Tag: ted greene

Categories
Music

“Eleanor Rigby” Rehearsal

Lucky me: I just started rehearsing for a duo project with one of my guitar heroes, the brilliant Mark Goldenberg. Here’s a run-through of “Eleanor Rigby,” one of the tunes we’re working on. It’s pretty rough still, and the recording quality ain’t great. But I love Mark’s playing so much here that I couldn’t resist sharing.

I’ve only known Mark a year or two, but we hit it off as soon as we met at one of Teja Gerkin’s solo guitar events. Mark played ravishing solo version of so many of my favorites: “God Only Knows,” “Shenandoah,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Mood Indigo,” and more. I love his ultra-dynamic touch and beautiful Bill Evans-style harmonies. Plus he’s just an cool guy.

And it turns out we both studied with the same teacher: the late Ted Greene. (I took lessons from Ted as a teen, with a few more sessions 20 years later. Mark studied with Ted long after he became a leading LA sideman and session player.) You can read more about Mark on his website. He’s recorded and toured with Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Eels, Natalie Imbruglia, Chris Isaak, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Peter Frampton and — hehehe — William Shatner. It’s a real thrill to collaborate with such an inspired player.

I’m playing a Gretsch TV Jones baritone on loan from my pal Xander Soren. Mark’s playing his magnificent mahogany Collings.

Categories
guitar Music Technique Uncategorized

Tonefiend Book Week 2013
Monday: Theory and Technique

Monday: Theory and Technique
Tuesday: Gear
Wednesday: Repairs and DIY
Thursday: Biography
Friday: Fiction

This week we’re talking about our favorite guitar/music books. The plan is simple: I discuss a few titles I’ve found particularly enlightening, useful, or entertaining, and then you jump in and do the same. I’ve organized the days of this week by subject matter. Today’s topics are theory and technique.

Tonefiend Book Week 2013 is an entirely selfish project. I expect to reap tons of great new info from you, smart readers. So don’t be shy about chiming in.

1. Ted Greene’s complete works

Yes, it's true — I studied guitar with Bigfoot!
This week on Finding Bigfoot, the BFRO team visits Encino, California.

Ted Greene’s jazz guitar books have haunted me since the ’70s. Chord Chemistry, Modern Chord Progressions, and Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing Vols 1 & 2 remain in print, and are available in both paper and digital editions.

Ted’s books helped me understand the fretboard, tackle jazz harmony, and perhaps most of all, grasp the concept of voice-leading — that is, the ability to perceive chords not as static blocks, but as volatile structures resulting from dynamic melodies. Ironically, even though Ted’s books are divided into chordal and single-note topics, they go a long way toward erasing such distinctions. Melody generates harmony, Ted teaches, and harmony generates melody.

Not that I’ve completely digested Ted’s books. Has anyone? These tomes are dauntingly dense and complex. I just cracked open Modern Chord Progressions at random, and this confronted me:

Continue reading “Tonefiend Book Week 2013
Monday: Theory and Technique”
Categories
Acoustic guitar

Guitar Lessons, Great and Otherwise

This clip from the short-lived British sketch-com Snuff Box made me think about great guitar teachers — and not-so-great ones.

I was lucky — I had some truly memorable teachers, starting with my mom, who taught me her coffeehouse folk. When she decided I needed a more advanced instructor, she recruited Larry, a friend’s 16-year-old Who-fanatic son. (He grew up to become renowned classical guitarist Lawrence Ferrara.) Katherine Charleton (later Calkins) mutated me into an early music geek. And I got to take a few lessons from Ted Greene was I was 17 or so, though he wouldn’t take me as a weekly student. He’d listen to me play got a bit, then dispense pages and pages of chord progressions and melodic sequences, the material that wound up on his Solo Guitar Playing books. I paid Buckethead for a few lessons when he was 17, but it was mainly just to hang out and watch him do his amazing thing. My last great teacher was the sublime Martin Simpson — I finagled a couple of lessons from him when he lived 90 minutes from me in Santa Cruz.

How about you guys? Which teachers inspired you the most? What was the best advice you ever got from a teacher? The worst? Do you teach yourself? Does teaching affect the way you play? Like that.