The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #76

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    Learning standard notation could inspire you to one day play piano...too.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #77

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    I recommend learning standard notation when you're young.

    Apparently, it's harder when you're older and you already know how to play. I don't really know why, but I've met a lot of guitarists in that situation. I often meet them in situations where everybody else can read -- so the non-reader often feels bad about it. They can play great, but they can't play the part on the chart.

  4. #78

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    Quote Originally Posted by ccroft
    Not to say everyone has to read. I've known many wonderfully creative players on both sides of it.
    Absolutely true! There's definitely some very good guitarists who learn strictly by ear and that's all they do! That wasn't me at all. I took a semester or two of guitar classes in high school but I never kept up with the notation reading at all. In fact, I found it boring and way too much work for me. That said, I always wanted to learn how to read music so when I retired in 12/17 I found me a great instructor. I picked out a lady teacher as I didn't want to deal with anyone's ego getting in the way as I had already been through that years before with male guitar instructors. Bottom line is I got through Leavitt Modern Method book 1 and after that, I found that it made me into a much more confident player in every aspect of my musical life. It certainly worked for me!

  5. #79
    I emphatically agree with you.
    The study of reading is an “investment”. The earlier you invested, the bigger the profits. Amazon and Apple were once cheap stocks.
    And I’m sure even great readers are forever improving. So there’s another reason to learn young.

    I’ve noticed the same thing: Older guys refusing to learn to read. I suppose it’s the opposite thing: Whereas learning to read while young is a marvelous “investment”, learning while older might not seem worth the (significant) effort.

    I’m older. My first instrument was clarinet. I read.
    When I started guitar I sought out standard notation music. Apart from classical, I found little. I did learn chord diagrams but they rarely show good voicings.

    It has to do with playing alone. You can play, while alone, with recordings or sheet music. I sought out notation and found Chet Atkins, classical and Delta Blues transcriptions. For some reason I avoided tab. Transcriptions of Chet Atkins performances are wonderful. So are classical pieces. Har, but rewarding to me.

    2bornot2bop said learning notation could inspire me to learn piano. It has. I’ve started. It’s sloooooow-going.

    i think it’s fun to learn a piece from notation - like a puzzle that explodes in sound.

  6. #80

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarStudent
    2bornot2bop said learning notation could inspire me to learn piano. It has. I’ve started. It’s sloooooow-.
    I've been thinking about vibes, for after the arthritis makes guitar impossible.

  7. #81

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    I never read a note of music until after I was forty years old. I can read fairly well now though Eb is still tough
    This topic comes up all the time in all types of music related forums. It's really actually a stupid question because
    the answer is so obvious.....reading standard notation gives you another advantage towards better musicianship.
    (assuming trying to advance your music skills is a goal)

  8. #82
    I had decided to not write this but ....

    I am aware of this “terrible” “to read or not to read” debate.

    Note: By “read”, I mean Standard Notation vs. tab. I think tab works best when you can hear the recording. Not sure.

    Hardly profound, but it occurs to me: “Who are we talking about?”.

    Studio musicians:
    I watched a terrific video: “The Making of Aja”, Steely Dan’s great record. It was either Dean Parks or Larry Carlton who said ”...excellent readers”. Apparently, Fagen and Becker would hand out “charts” (I assume “notation”). The players had to read very well, fast, accurately.

    Fred, down the street:
    Fred plays and croons “Imagine” on his Takamine. Belinda loves it and tells Monica and Stephanie of Fred’s gifts.

    Blues guitarists:
    Not sure Dwayne Allman, BB King or Robert Johnson could read.

    Classical guitarists:
    Yep

    “Solo guitarist (bed sitter) bend”
    Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins, Howard Morgan
    I Get transcriptions of their pieces, “master” them and incessantly thrill myself.

    ”Beatles cover band”
    Probably unnecessary. Tabs and recordings should be sufficient. Notation could be helpful for solos (Piccolo trumpet solo on Penny Lane)

    ”Guitar duets”
    I moved to a small town. I searched for and finally found the only other guy (it seems) within 100 miles who reads guitar music. We sit down and read these duets. (Bach, Brazilian folk songs, Paris Nights).
    Listeners have said it sounds beautiful. FUN!

    So, the value of learning to read depends on where you’re headed. (And amount of access to other musicians)

    An older guy: Do it for the satisfaction of it and to have fantastic repertiore. (In the old days, transcriptions were as rare as hen’s teeth.)

    A 25 year old in a SKA band: Maybe do it if/when you’re ready to “try out” for (other genres of) bands that use notation to teach songs.

    A kid: Do it.
    Learn theory. Knowledge of the fretboard, which reading promotes, will reveal theory. (Which promotes composition)
    Learn your instrument. Did you know that a G cowboy-chord grip has 2 Bs in it? Do you know what happens when you lower only one of those 2 Bs a semitone?
    Did you know that you can play a CMaj7 in many ways (voicings) on your instrument and they sound very different

    Having writtten this, I remember a quote from Dizzy Gillespie about a trumpet player he knew in Cuba: “He can’t read a note but he can play his ass off”.

    i can read but am a plodding player and may always be. But I love the guitar and it’s fruits. Glorious instrument.

    I’m sure I got lots of this wrong.
    Last edited by GuitarStudent; 08-12-2019 at 08:12 AM.

  9. #83

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    The more ways you can think about music, the better a musician you will be.

    There's a point at which your skills cross-pollinate and synergize to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

    For example, knowledge of standard notation makes it easier to learn harmony. And knowledge of harmony makes it easier to read standard notation:

    • If the chart has a key signature, you recognize groups of notes on lines as one set of chords and groups of notes on spaces as another set of chords.
    • You know that any note without an accidental is in key, and any accidental is out-of-key.

    Thus, you are not reading note-to-note but reading context. These kinds of graphical hints make it always easier for me to read standard notation than to read tab.

  10. #84

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    You have to have an astounding ear to substitute for the value of music sight reading skills.
    Sometimes this is what separates guitarists from being great musicians compared to other instruments.

    However....most good guitarists do get a complete handle on understanding music notation, understanding it is music's most valuable tool next to the ear.

  11. #85

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarStudent
    It’s sloooooow-going.
    Really? What are your goals and what study materials are you using?

  12. #86
    The piano doesn’t get much attention yet.
    When I do practice, I play the 3rd and 7th of the chord with the right hand + the melody notes. (Like chord melody). I play the chord root with the left hand.

  13. #87

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarStudent
    The piano doesn’t get much attention yet.
    When I do practice, I play the 3rd and 7th of the chord with the right hand + the melody notes. (Like chord melody). I play the chord root with the left hand.
    Mark Levine's 'The Jazz Piano Book' begins players with 3 note voicings just like what you're already doing.
    Like guitar, piano has grips (voicings) too. Within a couple of months, or sooner, of practicing closed voicings, 4 note chords that include extensions, around the Cycle you'll have those in your hands without having to think about them. Also practice these voicings in both hands simultaneously, without the root, for at some point you'll want to improvise with your right hand while comping with your left. That's why it's important to program both your left and right hands simultaneously.

    Try Abersold's ii-V7-I book, Volume 2, cycling voicings through the Cycle. It comes with a rhythm section CD that grooves. You supply the piano. I've attached Abersold's free pdf handout below that near the end includes some beginning 4 note voicings. What you're doing is as good a place to begin as any. Always here to help when you're ready to take the next step.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  14. #88
    2beornot2bop,
    i see that you have replied - I haven’t read that reply yet. I want to first reply to your prior inquiry about “my piano goals” and “piano study materials”:

    My piano attraction may be in service of my guitar study. I don’t really envision being able to perform as a piano player. I would like to someday sight-read simple piano music.

    Roger Edison observed in ”Rhythm Guitar”: “It’s unfortunately all too easy to learn to play things on the guitar in a mechanical way without really understanding what you’re doing”. That sums up my (new) approach to the guitar.

    First I tried to ”forget chord diagrams/grips”. Diagrams seemed to “offend” my ability to sight-read Real Book tunes. I could muddle through them. I’d just pick ANY shape I knew/remembered for each chord. No finesse. No strategy.

    My gripe with learning via chord diagrams:
    Take, for example, the popular (in my circle), 5-string, chord diagram for Dm7 on fret 5: It has 2 A’s and a (low-to-high) note-order of R,5,b7,3,5. That sequence isn’t, to my knowledge, part of any chord system. I think it is common in chord diagrams because beginners can grip it.

    My overwhelmedness with this deluge of chaotic chords led to “logical” Shell Voicings: 1,x,b7,3,x. Somehow this stripping-down chords to bare-essentials (3,7) seemed essential to learning the guitar in an organized (“honest”) way.

    I now thought of the guitar as a “note instrument”, not a “chord instrument”. (I wanted to forget those chord diagrams!) There were notes and harmonies and interval placements (I.e. b7 is same fret 2 string up). These notes+harmonies created chords, often the ones in my chord-diagram memory.

    My (massive) problem was the (note) harmonies we’re scattered (like an artist who hurled paints at his canvas). Notes within the chord, including the root, were sometimes omitted, the note-sequences 7-3-5, 5-1-7 seemed infinite. Strings were skipped. I needed to get faster at finding notes (on the fretboard), remembering chord spellings in all keys and spatial relationships (3rd is 4 or 16 frets up or 8 frets down).

    So, to go where I wanted to go - to really know how to read, I had to revisit fundamentals (chord spellings, reading rhythms (my unwelcomed surprise weakness) and instant note recognition (which I already had on frets 0-5).

    Relearning alarm.

    So, the piano (which I’d just gotten) seemed another good tool for my studies / goals. It had a logical layout unlike the “mad” guitar layout. Reading piano music a side-benefit.

    Thats why I want to learn piano. I sort of need to. To move ahead in my guitar/“theory” learning.

  15. #89

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    One thing is for certain. If you decide to commit to sight reading piano reading bass clef could also come in handy studying and playing bass. I took to playing James Jameson transcriptions, something I’d never considered before learning bass clef.

    Piano study is an advantage, an asset, to playing any additional instrument. All theory is easily accessible. Perhaps that’s why many music schools have piano class as a prerequisite no matter ones instrument.

  16. #90

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    Different players use grips in different ways.

    Apparently, Joe Pass, for example, based his improv on positions defined by grips. Other players do it different ways, apparently, quite commonly by scale/mode patterns or by simply knowing the notes they want. None of this approaches is likely to be completely uncontaminated by one or more of the other approaches.

    If you're reading a tune you've never played before at 200 bpm and you see an A#m7b5, I think it would be a rare player who doesn't need to think for a moment about what the chord tones are. Knowing a grip and where the root is within the grip is likely to be much faster.

    But, in the practice room and in performance at moderate tempos, you may very well want to be thinking about chord tones and voice leading in way that isn't particularly helped by your knowledge of grips.

    And then there's the issue of what they sound like. Some nights grips just sound harsh. Some nights my usual 3 and 7 on the D and G strings sound muddy. On those nights, I end up playing on the G and B strings. In that situation it helps to know the notes of the chords, which ones are moving and how you can voice them on the G and B strings. This happens because the sound of the band, the room, the gear etc all interact. Now and then, it sounds better than you're accustomed to, but usually it's the other way.

    More advantages of reading: I played a gig with a new band and no rehearsal a couple of days ago. They handed me a chart and counted the tune off. They were expecting rhythm guitar only, but, here and there, instead, I doubled the melody. Gives the band another texture. In the second set, they had me play the melody on a tune. I had to play that one by ear because the font on the chart was too small for me to read, but that isn't always the case.

  17. #91

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    Vash,
    You'll never be able to play studio gigs where reading music from scores is essential. You'll never be able to sit in with a big band that plays from charts. You'll never get a gig with a small ensemble that plays tight arrangements from their "book." You'll never be able to write songs with a melody and accompaniment. You'll never be able to sub for another musician who's sick or can't make the gig. You'll always be limited as a player if you have to play with other musicians. As an example, Louis Armstrong was a self-taught "ear" musician until he played with Fate Marable's band where he was required to read music to continue his success. He did and the rest is history. "Playing by ear" was the norm by the old unschooled blues players and generations of Rockers. You will always be limited if you can't read music. It's your choice. Good playing . . . Marinero

  18. #92

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bbmaj7#5#9
    Know what you read, but don’t read what you know.

    That summarizes my view about the topic. I presume that you have an acceptable knowledge in sight reading, but I don’t want you to be dependent on it.

    Sight reading is not the most important thing for me. Everyone shall have at least basic knowledge in standard notation and sight reading. That’s enough for me.

    Therefore, I feel that knowledge in music theory is far more necessary than sight reading. Jazz guitarists who don’t know music theory have a LOT of things to work on. It’s not a big deal if a jazz guitarist isn’t a skilled sight reader, but the person must have some kind of theoretical overview about what is going on. Jazz and music in general is based on theoretical building blocks. Therefore, it requires that we all have good theoretical skills. Everyone can’t or don’t want to be professors in music theory and sight reading, but we all shall have at least SOME knowledge about them. I don’t want to imagine what a horrible feeling it’ll be to talk about 2-5-1 chord progressions with a jazz guitarist who doesn’t know music theory!
    Well said; I've been trying to play jazz with a classical pianist for about 4 years. His sight reading ability is an 8 while mine would be a 3 but when it comes to playing jazz that ability isn't helping him much. I did purchase him the Aebersold Maiden Voyage CD as well as the full piano transcription of the piano backing track of comping and asked him to focus on Summer Time. Ok, we get together and he sounds like like the CD. Ok, but he learned little about jazz comping; E.g. when I ask him to use the CONCEPTS he must have picked up on from this,,,, well,,, he had little. I.e. he couldn't play similar chord voicing and comp (say over the starting passage of Dm), when I wanted to play other songs with him that had similar chord progressives (e.g. the II\V\I in F in the "B" part).

  19. #93

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    This question comes up on every music forum I'm on. Why learn to read? Maybe because knowledge is always better than ignorance?

    I learned to read music when I was 13. I've been using that skill for 48 years. These days, when my memory is not what it used to be, I write out parts to make them easier to practice and remember.

    One of the things that is never mentioned is that for the vast majority of these great players that get trotted out as examples of why it's not necessary to read - First, most of us aren't in their league talent wise. Second, most of them played with other players who were tops in the field, which many of us don't get the opportunity to do. Third, most of them played full time - gigging every day for hours, which very few of us have the opportunity to do today.

    It's really simple - if you want to be the best you can be, you take advantage of every possible tool and opportunity that you can. If you want to play Mustang Sally with your drunken buddies at the local watering hole twice a year, then don't bother.

  20. #94

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    Here's another reason. I was watching a Youtube "tutorial" by a guitarist. He took 12 minutes to show how to play a piece that could have been done with no explanation if he provided a link to the sheet music. Those things are annoying and aimed at "ear musicians." For me, they're a waste of time. Good playing . . . Marinero

  21. #95
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Very important get good at reading rhythms. Do a page or two of Bellson’s modern reading text a day at whatever speed you can manage, no stopping.
    I just bought this book.
    Please explain what you mean by “no stopping”.

  22. #96
    Learn them or ignore them, there are RULES governing music: ii V I comes to mind.
    Depiction is, for many, I assume, a learning aid. Standard notation depicts much.
    - If you want to see chord-spellings, standard notation depicts that (as do chord diagrams).
    - If you want to get good at rhythms, Standard notation seems indispensable. Does a substitute method even exist?
    - Standard notation shows Voicings. Cm7 can be played in many ways. Standard notation says “play it like this!”
    - And the other side of the coin is writing notation. Let’s say you toyed with Blue Bossa all day and found one set of voicings that were “best”. You could depict your choices using chord diagrams. But notation, perhaps with fingering suggestions and fret (position) suggestions is more flexible.

    What else does standard notation give?

    Maybe Tab exists, mostly, as a necessary substitute for notation. A skilled reader can pretty-much capture a tune with reading. (A skilled writer can write it fast.). “Capturing” can’t be done with tab. You need to hear it first. (19th century players couldn’t do that).

    It’s cool to learn a tune from notation and later hear the tune for the first time and discovery you pretty-much got it.

    I like to think that non-readers know the value of reading (and theory), and more would learn if it were easy (which it isn’t) but choose to focus elsewhere. Maybe not.

    Me? I’m itching to be (much) better. Ready piano is next on my list. I’ve found the “reading road” to be slow-going” but very picturesque.

    Reading, to me, is an “organizing” (and teaching) discipline.

    Having written all this, I’ll close with a contradictory quote from Dizzy Gillespie (about a trumpeter he knew in Cuba). “He can’t read a note but can play his ass off”. I CAN read (although not that well) but can’t play my ass off. But I’m optimistic.

  23. #97

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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarStudent
    I just bought this book.
    Please explain what you mean by “no stopping”.
    Read it with a metronome and don’t stop if you make mistakes. Learn to recover.

  24. #98
    Thank you

  25. #99

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    One thing about reading rhythms. Western notation is not a great system for writing down the syncopated rhythms of African Diaspora music.

    Such rhythms always look busy and sometimes baffling written down - but we are stuck with the system!

    The invisible barline rule is your friend. Allows you to read two beat phrases at a glance.

    Bellson starts by observing this rule and progressively writes out perfectly simple rhythms in increasingly tortuous and surreal ways.

    Sometimes parts are just hard to read and you have to read them anyway.

  26. #100

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    One thing about reading rhythms. Western notation is not a great system for writing down the syncopated rhythms of African Diaspora music.

    Such rhythms always look busy and sometimes baffling written down - but we are stuck with the system!

    The invisible barline rule is your friend. Allows you to read two beat phrases at a glance.

    Bellson starts by observing this rule and progressively writes out perfectly simple rhythms in increasingly tortuous and surreal ways.

    Sometimes parts are just hard to read and you have to read them anyway.
    Reading rhythms can be challenging. A couple of observations:

    When you begin, you're counting. But, as you progress, you start to recognize patterns in the notation and you start feeling where those things go in the bar. So, for example, there's a certain swing band hit on and-of-3. At first you count 1 2 3-and. Later, you know where it is by look and feel, without having to count. That can get you through longer passages of syncopated hits that would be hard to count. I would say, once you decode something, try to scat sing a drum fill that lands on the right place for your chord. That is, get away from counting numbers in your head as quickly as you can.

    There are different ways to write the same passage in standard notation. Things are much easier to read if the downbeats are shown, particularly halfway through the bar, e.g. on 3 in 4/4. So, if beat 3, say, is the second half of a quarter note that started on and-of-two, the right way to present it is as two tied eighths. So, the downbeat of 3 is visually apparent. If it's not written that way and you're struggling, it not entirely your fault.

    Getting good at this is a matter of repetition. Probably helps to begin in 4th grade. I strongly recommend reading with a horn section if you can find a horn band that voices guitar as a kind of extra horn. Having to play in a section with guys who can actually read may be humiliating the first time you try it, but it's maybe the fastest way to improve.