[jazz_guitar] question about the Joe Fava Method For Guitar series
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I'm practising sight reading from standard notation using the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method and also the similarly titled William Leavitt books; but I'm looking for more books with similar beginning and intermediate level material, with some double stops and chords (in standard notation) as are included in the tunes, etc in those books. (The further quirk is that it has to be playable with simple plectrum technique like in those books i.e. no finger picking or hybrid picking - otherwise I could just use classical guitar materials to practise with...) Does anybody know if the books in the Joe Fava Method For Guitar series contain similar material - or do those just contain single note lines and/ or chord diagrams?
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'bluesrenegade@yahoo.com' bluesrenegade@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
Check out Joseph Alexander's book on sight reading. All his books are excellent. Amazon has samples for download in the Kindle store.
I'm practising sight reading from standard notation using the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method and also the similarly titled William Leavitt books; but I'm looking for more books with similar beginning and intermediate level material, with some double stops and chords (in standard notation) as are included in the tunes, etc in those books. (The further quirk is that it has to be playable with simple plectrum technique like in those books i.e. no finger picking or hybrid picking - otherwise I could just use classical guitar materials to practise with...) Does anybody know if the books in the Joe Fava Method For Guitar series contain similar material - or do those just contain single note lines and/ or chord diagrams?William
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I had a quick look at the Joseph Alexander book and while it looks okay it does appear to only have single note material i.e. no double stops or chords written out in full on the staff. That's what I surmise from the limited samples available from the book and the table of contents. (I already have a number of good books that cover single note reading well like the David Oakes book which probably goes beyond the Joseph Alexander book with respect to positions on the neck and keys covered, etc.)
On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 9:10 AM, william_v_nicholson@... [jazz_guitar]<jazz_...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I'm practising sight reading from standard notation using the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method and also the similarly titled William Leavitt books; but I'm looking for more books with similar beginning and intermediate level material, with some double stops and chords (in standard notation) as are included in the tunes, etc in those books. (The further quirk is that it has to be playable with simple plectrum technique like in those books i.e. no finger picking or hybrid picking - otherwise I could just use classical guitar materials to practise with...) Does anybody know if the books in the Joe Fava Method For Guitar series contain similar material - or do those just contain single note lines and/ or chord diagrams?William
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I was able to preview a bit more using the Amazon "Look Inside" on amazon.co.uk and it looks like the book's examples entirely consist of single note reading plus some rhythm reading (i.e. no harmonic material written out on the staff),
---In jazz_...@yahoogroups.com, <bluesrenegade@...> wrote :
On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 9:10 AM, william_v_nicholson@... [jazz_guitar]<jazz_...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I'm practising sight reading from standard notation using the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method and also the similarly titled William Leavitt books; but I'm looking for more books with similar beginning and intermediate level material, with some double stops and chords (in standard notation) as are included in the tunes, etc in those books. (The further quirk is that it has to be playable with simple plectrum technique like in those books i.e. no finger picking or hybrid picking - otherwise I could just use classical guitar materials to practise with...) Does anybody know if the books in the Joe Fava Method For Guitar series contain similar material - or do those just contain single note lines and/ or chord diagrams?William
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'J. Vega' JVegaTrio@aol.com [jazz_guitar]
You might want to check out the Barry Galbreath and/or Sal Salvador books.
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
By the way, I stumbled across the Joe Fava method books by searching on amazon.com for Johnny Smith related material. One of the Joe Fava method books showed up on amazon.com as being written by Johnny Smith - which is not actually correct, although he did write a foreword for the book. (Johnny Smith's own well known method would be a pain to use because my immediate aim is to get competent at reading from guitar music written on the treble clef and his book has the music written out on staffs with a treble and a bass clef, like piano music. Having previewed samples of that book, it looks like it uses chord diagrams and/ or chord names a lot rather than notation, in practice anyway, which would reduce its usefulness for my sight reading practice),
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akmbirch@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
Two you might get some traction from are:
Reading Contemporary Guitar Rhythms by M.T. Szymczak
- It's main focus is on 16th note rhythms but the rhythm parts have chords in standard notation.
Sal Salvador's Sight Reading Studies For Guitar
- Features some chords and double stop type material all in standard notation.
In the "old days" we learned from teacher's chord melody studies written in standard notation and teachers would make their students write out their own chord melody studies and arrangements in standard notation. So I would look out for some of the out-of-print ( if there is a reprint, they've sadly put tab in the book ) chord melody arrangement books, e.g. Bucky Pizarelli, Joe Pass etc., ( Unfortunately, as soon as musicians worked out that they could make a buck for themselves without sharing any of the monies with the song-writer/copyright holder i.e. licensing the song arrangements by publishing them in chord diagram form rather than notation, there was an explosion of these types of publications.)
-A
--
Alisdair MacRae Birch
Guitarist/Bassist/Educator/Arranger
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keith.freeman@ziggo.nl [jazz_guitar]
Why not just adapt some single-note material by writing your own chords and double-stops into it? Good practice for your harmonic skills. There are a couple (but only a couple) of nice examples of chords alternating with single notes in Garrison Fewell's first book. (I hope Garrison is up there now jamming with his hero Grant Green!)
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I'm not too keen on that suggestion for a couple of reasons. I suppose the main one is that it won't really be proper sight reading if I wrote the material. (Apart from already knowing what notes I've written, I don't think I can even avoid being somewhat familiar with how it lays on the guitar in advance with arrangements I put together myself that include chords and double stops.) I may be able to manufacture a lot of practice material for sight reading by importing some of the online guitar tabs into a program like Guitar Pro and then choosing the option to display standard notation only. (There is actually a further issue that I would ideally use "graded material" like in the Mel Bay books.)
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keith.freeman@ziggo.nl [jazz_guitar]
> I was unaware that Garrison Fewell died. It appears he wasn't
especially old (in his early 60's).
Yes, I was shocked when I heard the news. I had lessons from him at a summer course in Italy. He really opened up the fingerboard for me.
> The earliest in print book that I'm aware of is "Jazz
Guitar: A Melodic Approach"
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
I would just sight-read transcriptions of recordings, that way you'll be playing real music rather than someone's exercise, and you'll know how the music should sound - before you proceed to butcher it.
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I couldn't find many published transcriptions in standard notation only and with fully notated chords or double stops - particularly after restricting to material playable with strict plectrum technique - which is why I asked for advice about books earlier. (If I'm willing to butcher books by pasting paper over the guitar tab or enter the notation into software that gives me a lot more options, of course. I've decided to do the latter to an extent. I actually experimented with sticking paper over tab temporarily with Blu Tack and also some commercial product called Overscore; but both of these tended to fall off and were frustrating to deal with.) I did buy a number of transcriptions of mostly single note material recently though,
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keith.freeman@ziggo.nl [jazz_guitar]
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I'm not aware of any Kenny Burrell transcriptions that are in print and are tab free. I had a quick look on amazon.com and this out of print book may be suitable http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Recorded-Solos-Authentically-Transcribed/dp/B000XVELHE but it's being sold at a rather high price by amazon.com marketplace dealers (admittedly these aren't quite as predatory as some of the amazon.com marketplace dealers - I'm sure I remember in the past seeing an in print Berklee College of Music ear training book going for about a thousand dollars),
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
I'll see what I have on hand, if it's out of print, legally I'd be allowed to share it here.
There used to be a lot of transcriptions in the File Archives, were they all just deleted?! Maybe I still have many of them, I'll look.
I used to read piano transcriptions, e.g., Bill Evans, which meant I had to figure out how to transpose most of the chords to guitar. But I wasn't trying to sight read them, just wanted to understand his harmonic ideas.
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
Gee that book looks familiar, I might have owned it at one time. Notice the price on the cover: $2.00 - definitely the good old days.
On a good night, Burrell was a monster player. I caught him with his trio in a small night club in North Beach, San Francisco on such a night. The club was virtually empty. I was barely old enough to get in, they had a two drink minimum, and I didn't drink, so had some very expensive soda pop. I was just getting into jazz guitar at the time and he just blew me away, I started thnking, "well maybe I can't play this music after all." But then I felt the same thing after I saw JImi H.....
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keith.freeman@ziggo.nl [jazz_guitar]
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
A web search turns up many jazz guitar transcription sites. A few of the better ones are gone now but there are plenty to browse through.
A few that came up:
1) http://goo.gl/Snt80c
2) This site owner's name sounds awfully familiar 
http://goo.gl/m99ffG
3) Another familiar name, a former member of this group:
http://goo.gl/0FOP31
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I neglected to mention that a large part of the immediate reason for practising sight reading is to do Trinity College of Music board grade exams in plectrum guitar which are described here http://www.trinitycollege.com/site/?id=3183 . This is also the reason for some of the arbitrary sounding rules in my original post like no finger picking or hybrid picking. (I'm also interested in working on sight reading for possibly joining big bands and general musicianship.) I passed the exam for grade 5 plectrum guitar about a year ago and I'm currently preparing for the grade 6 exam. Trinity College of Music actually have a free book with samples of what will come up in the sight reading portion of the plectrum guitar exam here: http://www.trinitycollege.com/resource/?id=6129 (which goes straight to the relevant PDF which is also linked on the page with the first URL). (There aren't enough of these to really use for practice on their own - although they give an idea of the difficulty of the sight reading "supporting test" apart from the description in the syllabus),
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Bob Afifi bobafifi@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
Hi William,
On Monday, June 6, 2016, 6:22 AM, william_v...@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar] <jazz_...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I neglected to mention that a large part of the immediate reason for practising sight reading is to do Trinity College of Music board grade exams in plectrum guitar which are described here http://www.trinitycollege.com/site/?id=3183 . This is also the reason for some of the arbitrary sounding rules in my original post like no finger picking or hybrid picking. (I'm also interested in working on sight reading for possibly joining big bands and general musicianship.) I passed the exam for grade 5 plectrum guitar about a year ago and I'm currently preparing for the grade 6 exam. Trinity College of Music actually have a free book with samples of what will come up in the sight reading portion of the plectrum guitar exam here: http://www.trinitycollege.com/resource/?id=6129 (which goes straight to the relevant PDF which is also linked on the page with the first URL). (There aren't enough of these to really use for practice on their own - although they give an idea of the difficulty of the sight reading "supporting test" apart from the description in the syllabus),
William
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keith.freeman@ziggo.nl [jazz_guitar]
It would have been handy to have known this from the start, William ;-}
I would suggest the Bach solo violin partitas (which Garrison Fewell incidentally recommended to his students, he said he used them himself) and the various Barry Galbraith books, including the Bach two-part inventions. And perhaps the Jimmy Raney written-out solos published by Aebersold.
The Kenny B and Pat M solos I suggested before are way more difficult than the Grade 6 samples you've shown us, might be frustrating to try to sight read.
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
"might be frustrating to try to sight read."
That's also true of many of the Bach solo violin partitas, some of the bowed double stops are rather tricky on guitar.
I have this book, apparently out of print, which means I could scan and share it: http://goo.gl/hXqCG3
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I actually have a scanned copy of that Wes Montgomery book already. I had a quick peek at it and some of it may be useful for my practice although I probably will not be able to play it up to the original tempo,
That's also true of many of the Bach solo violin partitas, some of the bowed double stops are rather tricky on guitar.
I have this book, apparently out of print, which means I could scan and share it: http://goo.gl/hXqCG3
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william_v_nicholson@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
I just noticed on the wikipedia page about Kenny Burrell that he studied classical guitar with Joe Fava (when a student at Wayne State University, I think - although it's not entirely clear from the wording on the wikipedia page, other web pages seem to confirm this),
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JVegaTrio@aol.com [jazz_guitar]
I just noticed on the wikipedia page about Kenny Burrell that he studied
classical guitar with Joe Fava (when a student at Wayne State University, I
think - although it's not entirely clear from the wording on the wikipedia
page, other web pages seem to confirm this),
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musette@myway.com [jazz_guitar]
Yes, Burrell plays classical guitar on "Guitar Forms," the album he recorded with Gil Evans
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bourgrosauraltf@yahoo.com [jazz_guitar]
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