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)