Conrad Cork's "Harmony with LEGO Bricks"

**jaelliott** · 05-06-2012, 10:24 AM

Sorry if this sounds like marketing, but in terms of the method, my book is the most complete and up to date. Conrad agrees with this and has said so on the Google Group. When I helped him bring out the last edition of his book, I tried to iron out some remaining wrinkles. What seemed mostly missing was a consistent analysis (not just prose) of a large body of songs to prove the method. And so I wrote my book which came out in 2009 and I used roadmaps that shows exactly where the bricks and joins occur in relation to the chords.

I tried to remove all ambiguity and I also extended the method to cope with what I came across in analysing the 238 songs.

I agree Conrad's book has a lot of wisdom about teaching and playing jazz and this is what makes it so long and interesting. But it lacks rigour in defining and applying the method to its 24 example songs.

My book has a section on where to start when learning. It is important to understand that this knowledge builds in layers. So, I would not start with Cherokee, for example, since that requires that several bricks and joins are already learned at the first hurdle.

Conrad wrote his book with the intention that non-instrumentalists could understand it. So he deliberately avoids musical technical terms like major and minor. My book is aimed at players who want to learn to play jazz and are prepared to learn the basic terms.

However, Conrad's concept it fantastic and is exactly the correct approach for jazz.

I hope this helps. I am happy to talk more when I notice these messages.

J

**fep** · 05-06-2012, 10:58 AM

I'm going to get J. Elliott's book.

Conrad Cork's book is $78 at Amazon U.S. That's a bit steep for me as I'll have the material I'm looking for in Elliott's book.

Perhaps that won't work for the study group?

There is the google group though. I'm such a big believer in study groups, they are motivating for me and keep me on track.

**jaelliott** · 05-06-2012, 11:04 AM

Just for info, Amazon is a bit of a red herring. They list all books with an ISBN, whether they can supply it or not. If you are a small publisher, they simply puy "out of stock" and will not engage.

The only source for Conrad's book now that he is retired it Jazzwise.com. They sell it for £25 +P&P, I believe. And it is not available for sale in ebook form.

**Reg** · 05-06-2012, 01:09 PM

Hey Rich... thanks for the free down load of your book...
Pretty incredible resource, took a while to get through.
I like your systematic approach, some what mechanical, but as resource and system for visualizing, cool.
The next step would be to view material from different aspects, different tonal systems as base for understanding relationships.
Or not, but again thanks, really cool. Every musician should go through this process.

Moving on to memorization of tunes...
I play gigs all the time and in all types of settings, players etc... I find that I usually am able to quickly hear tunes and remember very quickly by relating to forms, general functional harmonic movement and quick analysis. Generally I can hear or know the tune before we finish reading through. Obviously I understand music from a few view points, and my ears are well developed... but when I was young, before the educational process, years in the music business etc
I decided to hear music in shapes and forms... The form concept has not changed, has become more developed and the shape thing now reflects harmonic concepts.
Long story short.... If while you learn or play jazz standards... begin to hear or better yet, make quick analysis of the harmonic progressions. You will begin to become aware of Chord Patterns, simple two, four or eight bar harmonic phrases. Those are chord patterns, all the standards and even more contemporary tune are composed from them.

Different harmonic settings will have influence as to where the changes come from, the source for complete pitch or note collections. Same changes will have different implied subs. or directions of development.
The settings will also inform as to how sections are connected, standard jazz practice... at least starting point, reference to what might be used.

Part of this hearing process is being aware of jazz concepts, when you try and use basic Functional Harmony, basic major-minor tonal system as only reference... your going to miss things, which leads to conflicts, which leads to.... difficulty of memorizing tunes.

I would thing going through this learning process would be more beneficial than having someone else tell you... somewhat the nature of jazz.

But 99% of jazz tunes as well as where improvisation may go... use these concepts. Even the simple use of altered tension usually implies a source or direction where improve may go.

Somewhat simplistic, but I always play with all the basic jazz doors open, (the doors are my metaphors for basic jazz concepts), They all influence what I'm playing, even if they're never entered or referenced.

Part of mechanical chordal memorization techniques are the behind the basic chordal details. If your going to play in a jazz style, generally the memorization system needs to reflect those aspects... or not. Reg

**gersdal** · 05-06-2012, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by fep

I'm going to get J. Elliott's book. Perhaps that won't work for the study group?

Both are ok with me.

**jaelliott** · 05-08-2012, 08:14 PM

You definitely need to learn through experience. And you need to learn in layers. The difficulty beginners have is knowing what it a substitution and what it the regular form.
A quote from my book:

Building from the ground up

Here I show one possible order of learning bricks and related concepts based on the frequency in which they occur in the songs in Annex B.

Starting with a minimal set of the following bricks (see Section 2):

Regular Cadence and Launcher
On and Off
Hover

you can learn the following songs from Annex B:

Blue Bossa
Solar
Recorda Me
Tune Up
What’s New?

Adding:

Dropback, Pullback, dropping and pulling back in general (see Section 5)
Approach chords (Section 2)