Must Try Harder...

Got my notes back from JB regarding the "Satin Doll" exercise. Not bad, he says, but with a tendency to play too low down in the register, and could make more effective use of half-step chromaticism. Perceptive insight, the former, as I'm inclined to start lines on the bottom two strings because that's where I know where all the roots of arpeggios are. It's a habit I'll have to work to break as it not only makes for gloomy, repetitive playing, but one shouldn't always start from the root anyway. So, guess I'll have to practice starting from different notes in the arpeggio, especially the 3rd, as well as playing them backwards, and starting my lines on either the d or g strings.

Comments

[Charlie Barker]

Hi Relaxin'

How's the hand/arm? I wanted to ask you something. I feel like I have taken a similar path to yours in expanding my jazz guitar playing. Jimmy Bruno, Mark Levine, Andrew Green...I have learned something from them all.

That being said, I feel like I am stuck when it comes to chords. I don't want to learn the chords just through memorization of positions because for chord melody stuff you really have to be able to find the chord anywhere. However, to be able to spell every chord (the way Andrew Green and others do) seems like an infinite task.

Could you describe the chord-learning approach you took? There is that part of the Bruno video where he finds every 7th chord on the neck on all string groups and then says you can make every chord from that. Is that as organized an approach to chording that one can make.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

PS...your writing is so hilarious that I find it totally distracting. Keep it up. :)

[Mauricio]

hey, first, an advice to relaxin :), i think is useful trying to play some phrases of II V I in one position but only in two or three strings and then the other strings so you learn to connect every possible part of the arpeggio. hope its useful :)

and Charlie, i think you would enjoy the dvd creative force of pat martino where he discusses how to get inversions of the chords with the diminished chord, i think its a really good "chord-learning approach"