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Re: Voice Leading from arpeggio to arpeggio

 

There you go! See how easy it was to convey this and it totally makes sense for someone on my level! I have done this on occasion with two note sounds for each chord diagram, trying to find them as close as possible to the chord I'm moving away from, but I didn't work on this using 3rds and 7ths for each. Now THAT is a great thing for me to work on. Have the melody in my head at all times and add the 3rds and 7ths to that linear movement of the melody, and memorize them in two octaves. After that I can work on 9ths and 13ths,etc.

Not only will it help me to move through the tune in time but it will also drill into my head where each of the 3rds and 7ths are on all kinds of chord tonal centers - major/minor/dom 7th,half diminished,etc. I want these chord tones to become subconscious.

Of course I'll get totally bored with that quickly but it is a foundation to begin to think about harmonic movement within the context of a particular tune. At this stage I'm not trying to be Pat Martino, I'm just trying to get through a chorus without getting lost.

Thank you so much,

John

--- In jazz_guitar@..., "grahambop" <grahambop@...> wrote:

Try playing the chord progressions for the 2 tunes you mentioned using just the 3rd and 7th, all the way through, i.e. just using 2-note chords. I found this a really good way to get the essential notes (chord tones) of the harmonic progression 'in my head' so to speak. Try to do it with the minimum movement between the chord shapes - often just one note will change, and only by a semitone. Even an apparently complex progression like 'All the Things You Are' sounds a lot simpler after you've played it this way. If it sounds odd, you can add the root of each chord to begin with, but eventually you should play it with just 3rd and 7th, but still hearing the root note in your head.

If you do this long enough, the most important chord tones will sound in your head as you play the tune. Eventually to me they seem like 'harmonic colours' and I don't even think much about the chord or note names by this stage. (I don't like getting too hung up on theory for this stuff!)

Then you can start to build up phrases based on these chord tones. Listen to how the great players play those 2 tunes and try to copy and absorb some of their phrases into your playing. This should give you some ideas how to smoothly voice lead from one chord to the next.

Graham
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