Seeing harmonically on the guitar is a totally different problem from
the piano, so you're right, the Pat Martino thread is essentially
a guitarists thread.
Since I'm both a pianist and guitarist I can tell you this with
certainty.
The guitar has a particular problem when trying to play/learn block
chords.
On the piano you can play them in closed position.
For example: Em7 as E G B D.
On the guitar you are forced to use drop 2 voicings for the most
part. Thus [B E G D]
If you want to think drop 2 on the piano, it's very easy to
just visualize the chord in closed position and see the 2nd voice
from the top drop an octave.
On the guitar this visualization process doesnt work.
So if you want to harmonize an Em7 with a D in the melody, you
could try and think of the closed position chord and then the drop
two notes and then try and find the voicing. The main problem is
there is no visual clue as to what things are going to look like.
On the piano, once you know how an Em7 chord is spelled, you can
see it right away. On the guitar you'd have to learn the drop 2
spellings if you wanted to approach things this way. (I guess
someone could do this and it's something I'll consider. I have
to try it out myself before seeing if it is useful as a teaching
tool. )
Pat's idea is to apply the shape of the diminished chord, of which
there are only two practical ones on the guitar for these purposes.
It gives you way to have a fist approximation of the chord that
you can then adjust to find the other chords.
It's brilliant.
I'll never teach anyone block chords again differently. It's so simple
compared to the way I learned them.
Of course, I have to qualify this. I'll use this method to teach someone
how to find single block chords when harmonizing a melody.
Block chord licks have to be learned as separate patterns.
reed
>
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com