[jazz_guitar] Charlie Banacos
Chris Smart
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=35119
Wow ... sounds like a once-in-a-century human being...
So, has anybody on here studied with him?
And much in the way of Ted Green, is anybody archiving all the
wisdom this guy shared with the world? Did he write any books?
I'm sure most of his stuff is well beyond my capabilities, but I
would hate to see this stuff just disappear into the ether so-to-speak.
One part of Jeff Berlin's tribute jumped out at me:
"A few years ago, I sent him a quick recording of my bass soloing
so that he could make an assessment of my playing. Shortly
afterward, he mailed me back a cassette with a piece of music paper
with a few lines of music written on it. His message on the
cassette went like this: "Hey Jeff! I heard your playing, man!
You're playing too horizontal just like Pat Metheny does! You and
Pat aren't spelling out the chords. You guys are chromatically
playing through the chord changes! You have to play more
vertically!" The music that he wrote out for me changed my life. It
was a couple of musical lines that were shaped like an arrow
pointing up and down, requiring different inversions over different
chord types over 12 keys. I spent two months on those two lines of
music."
So, any guesses what those couple lines would look like, and how
one might go about running them through all keys?
Chris
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thomas sch�nsgibl
----- Original Message -----
> So, has anybody on here studied with him?
>
> And much in the way of Ted Green, is anybody archiving all the
> wisdom this guy shared with the world? Did he write any books?
your former teacher joey goldstein studied with him. and a mr gene
wrote:
Charlie did write a number of books:
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Pentatonic Scale Improvisation. Boston, MA
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Tonal Paralypsis: Book 1. Boston, MA
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Tonal Paralypsis: Book 2. Boston, MA
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Voicings in Clusters. Boston, MA
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Voicings in 5ths. Boston, MA
Banacos, Charlie (1972). Voicings in 4ths. Boston, MA
and here is a posting from joey goldstein that i saved on my pc from mai:
Paul wrote:
> i want to delve further into harmony... get some more advanced and
> contemporary concepts and voicings under my fingers, and be able to
> incorporate it into everything, including standards. like ben monder
> or something. speaking of which, does anyone have recordings or know
> of videos where monder plays standards?
>
> i've worked on stuff like drop 2s, quartal voicings, lately i've been
> incorporating the x6555x voicing out of the diminished scale into
> 2-5s....i want to keep digging further but not sure what i should do.
> i have this vic juris book, modern chords, which has some interesting
> intervallic structures, and compound triads, but i'm not sure if
> that's what i should work on next or even how to incorporate those.
> what do you think?
>
> paul
You might get some mileage out of Mick Goodrick's books, both the
Advancing guitarist and the Mr. GoodChord stuff.
The latter will run you through all of the various drop type voicings
through all keys through several scales through all root cycles. Lots of
work. It'll definitely expand you chordal chops and your ears, but might
not yield all that much usable music at first. But that's true of
anything worth studying IMO.
I think that Ben Monder may have some published stuff out now too,
arrangements to his original tunes etc. So have a look for that stuff.
When he did a clinic at Mohawk College he suggested starting with a
favourite voicing and then running through the various scales. If you
start with a vanilla 7th chord, then this is just like doing the
diatonic 7th of the scale in step-wise motion through the scale.
Imaj7 IIm7 IIIm7, etc.
But if you start with a non-standard chord voicing you can get some
interesting sounds that would not normally stumble upon otherwise.
He started with G C Db Bb X X 5 5 2 6, which he was using as Gm7b5 on
What Is This Thing Called Love, and took it through the G locrian #2
scale (aka Bb mel min scale starting on G).
G C Db Bb
A Db Eb C
Bb Eb F Db
C F G Eb
Db G A F
Eb A Bb G
F Bb C A
G C Db Bb
Notice how each vertical column is just the scale starting on its
various degrees. (You need to use a mono-spaced font to see this correctly.)
He would use each of these voicings as colours of Gm7b5.
The Barry Harris approach to harmonizing his "6th diminished" scales is
pretty cool. Stuff you won't stumble upon anywhere else. So check out
his materials.
My lessons with Charlie Banacos involved creating chords from the
hexatonic scales that are produced from the various triad pairs.
Eg.
The triad pair Cmaj + Dmaj creates the following hexatonic scale:
C D E F# G A C
If I start with
A F# C E
and run through the scale, I get:
A F# C E
C G D F#
D A E G
E C F# A
F# D G C
G E A D
A F# C E
Notice how the lowest 2 notes belong to one triad and the upper 2 notes
belong to the other triad.
Since we were using the C + D triad pair melodically over D7sus4, we can
also use these voicings as expressions of D7sus4.
Try a similar approach with the following triad pairs:
Cm + Dm (Great on Cm7 or Ebmaj7.)
Cdim + Ddim (Great on Ebm6 or D7alt.)
C+ + D+ (Great on C7#5 or C7b5.)
C + Db
C + Gb
Cm + Dbm
Cm + Gbm
Cdim + Dbdim
C+ + Eb+
C + Dm
C + Gbm
C + Ddim
C + Bdim
C + D+
C + Db+
Cm + Ddim
Cm + Bbdim
Cm + Bdim
Cm + Db+
Cm + D+
Cdim + Db+
I should shut up now.
--
Joey Goldstein
<http://www.joeygoldstein.com>
<http://homepage.mac.com/josephgoldstein/AudioClips/audio.htm>
joegold AT primus DOT ca
all the best
thomas