Ive also added a few more extra notes in the last measure to complete all the notes you would need to play the Wes Montgomery version of Sunny in octaves.
Andrew Green Jazz Guitar Technique How To Play BlockThe exact path I took to learn how to play block chords as Wes Montgomery did on Too Late Now is a little blurred after over 40 years of studying guitar.My guess is that after hearing Too Late Now I realized that I would have to start out with a simpler tune and purchased other Wes Montgomery records, most of which were in my collection until very recently.
My guess is that I bought the album California Dreaming which was released in 1966 and maybe a few other of Wes pop records (although critics consider these songs pop fluff, they are great for learning Jazz guitar). Andrew Green Jazz Guitar Technique Download From ITunesIn any event, my search for a simpler tune ended up with Sunny by Bobby Hebb (Sunny is one cut on California Dreaming you can download from iTunes or listen to Wes play here ). I also, at some point, purchased the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method. With sheet music for Sunny from Patti Music (in Madison, WI) and some instructional books, I somehow figure out how to play enough chords to get about 34 of the way through Sunny, but then got stuck or at least realized that I needed help. I started asking around about guitar teachers and everyone pointed to Roy Plumb. I played 34 of Sunny as my audition and told him I wanted to play like Wes Montgomery. What Id like to do in the next few posts is look back on that period with what I know today and fill in some of the stumbling blocks that faced me in trying to play a Jazz version of Sunny. What Im going to assume is that if I got anything useful from instructional books, it was from the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method (last I checked there was one used book available on Amazon, but it is probably quickly going out of print and out of circulation), so Ill start there. The book starts out explaining how to use your thumb for single-note playing. I doubt that I even tried to play the excerpt (I still cant play it at speed with my thumb) The book moves on to octave playing with some simple exercises. I probably worked on these since Wes plays mostly octaves on Sunny (Im not sure if I actually played octaves for my audition). The left-hand technique involves playing the lower note of the octave with the first finger, deadening the next string with the first finger and then finding the higher octave note on the next string either with the third or the fourth finger. The right-hand technique can either involve playing with the thumb, playing with the first- and third-finger using Classical guitar technique (sometimes called parallel octaves ), or with a pick. One very important point about octave playing comes from Jesse Gress in a Guitar Player article ( here ): The trick with octaves is to focus on either the lower (my personal preference) or upper notes only and let the higher octaves shadow the lower notes, or vice versa. I have tried both concentrating on the lower and the upper notes of the octave when playing and typically I concentrate on the lower note in descending lines and the upper note in ascending lines. Symptoms that I have lost my concentration are usually not playing a clean octave, that is, sounding the strings that are supposed to be deadened or playing a 7th interval rather than an octave. If youre having these problems, concentrate on playing one note in the octave and let the other note take care of itself (let it shadow the primary note). The fingering is shown to the left of the notes and the fret and string for the first finger is given below. The first note of the C minor scale (in the Key of E flat) starts at the third fret of the A-string and the octave higher C is played on the G-string (skipping the D-string) on the fifth fret. Notice that when we get to the D-string, the first and the fourth fingers are used (the right photograph in the picture above).
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