The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    A great aha moment a few years back, was looking for gigs for a jazz quartet and "aha" nobody wanted to hire a jazz group, but, did I know a ZZ Top cover band that would play 9pm to 1am for $300 most any Fri or Sat nite?

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #52

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    ????

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  4. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    A great aha moment a few years back, was looking for gigs for a jazz quartet and "aha" nobody wanted to hire a jazz group, but, did I know a ZZ Top cover band that would play 9pm to 1am for $300 most any Fri or Sat nite?
    I know those guys. "Dos Hombres," play with a drum machine...one less guy to pay!

  5. #54

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    when I realized every chord of 4 notes can be just one of 5 types: 1 3 5 7 / 1 3 5 9 / 1 3 5 11 / 1 3 7 9 / 1 3 7 11

    yup!

  6. #55

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    Since this post is in the 'theory' forum, I will say that my AHA moment was realizing it's not about playing the theory. It's about playing the sounds. I think I have posted here that I have taught college theory - all levels, and I did it for many years. I am a theory nerd, I love theory, and I never realized how bad and unmusical playing the theory can sound. Jimmy Bruno's on-line teaching made me realize that scales are definitely not the answer FOR ME. I can do melodic and harmonic analysis like crazy, and I understand all the substitute scales that are commonly used, and why they work. Boy did that ever make me a bad guitar player! When Jimmy demonstrated his approach, it really opened my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself pretty bad, but at least not as bad as I used to be.

    I admire players who can assign a different scale or mode to every single chord and make it sound like music - even when the chords are all diatonic to the same major scale. (...but just saying it like that makes it seem completely ludicrous.) There are some gifted players, many of whom I'm sure are members, who can do this. I am certainly not one.
    Last edited by ScottM; 05-28-2017 at 09:54 PM.

  7. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by ScottM
    Since this post is in the 'theory' forum, I will say that my AHA moment was realizing it's not about playing the theory. It's about playing the sounds. I think I have posted here that I have taught college theory - all levels, and I did it for many years. I am a theory nerd, I love theory, and I never realized how bad and unmusical playing the theory can sound. Jimmy Bruno's on-line teaching made me realize that scales are definitely not the answer FOR ME. I can do melodic and harmonic analysis like crazy, and I understand all the substitute scales that are commonly used, and why they work. Boy did that ever make me a bad guitar player! When Jimmy demonstrated his approach, it really opened my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself pretty bad, but at least not as bad as I used to be.

    I admire players who can assign a different scale or mode to every single chord and make it sound like music - even when the chords are all diatonic to the same major scale. (...but just saying it like that makes it seem completely ludicrous.) There are some gifted players, many of whom I'm sure are members, who can do this. I am certainly not one.
    Theory doesn't have a "sound". It's not a "style" of playing our even an approach per se.

    Many here understand what is meant by the above, but as-is, it's pretty strong hyperbole, and potentially confusing to those who DON'T know what you're actually getting at.

  8. #57

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    Latest "Aha!" moment: The modes, finally.

    How did I come to this? I started practicing the G major scale as a three note per scale excercise. After that got boring I continued to expand it to all positions. And that's when I realized the open position is E minor. And so forth.

    This also opened up the fretboard more for me. Example: a song in G minor --> move the grid. This is more of a fingering excercise still, because the theory behind it hasn't clicked. When I can identify more of the notes in the chords better, then I can adjust based on that and not just the root position. Like Jimmy Bruno said in some of his Q&A - you have to know what (notes) you're playing.

  9. #58

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    Quote Originally Posted by Marwin Moody
    16 32 32 16 16
    ???????



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  10. #59

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    When CAGED positions became a complete mapping system of the fingerboard, always next to each other in the same order whatever was the starting position ! It made it much easier to move around the fingerboard when playing.

  11. #60

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    Theory doesn't have a "sound".
    I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

    An Ab melodic minor scale has a very distinct sound. Using it over a G7 chord has a distinct sound. Both are theoretical concepts. Unfortunately, I started studying jazz after I had completed four semesters of theory as a music major, and I was completely 'self taught'. If I read an interview with a player who revealed that you can use the Ab melodic minor scale over a G7 chord, then I would take that to heart, learn melodic minor scale in all positions on the guitar - 2 octaves across the neck. It was my belief that it would start to come out in my playing. (yeah, right.) I am living proof you can't learn to play jazz by just reading the manual. Of course, I did the complete analytical study of why that scale would work over the chord, and the theory of all the alterations made perfect sense to me.

    I also did the analytical study of these over a G7 chord: G altered scale, G diminished/whole tone scale, G Super locrian, Lydian Dominant scale rooted a tritone above the G, etc. ...Yeah, I said that.

    If I had just had a teacher, when I was 15, say, "hey, check this out - you can use these 2 notes on this chord and it sounds cool, right? Use that!", I would have never cared about the theory behind it. I didn't need to know that the notes were Ab and Bb over a G7 or that it is in bar 10 or Green Dolphin Street. It just needed to be presented to me as: "this is how you do it." I never had that, and I suppose it's my own personal curse.

    Let's just say it was a pretty frustrating 25 years.

    I guess a better answer would have been, "you're right. Never mind." :-)
    Last edited by ScottM; 05-29-2017 at 07:00 PM.

  12. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by ScottM
    I guess a better answer would have been, "you're right. Never mind." :-)
    really? Wow...

    Again, I think most would agree with what you're saying, but it's not theory's fault. Maybe whoever gave you the approach of just playing whatever scale as a "method". All of the pitch collections work pretty well, when you have some basic vocabulary/melodic devices otherwise together. I understand that THAT'S a huge assumption in and of itself. The whole ...the-scale -is-the-method approach is a huge problem in jazz ed, but that's not just "theory".

    Some folks may view this as largely semantics, but I have a big philosophical problem with blaming theory for this kind of stuff.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 05-29-2017 at 08:53 PM. Reason: H

  13. #62

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    A few more:

    1. Learning what a tonal center was.

    2. Being reminded, by a bassist, that executing a simple idea with good time is way better than not quite executing a complicated idea with bad time.

    3. Spending a few hours with my pedal board to find a patch that would allow me to make some of the sounds in my head. Just to make the case: imagine Santana trying to play his style on an archtop into a Polytone -- and then discovering a solid body into a Boogie.

    4. Having a pianist hear a wrong chord I played and tell me, not just what it should have been, but what I just played in error. I hadn't realized it was possible to hear things and identify them at that level and it spurred me to do some formal ear training for the first time. Another time, a band leader said "where the seventh?". I had just played 1x123x without pressing hard enough on the D string -- and this in a room full of sound, including piano.

    5. Accepting that there were things I'd never be able to do and instead working more on developing a personal style out of the stuff I can do.

    6. Realizing that it isn't necessary to play every chord on a chart.

    7. Hearing Ralph Sharon, pianist with Tony Bennett, introduce the bridge to various tunes. What he does is create a little composition of a couple of bars, with chords and melody and rhythm that invariable fits perfectly with the tune. It helped me realize that good comping (at least if there's no other chord instrument in the group) is not simply strumming chords, but is creating a part. That induced me to comp in a guitar trio/singer setting with lots of single note lines and chord fragments, always trying to do what I could to play Ralph Sharon's concept.
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 05-29-2017 at 07:00 PM.

  14. #63

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    Hmm... I don't recall saying it was a theory problem. I think I said it's a ME problem. Letting go of the theory was my aha moment, and I don't instantly assume everyone else or anyone else has ever had the same problem.

  15. #64

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    Quote Originally Posted by Robertkoa
    Can I just close my eyes while I Play and think of the Pyramids ?
    Ha! Liked this.

  16. #65

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    I started playing guitar around age 14. As soon as I started walking around with a guitar case, people
    would ask if I was a lead guitarist or a rhythm guitarist. I felt certain that greater glory was to be found
    as the lead guitarist. Although I did learn some basic songs, I spent most of my time figuring out riffs and
    leads within very limited resources. As I began to play more with others, I discovered that playing in a rhythm
    section, parts in a relation to what others were playing (aka rhythm guitar) accounted for the largest percentage
    of what the music required. While lead guitar was still a path to glory, playing rhythm guitar was taking care of business.

  17. #66

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    Quote Originally Posted by ScottM
    Hmm... I don't recall saying it was a theory problem. I think I said it's a ME problem. Letting go of the theory was my aha moment, and I don't instantly assume everyone else or anyone else has ever had the same problem.
    Reading Mark Levine's Jazz Theory was one long Aha moment.

    But, I may have had a bigger Aha moment when I realized that I had to limit my involvement with theory. I found it was distracting me from basic things I needed to work on, mainly rhythmic issues. I also recognized that few of the chord/scale/lick juxtapositions were getting into my playing. I came to believe that I could work on the combinatorics forever - and maybe finally learn lots of sounds and how to find them - and still not be a decent musician.

    This is not an argument against learning CST. Rather, it's a recognition that, for me, it was seductive and, at times, got in the way. I think the better way (speaking only for myself) would be to work out of lot of things with simple scale forms and then introduce additional sounds slowly, based on what catches my ear on recordings. I know it's possible to use CST to discover new sounds, but I never had success with that approach.

  18. #67

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    My biggest "aha!" is kind of well off the beaten path; abandoning the naming of things (keys, notes, scales, chords) in my own playing. I have always played exclusively by ear and reached a point long ago where I realized I was hearing far more into the music directly than any untangling of names could ever describe. Pitches take multiple note names, scales change names with interpretation, chords change names with context, and even progression changes may be renamed for re-harmonization, superimposition, etc... but when listening, practicing, rehearsing, and performing I just directly hear, recognize, and play these sounds as unnamed identities - it's the way I understand music.

    I have however continued to use theory when working up tunes with my fellow musicians. Maybe the pianist is playing the same chord when it needs to be different the second time (a bridge that walks down to a 7sus2, then repeats but the second time needs to change that last chord to 9th, to functionally herald the continuation into the next part...), or he's playing an 11sus2 where I hear a 13b9 might be better, I ask, "Try moving the three notes in your right hand down a half step, what do you think?"

  19. #68

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    So I was talking about chords n stuff
    with a really good sax player friend
    I mean he's way more advanced
    harmonically than me ...

    During the convo I realised that I knew
    technically more than him on theory !
    modes of Mel min etc ...
    and I didn't know a huge amount myself

    But somehow he could play me under the table
    and back again
    I thought Huh ? How's that work ?

    I got a big Aha !
    So ...maybe its not about the theory so much
    I stopped trying to grab the theory so much and
    started learning tunes
    I now think
    Its about really feeling the harmony and singing the
    lines over that , not over analysing

    Theory's like salt , a little is really good but its easy
    to overdo it
    Last edited by pingu; 05-30-2017 at 08:55 PM.

  20. #69

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    So many...too many to recall, even...

    My big one now is in simplfying the chords to a tune, and then STILL not chasing changes. I've never felt so relaxed or free.
    I feel like I'm on the verge of this...call it pre-AHA. Lots of iii and vi subs for major tonic in the Howard Roberts Superchops changes we are working on in the study group. I still haven't completely reconciled how to not try and think of iii and vi as separate chords--still learning to hear sounds and implications instead of just chords. It's a bit trickier with ii-V7 that may contain altered sounds. And playing at the obscenely slow tempos I am practicing the materials at, thinking V7alt over a ii can sound off. Any ways some day I hope this will be a full fledged aha for me.

  21. #70

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    The relationship between the interrupted cadence and the minor ii V I. And realising that 7b9 is not always best understood as 7 altered.

    Obvious perhaps, but the most useful thing I have learned for vanilla changes running. Also the way it explains how apparently unconnected ii v I s in Real Book style changes operate.

    Further rabbit holes into diminished symmetry from there.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-10-2017 at 08:45 AM.

  22. #71

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    My first A-ha moment came when I've heard ''Take On Me'' on the radio.

  23. #72

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    When I saved all my gig money for a month, and went "aha", I can't pay my rent.

  24. #73

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
    My first A-ha moment came when I've heard ''Take On Me'' on the radio.
    That half time in the chorus tho

  25. #74

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    That half time in the chorus tho
    Pop music at its best! Saying that makes me realize Im more European than American, but thats ok. I was a proud owner of two LPs, Pet Shop Boys and A-ha, and thats all needed at the time.

  26. #75

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    The biggest 'AHA' of my actual Playing which opened the door to how I Play now was I about 3 or 4 years ago taking my Fret Hand Thumb OFF the top of the neck .
    Because I have small hands and a short pinky - the fret hand ' thumb up ' which enables vibrato was really holding me back and I didn't realize how much.

    I had developed advanced pick hand facility in the
    by the late 80's and was stretching to 6 frets for cool voicings ..playing in a kind of post Steely Dan way but my fret hand could not really keep up for fluid type stuff and I had Fusion speed but only in short bursts -not for 'sculpting ' long lines .



    About 3 to 4 years ago I switched thumb off top of neck just fooling around ( not a big decision )and surprisingly it worked rather quickly and there was consistency that carried over to the next day .

    Then more surprisingly after only a week or so I was able to start playing much more easily and cross pick more easily across voicings. And it was STABLE and consistent .

    Then more surprisingly it just became much easier to Play what I was hearing and my fret hand covers 5 frets instead of 4 on lines ( but aside from that it just became much easier- about twice as easy to Solo ) .

    And the CPU load on my brain/ mind lowered so I can mentally 'cue ' up the ending to the current line
    while playing it .. another huge AHA.

    But - the full Transition to how I Play now - took about another 3 to 4000 hours which is relatively quickly and I can Play a very large % of what I 'hear' now which I could never do on single lines without 'compromising'.
    Including Fusion Type Speeds with Swing - Guitar Abuse overplaying but in small doses played with nice clean Tone in Rhythm is kinda cool.


    'Pre hearing ' while Playing the current Part or Line
    and nailing it all in the 'time feel ' you 'hear' imagine
    is A 'KEY ' to high level Pro Improv.

    I said 'A Key ' - not saying it's the only way or the Best way - but it really works - and will work for others I am quite sure.

    I even do 'drills' or Practice putting defferent endings on the same 1 to 4 sometimes 2.5 Bar line Phrase - to see if I can get it to resolve to a different Harmonic Region - this can be done by an Arp or Arp Fragment of the Destination - the Key to ALL IMPROV is Melodic Cadences whether you know ALL Theory or NO Theory -
    ( another AHA ).
    As I pointed out in a few other Threads - CST in Practice will not work for establishing the New Tonal Area unless you are playing arp fragments any way.
    [ although I don't fully grasp CST on a deep level]

    'What exactly is your Point Robert ?'

    My point is that often you NEED Arp Fragments in your lines to tie the lines Harmonically to the Music and you MUST USE Arp Fragments ( chord tones and extensions ) to do this.

    Do they have to be the SAME Arp as the chord you are Soloing Over ?

    No -it can be a Related Chord Arp.

    As long as the Related Arp contains many common Tones as the Parent Chord [ C.O.M.].

    IF you are using Zen Buddhism or Scientology -or CST ( as a 'Pitch Collection ') you STILL must come up with chord tones and or extensions regardless of how you come up with it including 'prehearing' the actual Tones and nailing them ..and sometimes..a thought ...( 'BbMinor') ..then hearing that Triad ...and nailing that etc.
    Last edited by Robertkoa; 11-30-2017 at 08:36 AM.