我的結他雜記: 6th chord

I have been looking into the art of jazz comping on guitar these days and saw that the 6th chord is commonly used for substitution (C6 for Cmaj7 for example) And this is a good article on Jamie Holroyd's site that explains what 6th chords are and how to play them.

我的結他雜記: Jimmy Bruno and Herb Ellis method

I have been a fan of Jimmy Bruno's teaching (as well as playing) for a long time. I have watched his old instructional video "No Nonsense Jazz Guitar" years ago. At first I couldn't understand most of what he said (and still don't) but I did pick up a couple major scale fingering from it (those are commonly taught and proved to be useful) I re-watched the video and joined his "old" online school towards the end of it a few years ago for a few months. This time I picked up all of his 5 major scale fingerings and the ii-V-I arpeggios extracted from them (m7b5 arp could be extracted indirectly) It took a long time to got them under my fingers for all 12 keys though. I also got a better understanding in making single-note solo only based on all "inside" note of a key center (or pitch collection in Jimmy's terminology) by mixing up scale and arpeggio runs. The "understanding" didn't translate into the ability to come up with those lines on the fly though. I submitted a ii-V-I improv video trying to apply the principle and the result didn't really sound like jazz. Jimmy suggested me to listen carefully to the ii-V-I video submitted by other students and his responses. Too bad that's when the "old" school closed the door. I think part of what he wanted me to do was to transcribe the lines that sounded good and analyze them. Jimmy wasn't actually secretive about his method. A lot of the value of his online school lies in his feedback to my playing as well as the other students'.

I also had some experiences with Herb Ellis' method via his "All the Shapes You Are" book, part of his series of 3 method books. This volume presented 7 shapes. They are major triads, minor triads, dominant 7th and dominant 9th chords. For the shapes with major triads, there are 2 corresponding scale fingerings: major scale and dominant scale (i.e., the mixolydian mode) Some shapes have 1 dominant scale or 1 minor scale (actually dorian mode rather than natural/harmonic/melodic minor) If I understand it correctly (described in my old post), to use this method, pick an applicable "scale" over the chord you encounter during improv (obviously, major chord uses major scale, minor chord uses minor scale and dominant chord uses dominant scale) The shapes help identifying chord tones which should be emphasized in the line (e.g. start or end a phrase, or finish the line, especially for resolution to I chord) The bulk of the book consists of many example lines that demonstrate how Herb's method is to be applied, which the author merely suggested to try playing a few times and move on. I made a mistake of not analyzing and memorizing those lines at that point of my study. I was too lazy and thought I should come up with my own lines anyway but I couldn't (partly because I wasn't familiar with the fingerings enough) so I gave up on the method. Another reason why I didn't study those example lines was they are based on a single chord covering multiple bars. Real tunes usually modulate quickly, with ii-V-I in 2 bars often. I just couldn't imagine myself switching from one scale to another every 2 beats. (Later on I found out a phrase that "works" on a ii chord could also be played over the V in the ii-V and vice versa. So I could have "switched" less frequently)

I definitely see similarities between both methods: in fact, the fingerings are very similar. You could even say all of Herb's major/minor/dominant fingering could be "merged" into Jimmy's 5 major fingerings (one or two needs very minor modifications like moving the 4th fingers to the 1st finger of next string. Jimmy doesn't like stretching over 4 frets on a single string in one position, for speed I guess) and all the chord tone shapes are subset of arpeggios extracted from Jimmy's fingerings (except the 9th in dominant 9th) 

I'd say Jimmy's fingering are easier to apply in a ii-V-I context because you don't need to recall 3 of Herb's fingering in the same position of the neck. Instead, just recall one of the 5 Jimmy's major scale fingering and the 3 arpeggios within it.

Both of them taught the use of approach notes (half step from above and below chord tones) for chromaticism.

I gotta admit I suffer from low JIQ (Jazz improvisation quotient) As my instructors would say, I didn't "speak" in the jazz language in my solo. To overcome this, I tried memorizing licks from various books by Joseph Alexander, Sid Jacob and Robert Conti. You could hear common phrases among all these licks and from actual solo played during performances or recordings. I am practicing playing these licks using Bruno's fingering (5 shapes)

Fingerstyle guitar master Stefan Grossman

禮拜日無節目，也是當天才知道，幸好家在bay area，不愁沒有音樂會，基本上我的策略是先看KCSM Jazz datebook，以及一些著名演出場地的網址，包括Yoshi's, Freight and Salvage, Davies Symphony Hall等等。首先看到Freight and Salvage有acoustic fingerstyle guitar表演，然後看到SFJAZZ有一場拉美爵士樂，有我欣賞的古巴單簧管色士風大師Paquito D'Rivera，可惜SFJAZZ售票網及電話皆不通。兩全其美的方法：是去前者，在路上聽後者的CD！相當慶幸沒有錯過一場非一般的音樂會。

Freight and Salvage這個場地本身已是非一般牟利娛樂場所，而是一個歷史悠久，靠捐款由義工協助運作，以傳統美國音樂為主的表演中心。傳統美國音樂除了我常聽的Blues及Jazz，也包括我興趣不大的Country及Bluegrass。不過演出宣傳網頁介紹Stefan Grossman彈fingerstyle guitar，從結他手角度也絕對值得支持。提起fingerstyle，我聽得較多的有Tommy Emmanuel, Martin Taylor, Adam Miller（去年他首次從澳洲來美國巡迴演出，可惜Bay area一站是在偏遠的Lafayette，包括我在內的捧場客寥寥無幾）網頁上的Stefan Grossman sample track風格頗有不同，卻是我非常欣賞但不常聽到的Acoustic blues。音樂會打頭炮就是一首令人聽出耳油的acoustic blues instrumental。接著他開始他獨有的「棟篤笑」式表演：邊說邊唱邊彈地介紹自己學及玩結他的軼事，歌曲的出處等等。雖然個人偏好instrumental music，也覺得他的方式很是過癮。他是一個成長於Brooklyn的猶太人，小時候想學結他，父母叫他去買點唱片，他在唱片店買來一張folk(Woody Guthrie)，一張acoustic blues唱片，決定走後者的路線，師從Reverend Gary Davis，學了一大堆廿世紀初至中的美國傳統歌曲，包括Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy等大師的作品。當晚表演也有原創，例如拿另一位acoustic blues 結他手開玩笑的Assassination of John Fahey，大概有三分二是instrumental，除了blues，也有一點pop/jazz；作為一個白人，唱blues的唱腔亦別具一格。還不忘宣傳他當晚有售的CD Blues for the Mann，該碟包括大部份作品的TAB(PDF)，大家可以跟著彈，中場break time大家都趕著買一張（包括我）！

我的結他雜記: KORG Pandora PX5D on a new PC

Deja vu: this is the 4th time I'm trying to get Pandora working as an audio interface (playback and recording) and for some reason I always have problem making it available as a recording device under Windows. There is a solution (thanks to this post) and I always forget. So I decided to copy it here so that I could look it up in the future (or help a fellow guitarist!)

1. Go to the control panel and open the sound settings 
2. In my setup I could see the PX5D as an option in the playback tab, but NOT on the recording tab. 
3. To solve this go to the recording tab, right click in the box and check "Show Disabled Devices". Now you should see the PX5D, but it is disabled 
4. Right click on the icon of the PX5D and select enabled 
5. Click OK and that is it.