Don’t know if this will be of any interest. I was captivated by it probably mostly because I tortured myself as a teen by studying Ted Greene’s book Chord Chemistry. It was must study material but it was a titanic feat trying to organize that much knowledge in a book.
Last edited by CEB; 11/20/2006:11 PM.
"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne
"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt
That book is the bible of jazz guitar theory. He was a very interesting cat. My girlfriend's first husband studied with him, a client of mine had a vocal/guitar duet with him, but mostly he very rarely played out. I have a video of him playing at a wedding, sitting alone in a corner, being ignored by everybody, & playing the most amazing & complex stuff imaginable. It's great to see there's an instructional video with him. I'll have to get out my copy of 'Chord Chemistry' & see if I can follow along & keep up for more than a half page.
Memorizing all of those variations so you can play without thinking (the only way I enjoy playing) is an enormous task.
I've always absorbed guitar learning in terms of patterns, which is a real time saver. One pattern can be used in 12 different locations, the pattern does not have to change, like it does for keyboards. Patterns are "scale/chordal forms" in my guitar-brain world but I've never excluded any notes that lay outside those patterns. My knowledge of chords is pretty basic but I often play chords that are not basic. It is a matter of recognizing that melody can flow through a variety of harmonic potentials and that "wrong" notes can often be exactly the perfect thing to create tension or make the lines flow as the underlying patterns shift.
Yes, that makes no sense. I could never have written a book like Ted's, it is a remarkable accomplishment.
If I had tackled it when I was in my teens and my tiny brain was not full yet, I may very well have gotten somewhere. As it stands now, I have the entire neck as a playground and can play as "normal" as needed or toss my own freaky-deaky touches in when inspiration hits. So I am happy.
