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Sheets Of Sound

 
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woland99



Joined: 31 Mar 2007
Posts: 155
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 2:29 pm    Post subject: Sheets Of Sound Reply with quote

Sheets of Sound is a title of instructional book by Jack Zucker:
http://www.sheetsofsound.net/
In a nutshell it is elaboration on Jimmy Bruno's picking method
(as described eg in "Art Of Picking") where you "follow thru" when
you change strings - eg. when you go from D to G string your first
stroke on the string should be downstroke. And vice versa.

The difference is that Jimmy also tries to deliberately LIMIT type of
fingerings used (check his "6 essential fingerings" book) allegedly to
make guitar similar to saxophone where there are much fewer variation
when it comes to fingering used to play specific scales. Jack on the other
hane starts the book with G major scale modes played in consistent
pattern (3 notes to string) to facilitate the "follow thru" concept of picking.
Resulting fingerings are a bit strange at first but may help you in
developing more precise fretting esp. when playing along (not across)
the neck (similar to "one string exercises" in Advancing Guitarist" book
by Mick Goodrick).

I had SOS for couple of years and work thru several of the exercises.
Always working with metronome and starting at VERY slow tempo - so
your motoric memory has time to absorb the pattern.
I abandoned it for a year or so to play more of "Art of Picking" and also
Mimi Fox great little book "Guitar Arpeggio Studies on Jazz Standards".
But I am thinking about starting on SOS again and work one exercise
every week into my daily routine. At such pace book can take years to
go thru - there are easily couple hundred of exrecises there (with one
exercise being eg. all 7 modes).

Anybody out there with some opinion on SOS - success/failure stories
or advice ?

JT
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Mark
VM Coach


Joined: 26 Feb 2007
Posts: 479
Location: Portland, OR

PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 9:47 am    Post subject: Re: Sheets Of Sound Reply with quote

woland99 wrote:
Anybody out there with some opinion on SOS - success/failure stories or advice?


JT,

Well, I hate to put a damper on things (and I did have the privilege of reviewing Jimmy's excellent book for Just Jazz Guitar a couple of years ago), but here's my two cents, for what it's worth...

Nowadays I avoid exercises like the plague, unless (and this is extremely important) it is something that you would actually PLAY for someone. Otherwise it's a waste of precious time that could and should be devoted to "real world" language instead.

Just look at the legends of jazz guitar and ask yourself if Christian, Wes, Pass, or Benson ever practiced exercises, or scales and arpeggios? No, they didn't. Instead they played great music (tunes, solos, licks) which became their exercises.

Music should always dictate technique and theory, not the other way around. For instance, I've played bass for over 35 years, and the way I developed my technique was by playing hundreds of bebop and blues heads (a la Jaco & "Donna Lee") every day. Efficient? Practical? Musical? You bet!

With all due respect, anything technical that you'll find in any of these books can be achieved by simply playing the music, which is clearly what the aforementioned players have historically proven. Exercises are fine, but only if they're the right kind. I highly recommend keeping abstraction to a bare minimum (like 5 minutes out of every hour).

Well, okay... I guess that was more than just two cents. Laughing

- Mark
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woland99



Joined: 31 Mar 2007
Posts: 155
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 1:47 pm    Post subject: Re: Sheets Of Sound Reply with quote

Mark wrote:

Well, I hate to put a damper on things (and I did have the privilege of reviewing Jimmy's excellent book for Just Jazz Guitar a couple of years ago), but here's my two cents, for what it's worth...

Nowadays I avoid exercises like the plague, unless (and this is extremely important) it is something that you would actually PLAY for someone.


Mark,
I do agree with you that practising for 4hrs and not learning any lines
that can be useful for actual performance is utter waste of time.
But my problem is often that I play more from fingers than from ear.
So my vocabulary will not grow on it's own - unless I do a lot of
transcribing. And even then I will tend to force the phrase that I am
learning into my current ways of fingering given passage. So doing
some exercises to make new fingerings accessible makes playing
and transcribing easier. It also take you out of beaten track and often
forces you to examine your technique (since some new elements may
prove very hard unless eg. your playing is very relaxed).

I think ear development is absolutely the most important aspect of
playing - my biggest mistake was spending enormous amount of time
playing from various printed sources. Since I started with playing
classical guitar that was somewhat natural thing to do. So transcribing
is always first priority for me. SOS book is still helpful in pushing the
envelope further as far as technique goes.

JT
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Mark
VM Coach


Joined: 26 Feb 2007
Posts: 479
Location: Portland, OR

PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:11 pm    Post subject: Re: Sheets Of Sound Reply with quote

woland99 wrote:
So transcribing is always first priority for me. SOS book is still helpful in pushing the envelope further as far as technique goes.


JT,

Great to hear that you've got your priorities straight. And don't get me wrong, because you'll note at the end of my last post that I cited 5 minutes of every hour devoted to exercises? I've certainly done more than my share of research over the years.

Unfortunately and in retrospect, a lot of it was time, energy, and $$ poorly spent. Being a coach and eternal student who is well aware of the time constraints that each of us face, I always feel obligated to warn others regarding the judicious use of time. The less time you have the more critical the situation.

De-emphasizing abstraction purely on a clock basis helps enormously, because all too often I meet students who are doing the exact opposite. In reality they'd be FAR better off transcribing and writing their own book, therefore developing a highly personal approach that embraces what they've learned, and from a number of different sources.

And the real hammer is subscribing to the "Only practice something that you would actually PLAY for someone" philosophy, because even if that doesn't eliminate abstraction altogether, it certainly forces the student to reconsider how they're spending their valuable time. All for now...

- Mark
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"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple" - Mingus
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