books can be that because of the way that Mick Goodrick wrote them.

    Tony

  7. #681

    User Info Menu

    Hi Tony


    That's several excellent points, most particularly the one you make about the Almanacs offering a break from the 'math major' style music theory disciplines. Your approach matches one of Mick Goodrick's comments in the Almanac Vol. I introduction:

    "Try not to learn it ... You just have the experiences of going through the material. That will be enough."

    I like your idea of using these books 'to stir up creativity' by limiting the scope of the musical palette and canvas - saxophonist Steve Lacy described a similar method that he called 'Tight Corners' in his book 'Findings: My Experience with the Soprano Saxophone' (Paris: Outre Mesure, 1994.)
    In a way similar to what you describe, various posted comments about not using tab, or notation, inspired me to begin simultaneously using several registers for each chord of a cycle, playing these up and down the fingerboard, while still moving through the cycle. The voice-leading connections are still audible as the harmony shifts, but the 'piano-like' sounds from the constant register changes are at once educational, creative, and great fun. I try to feel and hear these as much as 'think' them: somehow, the left-hand fingers gradually find their way to the correct notes with minimal conscious effort.

    I certainly took the wanna-bee math major approach myself, at first, when trying to work through these mazes of chordal voice-leading. (I asked myself - Ok then, so what are these twenty different three-part chords? And, why do TBN I & II voicings suddenly produce contrary voice movement in Cycles 3 to 6?) Such puzzles get very compelling once the basics make sense, and we are steered a little in this direction by Mick Goodrick, in his introduction to Vol. II. Even there, though, his 'discovery learning' approach is still implicit in the format (so there are no page numbers at all in Almanacs Vols. I & II, and everything is 'only' presented in C major or C minor). Almanac Vol. III then changes to a different viewpoint, where a far greater amount of analysis is explicitly incorporated into the study material.

    The examples given in Vol II’s introduction are incredible condensed illustrations, yet these are only a tiny facet of what the Almanacs potentially offer. It's exciting to read people's experiences here, and to hear that there may now be further useful material coming soon.

    It might be interesting to see these introductions unpacked further. And any tips on modulations, please, anyone?

    Finally, to state the obvious, any page of these cycles works 'backwards' as effectively as it does 'forwards' — so a Cycle 6 progression for any given chord voicing sequence is a 'perfectly-reversed' Cycle 3 (i.e. cycle 6=3, cycle 7=2, and cycle 4=5). It is always useful to play and explore each page in both of these directions — it halves the paperwork, and the math!

    All the best
    Mick W
    Last edited by Mick Wright; 06-04-2020 at 02:35 AM.

  8. #682

    User Info Menu

    Paul Desmond said jazz can be learned, but it can't be taught.
    There's a curious dichotomy when it comes to the music we call jazz: On the one hand, it's a music that values, and even requires that one finds their own voice, their own way of playing. On the other hand, it's a music that is an incomprehensible and dangerous mixture of layered ritual, canon, linguistic nuance, and ostensibly impossible complexity...to the uninitiated. There is, in its history, a design of exclusion, a trial by fire that was once also a way of literally keeping those who didn't know off the bandstand.
    It manages to be universal and exclusionary at the same time.

    I love the challenge of working with Mick's materials because they really embody the spirit of exploration, and they offer the potential to find something within yourself that nobody else using the same material will even imagine. Every day I find something new about the guitar through just picking up the almanacs. It's humbling.
    I remember as I was learning about playing improvisational music, bebop, and I learned about lines, embellishments, harmony, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, I had the great honor of learning from Tal Farlow, saw Herb Ellis in a tiny cafe, heard Ella with Oscar. And I learned about Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, John McLaughlin- too. They were different. I didn't know why or how, but they were different. I was full of knowledge about how the music went together, and full of questions.
    I'd heard Mick was a respected and knowledgeable teacher and came to know his music.
    One day I asked him, "Mick, you play a lot with chord scales. Did you ever play bebop?"
    Without hesitation he said "It's all bebop. What I play IS bebop." There was no break in the continuum of knowledge in what he saw in the start of this tradition and where anyone could take it, just a requirement to know it thoroughly and bring it to a new place.
    It took me decades to get to this place but yeah, I see that.

    There's still that dilemma of just how to get to that point of revelation, and the more interesting question of how to share that experience with others. That balance of DIY and "You need to know this".

    Quote Originally Posted by tbeltrans

    If I have any concern about providing more direction in these books than what Mick Goodrick already provided, it is that such information can steer a person into a direction, rather than just leaving the material wide open to interpretation.
    I've witnessed the arc of the Almanacs from a book everyone at Berklee had to have to an obscure library bookend nobody even dusts off. And you can't even find them anymore. But to a small number of advancing guitarists, it's an elusive key; not even a doorway, but a key. You carry it with you, craft your door and your own frontier is all yours. So who shows you what you need to build a doorway?

    Mick was brilliant but he didn't put his years of teaching into teaching people what they needed to grok the Almanacs. He wrote The Advancing Guitarist and in many ways that became the body of information he expected you to know to reap the fruit of these books.
    There are a lot of guitar books out there. Most don't have the scope of information that Advancing has and none have the vision of the Almanacs, well I guess you can devote yourself to Bach Chorales and listen to the history of written music between then and now, but yeah their beauty lies in the open endedness of the approach.

    That's why so many of them are on shelves. That's why it's beyond the scope of many and that's why I asked you all to share your own process of improvisation, that we might find the common ground, as broad as it may be, to open up the fingerboard, ear and hand approach that will continue your own contribution to expanding the language.

    In the next few postings I hope to take a piece, and look at how I learned it before the voice leading cycles, and how that changed with some of the material. That's where, if we might share how we each approach cycles as those of us who want to, learn them, we can have some fun in this lock down.

    I thought we might work on All The Things You Are.

  9. #683

    User Info Menu

    The music colleges did have a vested interest in making jazz more this way.

    TBF jazz always had its guru figures and theories - Tristano, Van Eps and so on - but this side of the music was very much suited to academic institution.

    Also quantifiable aspects of the music - harmony, theory, mathematical approaches to rhythm etc - are easiest to codify and turn into concrete products such as textbooks.

    Anyway this is not meant to criticise educators themselves who are mindful of these issues, or Mick himself who is as praxis oriented as they come... but it is important to bear in mind how education moulded the music in the same way as the dance halls a generation earlier.

    No individual is responsible for any of these tendencies. They just sort of happen.

    none of it is ‘music from mars’ - it all has a context.

  10. #684

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    The music colleges did have a vested interest in making jazz more this way.

    .
    I agree. I've seen Berklee morph from a masterclass where it was considered a failure to make it to the end because it meant you didn't get snapped up by a working band, to a place where kids graduate not being able to play a tune through to the end.
    The shame is the academics have taken precedence over the exploratory search for a crafted expression. But no more rants on that, except to say the enviable situations where one joined up with a big band and learned the total integration of art and logic, survival and expression, the public and the private, and the ephemeral nature of the hang- there's an lost avenue of initiative that's been overlooked in the "need to know".
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Anyway this is not meant to criticise educators themselves who are mindful of these issues, or Mick himself who is as praxis oriented as they come... but it is important to bear in mind how education moulded the music in the same way as the dance halls a generation earlier.
    .
    As I'm working with students, graduates and musicians who have played for life, one thing is becoming clear: It's necessary to find the time, inspiration, material and guidance to achieve independence. For some of us, this shut in is a blessing, freedom from deadlines and exams, time to reflect.
    A network of like minded spirits and it's the closest thing to the big band experience. We have the time, the material, and the guidance from our collective experience... you provide the inspirational motivation.

    As far as the continuum of music from OJT -on the job training- swing and dance bands to the oft perceived as academic complexity of some players, well this music at its best is an honest portrait of what makes the individual. There are more people living in cities where a classical education, a poetic aesthetic, the assimilation of Wayne Shorter or a love for Ligeti is an integral part of the musician. You bring what you are, you find the way to swing, and you find those who speak your language. It's uncanny and something to dance about when you find it.

    Sometimes the ceaseless itch to capture the many voices of experience finds a resonance in polyphonic thinking. Now there's a way to see the fretboard so that is possible. No answers in the Almanacs, be warned, just some revealing forms where many possibilities are presented. For those who need it.

    Please, if you have a question or observation you think is basic, that is the best question in the responses they generate are the most revealing. Please don't be shy if you're learning and you're curious.

  11. #685

    User Info Menu

    Mick was brilliant but he didn't put his years of teaching into teaching people what they needed to grok the Almanacs. He wrote The Advancing Guitarist and in many ways that became the body of information he expected you to know to reap the fruit of these books.
    I have just been looking through my stacks of Jazz books trying to figure something out about the cycles. I discovered some pages in The Advancing Guitarist that I think will help me.

  12. #686

    User Info Menu

    Hi JohnoL
    The Advancing Guitarist is full of cycles, and perhaps pages 47-50 might be a good place to start. Pages 48 and 49 are all thirds-based harmony in various useful and guitar-friendly voicings, with regular sequences of inversions, using all six cycles of the C major scale. This material is closely related to various Almanac pages, only here it is notated in more register-specific 'written-out' form.

    A polite warning though — beware of the confusing layout and 'non-title' at the top of page 48 which says: '5. Quartal Harmony (fourth voicings) see Page 50”. These first few lines conclude the information begun on page 47. The notation on page 48 then relates back to section 2. on page 47, while the notation on page 49 relates back to page 47 section 3. etc.
    It confused me a lot anyway, but it's really great material to explore and to improvise with. For variety, Mick Goodrick suggests dropping the low E string to to D, which allows you to have a D dorian mode drone below all of these triads.

    It's all about identifying and playing a lot with these voicings and cycles, but there's also an extra game to play here as you work through the material. I'm pretty sure that there are two wrong 'top voice' notes on page 48, and a whole missing chord on page 49. That's the case in all of the copies I've seen, unless there's been a second edition published somewhere? As they say — what mistakes? ('Their are five mistake in in this sentense.')
    Best wishes
    Mick W
    Last edited by Mick Wright; 06-04-2020 at 04:22 PM.

  13. #687

    User Info Menu

    The Advancing Guitarist is full of cycles, and perhaps pages 47-50 might be a good place to start
    Yes, I had pages 44-56 marked off! These pages also include a nice summary of Drop voicings.

    I have also marked off pages 74-79 which includes Triads over Bass I and II (TBN) and some quartal voicings.

    I'll be sure to check out those details you mentioned.

  14. #688

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    Yes, I had pages 44-56 marked off! These pages also include a nice summary of Drop voicings.

    I have also marked off pages 74-79 which includes Triads over Bass I and II (TBN) and some quartal voicings.

    I'll be sure to check out those details you mentioned.
    Right. Exactly.
    Hey Johno, let's make you the guinea pig. Tell me where you are as far as your fingerboard knowledge. I'll walk you through a treatment of a piece at your level, you ask questions, I'll give you a different way to look at this. At your level. All tech support included. What do you think? Anyone else up for Johno meets the Almanac?

  15. #689

    User Info Menu

    Hi JohnoL, jimmy blue note,

    I'm on one of my favourite subjects here! I'd be happy to contribute whatever I can.

    In The Advancing Guitarist, if you move on from the section dealing with the major scale (and its associated modes), to the Melodic Minor Scale section (page 51-53) and the Harmonic Minor Scale section (page 55-56), you can quite easily re-use the triads and sevenths sequences on pages 48-49. To create the Melodic Minor chords just change every E to E flat, and for the Harmonic Minor chords replace each E and A with E flat and A flat.

    That section of The Advancing Guitarist is like a very short introduction to the Almanacs, condensed onto two pages
    .

    The differences, in 'stepping up' from these pages to the Almanacs, are quite manageable, and hearing about people's experiences with these is going to make interesting reading.
    All the best
    Mick W


  16. #690

    User Info Menu

    Tell me where you are as far as your fingerboard knowledge
    Hmm, where to start. I've been playing for almost 60 years. I have played classical (very little) ,bluegrass, folk, "hillbilly-fusion", and have been playing jazz guitar most of this time also. I am strictly finger style.

    I have never performed much jazz but I work or think about it every day. I consider myself to be "advanced" in some areas, very average in others. I wouldn't survive in a big band because of my slow reading skills and lack of focus when it comes to counting measures.

    I do have a strong knowledge of the fingerboard, string sets etc over this time period especially major/diatonic. But I don't know everything, I wouldn't be lurking on this forum if I did. I also work on diminished harmony, diminished scale triads a lot. Also quartal harmony. I have a decent knowledge of drop voicings but I need to keep going over them.

    I retired 2 years ago and had big plans to learn hundreds of standards, in all 12 keys, with one hand tied behind by back, but unfortunately I haven't been as productive as I had planned. I do teach myself something new every time I sit down to play.

    As far as the cycles, I have read through a lot of them, but the only ones I have focused on were some major spread triads. I got a lot of mileage just from that.
    Right now I am really enjoying working with chords and "chord melody" (yes I said it, chord melody), putting single note soloing on the back burner.


    I'll give your experiment a try, although I may wash out.

    Johno.
    '

  17. #691

    User Info Menu

    JBN,
    I've been trying to come up with some ideas for a sample tune, unless you have some ideas.

    What kind of tunes standards wise work well with the cycles? Lots of chords., lots of 2-5s?

    Also for the sake of simplicity would a guitar friendly key be better? The cycles all seem to be written in C major, melodic and harmonic minor.
    I could obviously transpose but I might get on track faster if I didn't.

    One tune I experiment with a lot is Cherokee. Would that work?
    Last edited by JohnoL; 06-07-2020 at 12:37 AM.

  18. #692

    User Info Menu

    I've been working with the triad rows on page 41 of Advancing Guitarist with spread voicings to help me get a better feel for this chord family. Did them with closed position triads before, but the spread voicings add a layer of difficulty.

    It's slow going, but I'm already seeing the benefits. You start seeing and hearing how the voices move, and you slowly start to get away from thinking about shapes.

    Mick only gives one possible randomly arranged row. To add a little variety, I whipped up a short little program. This is in JavaScript, so you can run this by opening up your browser's console and pasting it inside:

    function triad_row(){
    const result = [];
    const keys = ["C", "F", "Bb", "Eb", "Ab", "Db", "F#", "B", "E", "A", "D", "G"];
    const triads = ["maj", "min", "dim", "aug"];


    keys.forEach(key => triads.forEach(triad => result.push(key + triad)));


    return shuffle(result);
    }

    function shuffle(a) {
    for (let i = a.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
    const j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));
    [a[i], a[j]] = [a[j], a[i]];
    }

    return a;
    }
    Not the most elegant thing I've ever written, but it gets the job done.

    Now in your console, you can just type:

    triad_row()
    ...hit enter, and it should spit out a random row for you.

    I should note that, for security reasons, you should not normally just enter random code from the Internet into your browser console unless you're sure you know what it does.

  19. #693

    User Info Menu

    Another simple possibility is to insert a list of all the triads in this online randomizer app.
    https://www.random.org/lists/?mode=advanced

  20. #694

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    JBN,
    One tune I experiment with a lot is Cherokee. Would that work?
    Attachment 73632
    Great tune. For the generation of bop, hard bop and up to Coltrane/Shorter, Cherokee was the Giant Steps of the day.
    Anybody use the Goodchord Voice Leading Books?-cherokee-jpg
    We can certainly look at the flow of chords and find alternative paths from one point to another. That's really what the Almanacs provide, a huge number of alternatives for the player to work with.
    If we see the instrument as a landscape to be negotiated, a kind of aural topographic journey, there are lots of ways you can get from one point in the tune to another, and there are ways we learn to play ourselves from phrase to phrase. Sometimes convenience, habit or just the ideas of what we know can steer us into habits that are limiting.
    I had certain ways that I approached Cherokee and even with consciously using other options, there was a predictability of lines and chords that came from the patterns I knew, chord voicings I was comfortable with, looking at the root in the bass (or an inversion on the same set of strings a few frets up..., and I came to know these pretty well.
    Anybody use the Goodchord Voice Leading Books?-fullsizerender-4-jpg
    For instance, maybe I'd play Cherokee's first system as root position BbMaj at the 6th fret, the secondary dominant to the IV as root voicing II V starting 8th fret 5th string. Makes sense, falls easily.
    This is seen as a I (II V7)> IV...
    One possible way to create an alternative line of chords from I to IV is just to walk there up the harmonized scale. Yes, we're going to ignore that secondary dominant.
    I II III IV
    That gives you roughly one measure per chord, and the conventional wisdom keeps the voicings on the same set of strings ascending up the fingerboard. That keeps things sounding consistent and maybe familiar.
    But that same progression can be voice led by finding a descending root line with the root switching to different strings.
    Let's look at the little chart of root movement above in green.
    Start with your I chord root position (Bb at 6th fret). You can find a II chord root on the third string a fret down or on the second string 5 frets down. If you're playing spread triads, root on top is second inversion.
    You can next play the III chord. If you use spread triads, the first inversion has the root in the middle voice.
    And so on.
    Now that's the idea. Take a progression that has a beginning and an end, and chart a route with the same chord voicing family (closed triads, spread triads, drop 2, drop 2 drop 4...what ever you want) and move the chord roots by cycle (step wise cycle 2, in thirds cycle 3, in 4ths cycle 4...) and follow the chord movement until you reach the end.
    Things you need to know to do this:
    You need to know your chord voicing family in all inversions
    You need to know the fingerboard by root movements (green chart above)
    You need to know chord tones within a chord in all inversions
    You need to have a developed sense of diatonic ear training
    You need to have a sense of where the piece is going and the overall arc of the chords so you can choose a route to the defined key areas
    You need be able to play the same chord and voicing in all possible positions of the fingerboard
    If you have these, you have the basic building blocks as an improvisor and you can look at a piece conventionally or with voice leading.
    In the next few posts, I'll focus on specifics...how to visualize the movements, how to use the individual voices to guide you to the next chord, the importance of ear training and visual navigation as the balanced guides to chord progressions...etc.
    But this is the general idea.
    I think next I'll introduce the idea of cycles as connective roadways to interesting progressions.

  21. #695

    User Info Menu

    Other flipping difficult pre GS tunes:

    China Boy (problematic in every way)
    Old Milestones (really, Miles?)
    Conception (bog off, Shearing)
    All Gods Children Got Rhythm - shouldn’t be hard, but it is.

    Actually Cherokee isn’t too bad, because it is at least familiar on some level - you ain’t going to get far in modern jazz without mastering that middle 8 descending on whole tones movement. Think:

    Invitation
    Solar
    Tune up
    and so on

  22. #696

    User Info Menu

    Just to get my bearings:
    Question about the chart above. It's based on the key of C not Bb? And the far left numbers are the open strings?

    (I am pretty much following what you are saying in the post otherwise)

  23. #697

    User Info Menu

    and move the chord roots by cycle (step wise cycle 2, in thirds cycle 3, in 4ths cycle 4...) and follow the chord movement until you reach the end.
    Maybe you'll say more about this later, but this is what I don't quite get about using the cycles.
    Progressions obviously don't follow any cycle perfectly all the time.

  24. #698

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    Just to get my bearings:
    Question about the chart above. It's based on the key of C not Bb? And the far left numbers are the open strings?

    (I am pretty much following what you are saying in the post otherwise)
    It's open ended. It's not key specific. When you think in Roman numerals, it's all movable. This is the relative position of every chord in the key, so for instance, if you're in C, the I on the 5th string would be at the 3rd fret. If you're in Eb, the I on the 5th string would be at the 6th fret.
    Once you see (and hear) all your chords relative to the tonic chord, this chart will tell you where you find all the II chords, where you find all the VI chords, etc. Learn to see and hear the fingerboard this way and you'll instantly be able to chose alternative places to play chords, and see new ways to move around the neck.
    This is relative positioning and it relies a lot on your ability to hear different chords, and your ear will be an invaluable aid in finding progressions, target chords and moving voices.

  25. #699

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnoL
    Maybe you'll say more about this later, but this is what I don't quite get about using the cycles.
    Progressions obviously don't follow any cycle perfectly all the time.
    Yes this is not following a specific chord progression, it's having at your fingertips the means by which you can find alternative chords and lines to get to a target chord.
    Chord substitution is a way of thinking where the player can choose not only alternative chord choices to create the idea of tonality in a tonal phrase, but also a way of imparting lines that can be more expressive than stock chords. It's about defining the structure of the song and crafting an original way of playing and expressing what the harmony is about. Each cycle has a route through it that can take you to any other chord with differing degrees of intricacy and tension.
    I'll be getting into this in following posts.
    Just an observation, some players are happy to play changes as they are. Some are restless to challenge themselves beyond the zone of the familiar. It's the latter that seeks out alternative ways and sounds to play a piece. Cycles are alternative routes, but more than that, they are very concise and dense exercises in chord movement that, when practiced consistently, lets a player start to hear in 4 voices, lets a player see progressions in less linear parallel ways and opens up the hand vocabulary to movements not often seen in guitar playing taught traditionally. Piano players, very familiar, guitarists, not so much.

    More about this in future posts.

  26. #700

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    Yes this is not following a specific chord progression, it's having at your fingertips the means by which you can find alternative chords and lines to get to a target chord.
    Chord substitution is a way of thinking where the player can choose not only alternative chord choices to create the idea of tonality in a tonal phrase, but also a way of imparting lines that can be more expressive than stock chords. It's about defining the structure of the song and crafting an original way of playing and expressing what the harmony is about. Each cycle has a route through it that can take you to any other chord with differing degrees of intricacy and tension.
    I'll be getting into this in following posts.
    Just an observation, some players are happy to play changes as they are. Some are restless to challenge themselves beyond the zone of the familiar. It's the latter that seeks out alternative ways and sounds to play a piece. Cycles are alternative routes, but more than that, they are very concise and dense exercises in chord movement that, when practiced consistently, lets a player start to hear in 4 voices, lets a player see progressions in less linear parallel ways and opens up the hand vocabulary to movements not often seen in guitar playing taught traditionally. Piano players, very familiar, guitarists, not so much.

    More about this in future posts.
    I find this to be really inspirational.

    Also as an older retired person this is also a really enjoyable brain exercise.
    I'd rather be doing this than taking ballroom dancing or karate lessons.