The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #151

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    I love the old rhythm sections with outstanding bassists and drummers - there was a lot of energy.
    I always like to hear it because it makes me feel positive.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #152

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    I was passionate about many young musicians when I was young myself.
    Today my guitar idols are old gentlemen.

  4. #153

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    major seventh chords are … really weird actually don’t you think? They don’t really invert and so much dissonance in them
    I usually replace the 7th with the 6th on the third inversion, unless this dissonance is wanted of course. The pages i posted are kind of my own making, mostly stuff i learned from John Thomas. They are a lot more bebop sounding than Goodrick's approach (which i also like - i studied with him and have gone through all his cycles and voice leading stuff, it's great but more modern sounding).

  5. #154

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    I'm not so sure that audiences are to blame ... it's just how the times are currently ... I suspect it is the arrival of computers. Suddenly you can analyze everything in extreme detail and human nature will strive to make it perfect ... You see it in all fields


    The big question is this:
    Players like Lage Lund or Julian Lage .. If you ask them to a Bernie K or Grant G impression .. You think they can nail it?


    Do they play like they play thru necessity ... They can't play differently?

    Or do they do it as an artistic choice?


    If it's the former then Marinero has quite the point .. If it's the latter then all is good, isn't it?
    I attended a class some years back by Andre Bush. He was making his mark with the notion that all 12 notes were equal. His favorite music was heavy metal and he sort of played jazz that way. Loud, aggressive and all 12 notes.

    But, in the lesson he played a quiet jazz standard chord melody in the conventional way, sounding great. He said, "if I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that".

  6. #155

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I attended a class some years back by Andre Bush. He was making his mark with the notion that all 12 notes were equal. His favorite music was heavy metal and he sort of played jazz that way. Loud, aggressive and all 12 notes.

    But, in the lesson he played a quiet jazz standard chord melody in the conventional way, sounding great. He said, "if I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that".
    Were these lessons for beginners?

  7. #156

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alter
    I usually replace the 7th with the 6th on the third inversion, unless this dissonance is wanted of course. The pages i posted are kind of my own making, mostly stuff i learned from John Thomas. They are a lot more bebop sounding than Goodrick's approach (which i also like - i studied with him and have gone through all his cycles and voice leading stuff, it's great but more modern sounding).
    I don’t know John Thomas, but maybe Groinaid knows him? (FNARR)

    Yeah the 3rd inversion major seventh turns into a different animal functionally. But major 7ths can sounds strikingly weird in certain voicings…

    x 7 9 x 8 8
    x 3 5 x 5 7

    that type of thing

    TBH I’ve always found that it takes me a long time to get into any systematic approach to fretboard harmony; like months or years, which makes me a bit dogged about the one thing I am working on. I think as the years go on and I become ever so slightly less crap at this absurd instrument this becomes less the case. It gets easier.

    Procedures like the various drops, and seeing the diatonic notes on the neck become much more natural. Now I’m seeing chords as intervals more (figured bass is great for that too.)

    Diminished triads remain my bete noir lol.

    Anyway to relate to the OP it is perfectly possible to be a killing jazz player and use only basic chord voicings. That’s obvious from the history but even some of the modern players such as Mike Moreno, Kurt and Peter Bernstein often use disarmingly simple grips very musically. Cecil Alexander comps brilliantly with just shells, and so on.

    (And there’s Reinier Baas with his modern and clever open string use that is based on a lot of intelligence musically and often very simple, but unusual, grips.)

    For every harmonic wizard like Lage Lund or Ben Monder there seems to be an equally brilliant player who makes great use of mostly obvious chordal vocabulary. And as someone once pointed out to me Lage’s chord vocabulary is well integrated into a coherent musical language. It’s very easy to sound like you are playing fancy grips for the sake of it, the trick to make it sound part of your music….

    That said, I also feel that as you crunch through a million chords some are going to jump out as colours that you enjoy… and that’s normal too. I think it’s ok to have some pet grips as well.

    here’s one of mine for an altered dominant (A7#9b13 in this case)

    x 0 3 5 2 5

    And for an Amaj13

    x 0 6 9 7 9

    (These are four voice ‘drop 2s’ based on Jordan K’s triad + extra note on a bass concept.)

    Anyway the Ritchie Hart story relates, one can be a master of the guitar as an instrument, have the scales and notes totally mapped onto the instrument but still lack jazz know how…
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-22-2022 at 04:59 AM.

  8. #157

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    Quote Originally Posted by kris
    Were these lessons for beginners?
    It was at a jazz camp. Most of the students were adults. A lot of the students, maybe most, could probably handle a RB gig.

  9. #158

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller

    If we characterize CST as a theory of what notes you can stack on a given chord, it’s plain that it could never teach about language or improvisation and tbf I don’t think anyone who can play makes this mistake.
    Exactly. It's just the ABCs

  10. #159

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    Comparing apples and oranges again, eh? (Also not even the same song)



    But the core of it all is that your main argument is modern musicians over play .. Too many notes .. Too technical .. Followed by posting an old video as your counter argument. The old "master" plays beautiful simple stuff.

    But the thing is that all the modern overplaying is always in a situation, where the musician is alone with no band behind him, while those old records .. Like Ben Webster here or previously Miles playing a ballad on the "My Funny Valentine" record are all with a full band behind them ... Most importantly a piano player to lay down all harmony ... So situations with full lush backing, where the solist can hold a long note and it just sounds beautiful as others are outlining the shifting harmony beneath that note.


    Pure manipulation in order to get your point across. Can you post a vid of Webster, Miles or whoever standing alone on a stage and not playing too many notes?
    Coltrane on his own is the famous "Sheets of sound" .. I don't think Ben or Miles ever tried to do what Julian does for the first minutes of "I'll be seing you".

    Also Julian does not have a piano player backing him ... It's only him .. Melody and harmony.


    You've taken a song where Julian plays solo and try to represent it as his entire work. You want ballad then how about this song from the same concert




    Or if you insist on "I'll be seeing you" then why not take the album version, which is a short and sweet 3 minutes version.





    Your taste does not equal truth about music .. No matter how much much you try to validate it by bringing up and cloaking it in random references.

    Ultimately your argument for Julian Lage not being on the level of musicians from the past is simply that you personally don't like him. I get that and your allowed to have taste ... But when you try to make it more than taste and furthermore use it to shit on the musicians of today ... That is where it stops being fine.


    Maybe you should focus on the stuff you like and try to smitten us with it (not really necesarry as most of us love both Miles and Webster) instead of telling us that the music we like is shit and does not compare to that of the past?
    Hi, L,
    Let's go one at a time.
    Comparing apples and oranges? It doesn't have to be the same song. It's the idiom: Jazz and its variegate approaches to the music.

    My argument is not that modern Jazzers' overplay. It's that they play mechanically. In Lage's "ballad" in the opening, he starts doing scales he learned in Classical music as improvisation and the cowbrains in the audience were wowed. For me, it was "What's this about?"

    I'm not critical of what you call "overplaying." I'm critical when it's their only approach to music. I loved the playing of Renee Thomas. But, his approach to music was "musical" . . . not "I'm gonna play a ballad . . . watch me play it fast so you can see how great I am." Music is not one speed. It's encompasses everything from a jog, walk, run, and amble. "Overplaying"--your term, has nothing to do with playing solo or in an ensemble.

    "Standing alone" and playing sheets of sound and not playing slowly? Pianists and guitarists do it all the time. Horn players? What's the point, really?

    My taste does not equal truth in music . . . just my Truth. How can a person be an individual and unique when he runs his life with the herd? Then we wouldn't have had musicians like Miles, Coltrane, Ben Webster, Louis Armstrong, Chet, etc.

    I personally do not like Lage because he does nothing for me spiritually. Simple. And, my time is limited and I need to maximize my life's experience with things I perceive as beautiful so why waste my time after a few exposures to someone I don't like? It's not about his age, really, but rather that he doesn't communicate to ME. And, this is the purpose of true Art: communicating the human experience.

    Finally, with "Nocturne" and "I'll Be Seeing You," you help me make my point further. Neither one is a ballad ,in practice/vision, and "Nocturne" jumps into a Rock solo--volume and all at 2:15 when I dropped out a after a few more measures. In my world . . . these are not ballads.

    So, Lobo, I appreciate a civil approach to discourse since it contributes to the quality of a conversation. And, although we don't agree very much about music, it doesn't mean that we can't present our ideas, good or bad, for discussion. I hope everything is clear.
    Marinero

  11. #160

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    A thinking person always has something interesting to say.

  12. #161

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    At no point seeing Julian live did I feel the volume level was excessive (I think he used a little bit of drive maybe from a low gain drive box, so not amp distortion)... but he did use dynamics extremely well.

    A lot of jazz guitarists don't do this at all. They play more or less at one level all the way through.

    Kurt Rosenwinkel made great use of dynamics when I saw back in 2009-ish. I don't know if he still does tbh.

  13. #162

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    Hi, Lobo,
    I get the impression that you're trying to sell me yellow apples and I told you I only eat red ones. No amount of conversation is going to make me like your yellow apples. Period. Your defense of your music(what you like) is admirable but it doesn't change my mind or tastes, at all. That doesn't mean that we can't express what we like in music and share our thoughts with each other. Further, I don't see myself in an adversarial position with anyone on this Forum but, at times, if we express dislike for others' "untouchables," some raw nerves are exposed. This, of course, is a natural course of people expressing strong opinions. So, I look forward to our future conversations and hope they gain greater civility in the future.
    Finally, there are real generational differences between younger musicians ,today, and in my generation(Boomer). I cut my teeth playing live music in funky, smoke-filled corner bars, lounges, and restaurants* where your goal was to give people a good time so that you'd be asked to play again in the future. We played for money, we competed with other local bands, and our repertoire changed regularly to keep up with our competitors. Today, performance opportunities are limited unless you want to sit in the street like a beggar and busk for coins or join the ever-growing army of Youtube AllStars who play in perfect studio conditions with complete control of every note they play through editing and retakes. How can you really compare these two totally opposite experiences? So, sadly, the bottom line is that only the perceived "cream of the crop" gets paid to play today and the hungry hoardes of starving artists are relegated to the hallowed halls of Youtube. This difference is the main reason that the generational divide and playing style is so great among Jazz musicians. It's all in the soup.
    Marinero


    * How many can remember finishing a 3 set gig and the stink on your clothes and your burning eyes from smoke was unbelievable? In the old clubs in Chicago before modern air filtration, they used to open the front and rear doors of the club during intermission. M

  14. #163

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    Waste of energy debating this stuff innit.

    Fundamentally it’s a values thing. I would rather listen to a lot of new music I hated than only music I knew I already liked. I would still do this even if i hated everything new.

    i would also rather my critical faculties remain underdeveloped so long as I was engaged in making stuff. OTOH I have become less critical. I just tend to like things now? Most musicians I know tend to have no musical taste. It helps with work.

    Other people would rather rail against the modern world and find everything different to what they knew to be lacking and everything like it to be a second rate knock off. There is, needless to say, no pleasing these people.

    i no longer feel I need to convince anyone else to like the stuff I like. I’ll need all of that energy to try and make some music, tbh.

  15. #164

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    I dont have the slightest against your tastes.

    I have a huge problem with you saying that all musicians that don't play according to your taste are lesser ones.

    Praise what you like all that you want. Don't shit on what others like.

    If I was the only one here that find Julian Lage great then ok ... But many do ... We can all be into a shitty musician, can we?
    Hi, L,
    I never said JL was a "shitty musician." I just said I don't enjoy his music. That's a big difference. I also don't enjoy Neo-Classical Literature and prefer early-mid 20th Century Fiction/Poetry/Philosophy. One not need be a student of Culture to know there ARE generational differences that reflect quite clearly in the Arts. It doesn't really make one right or wrong since it's a matter of taste. As an aside, I do notice that you have a penchant for scatalogical adjectives . . . while I prefer copulative verbs . . . hey, someone call Graham . . .there's a pun hiding here!
    Marinero