Ted Greene�s thoughts on Chord Chemistry

[CEB]

Don"t know if this will be of any interest. Especially to a bunch of pianist because as a group we are generally indoctrinated into harmonic chord theory. But Ted always sort of had different view points. I was captivated by the video probably mostly because I tortured myself as a teen by studying Ted Greene"s book Chord Chemistry. It was must study material for a serious guitarist but it was a titanic feat trying to organize that much knowledge in a book. The organization of the material was rough but it was a lot of stuff to absorb.

 

This is off topic. But it deals with usable concepts as opposed to all the parody bullshit.

 

[video:youtube]

[Docbop]

I grew up musically hearing about Ted from his time as the rock guitarist all the locals spread the word about. Then working at the music school his sister was a student and I started taking lessons with Ted off and on. Later hiring Ted to do clinics at the school. Ted didn't play out much after his rock days, but when he did the word of mouth went out and guitarist would pack where ever he played. I drifted off into the computer world, but was still dabbling in guitar and was going to be home for a visit and decided to call Ted for a lesson for old times sake. That was the last time I saw him a few years before he transitioned. Ted was a strange character but also the nicest person you'd could ever meet. He loved to study music all genres and teach. Ted and I got along because most his students were into Jazz only, but I was an old Blues, Doowop, and R&B fan. After lessons Ted would pull out CD's of Blues and R&B and play it for me. He would hand me the CD's and in the tiny handwriting like in Chord Chemistry book you'd see Ted would write comments on every tune. But at same time if you got to your lesson early Ted would have you wait in his music library that was full of scores and music history books and old Jazz archtop guitars.

 

I never used Ted's book in my lessons and I'm not sure he did with other either. He had a large file cabinet full of lesson sheets that looks kind of like pages from Chord Chemistry, but basically he could pull out just the topic he wanted to talk about. Having Ted talk you through one of those pages and hearing him play use the lesson definitely made things fall into place. So I would recommend if going through Ted's books approach them in small chunks and take time to not only learn the examples but use them in a tune. Ted's lesson material included a lot of tunes arranged using his approach.

 

The guitar world lost a lot when Ted passed.

[Baldwin Funster]

I had that book back in about 1982 or so. After about page 4 it got way over my head. Great pics of some 50s gold top Les Pauls though.

[GovernorSilver]

Ted Greene's most devoted disciples usually steer everyone to this site, which has loads of free articles, transcriptions, etc.

https://www.tedgreene.com/

 

Some of them will give you an earful about what they think about Chord Chemistry and what Greene supposedly thought of it. I can understand at least that every writer seems to want to rewrite/revise their book as soon as it's published already.