Training by Howard Morgen

[lw216316]

I found some free samples on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ojEu8xsIS8

...was so impressed I ordered the course !

First off, he's playing an Eastman carved archtop like one I
bought last week - that really got my attention -

next he plays a familiar classic with a great moving bass line -
and then teaches how to arrange it that way
...something I want to learn to do when I arrange my favorites
for solo instrumentals

AND - I really like his teaching style, and its hard to find a good teacher.

I found this by chance (?) as I was looking for examples / teaching about
how to play horizonatally up and down the fretboard.

ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH HOWARD MORGEN'S TEACHING ?

If not, you may want to check this out if you are into playing solo instrumentals and arranging .

I'm excited about this....hope the course turns out to be as good as the
youtube samples

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Yes, I am familiar with Howard Morgen's materials. He has several books that might be of interest to you. In particular, his book "Concepts" would be an excellent match for that Truefire course you posted about, as would "Solo Guitar". Personally, I think that if you want to pursue chord melody at some point, you would do well to start with Robert Conti's "Chord Melody Assembly Line" and "The Formula" first and then maybe get into Howard Morgen's "Beyond Chord Melody".

The differentiating factor about Robert Conti's materials is that they are very linear in their approach. Conti has also been teaching and performing for a very long time. He understands that when self-teaching, especially in the beginning, the student needs to be virtually led by the hand step by step through how to do the thing before expanding out into all manner of choices that might otherwise be confusing. In "Assembly Line", there is only ONE solution to each situation he presents. Some people criticize that as being too much like "paint by the numbers". But in reality, that is EXACTLY what self-teaching people need. Once you can arrange and play chord melody of your own from fakebooks (i.e. you have the mechanics down and are actually making music), then Conti begins to expand with a very unique and powerful approach to understanding harmonic movement.

If you find yourself confused as to what to do with any of what Howard Morgen is teaching (probably because there are too many choices early on as to what to do with what he is showing you), then Conti is the answer. Note that in "The Formula", Conti provides you with the full pallette of harmonic movement so you have everything you need to never have to play the same tune the same way twice in a row. But to start with, in "Assembly Line", he leads you step by step very clearly so there is absolutely no way you can get confused or "go wrong". That is the antidote to becoming lost in the details too soon and giving up or looking for something "better" to work with out of frustration.

By the way, I think it is easier to go from chord melody as Conti teaches it to working on Howard Morgen's materials than to just dive into Howard Morgan. The reason is that if you are already playing tunes in a solo style, then you have a very solid context in which to learn the information that Howard Morgen teaches. With self-teaching, especially, this is extremely important - to not get lost in all the information with too many choices as to what to play, too early in the learning process.

I have long been down the "self teaching" road and therefore speak from personal experience. It is difficult when the "blind (me) is leading the blind (me)" to know what the problem is when I am getting frustrated because intellectually I understand what is being taught in the books and DVDs, but I just can't seem to put it together to come up with my own arrangements.

The approach I am suggesting here is the one I have found to work best for me. It is really simple: to begin with, you want to get a solid feel for putting a workable chord under a melody note. Conti eliminates all but one possible chord for each such situation, but he provides all the chord forms you need to harmonize every possible melody note in every possible situation, so you are working from a "real" fakebook, rather than being stuck with very simple children's songs until you get to the "good stuff".

After you have worked up 20 or 30 tunes this way using "Assembly Line", you go on to "The Formula" and learn all the various bass line movements that drive all the really interesting ways to harmonize a melody, and do so in a very solid and practical manner that makes sense every step of the way. Do another 20 or 30 tunes this way, and then you are ready to expand to the kind of thing that Howard Morgen teaches because now you are already playing real music and have a context for understanding about moving lines and the fingerstyle stuff that Morgen teaches.

With shelves of books and a pile of DVDs and other stuff in my collection, this is what has truly worked best for me. All this material is great stuff, but unless it is tackled in a sensible order, the results are spotting at best, and usually frustrating with little to show for it at worst. Morgen's materials are great, I don't want to imply otherwise, but they are best tackled when you are already engaged in putting together solo arrangements in the guitar so that his materials are expanding on that foundation. The reason is that he shows you the nuts and bolts, but it is really up to you to figure out what to do with them. Conti gets you playing tunes as solos on the guitar first and then delves into the nuts and bolts. Conti does straight chord melody (a chord under each melody note), leaving you to figure out how to make it more interesting through various fingerstyle techniques. Morgen shows you how to make it more interesting, leaving you to figure out how to apply it to play tunes. So from personal experience, I suggest that the two are very complimentary, with Conti serving as the foundation on which Morgen builds.

Regards,

Tony

[guitaniac]

Hi Larry,

I have three of Howard Morgen's books and have greatly enjoyed learning some of his arrangements. Even a hacker like myself can sound halfway competent and knowledgeable with his arrangements.

I've also corresponded a bit with Howard Morgen. Seems like a very nice guy, in addition to being a guitar and harmony whiz.

Thanks for the heads-up on his YouTube vids. I look forward to subscribing to his channel.

Gary

[lw216316]

Tony,
Thank you so very much !
I have saved your comments and plan to follow your advice !

A very structured approached in the beginning is what I'm looking for.
I just happened to encounter Morgen first.

I'm at a beginner level right now -
I'll take some classic song I like -
for example - What A Wonderful World - Louie Armstrong

I play the melody on the treble strings so I find a KEY that will work for me.

Then I identify what chords are used in the song -
straight - no substitution, no passing chords

Then I just 'follow the melody' -
and whatever position that leads me to on the fretboard - I then
figure out how to make the chord at that position.

This is so simple and basic but I enjoy it so much I want to learn more.
...to use beautiful chord substitutions, add bass lines etc...

When I discovered Morgen yesterday - his sample video was showing
how to set up a moving bass line for a classic song like ' Danny Boy '.

I do a simple solo instrumental of ' Danny Boy ' now -
I'm very excited about applying what Morgen shows
and improving my version.

Eventually, I want to do arrangements of all my old favorite classics
for solo finger style.

It's a labor of love and will take me a long time -
I'm a senior and just now beginning to study these things...
had no formal training in music.

Thanks for helping an old dog learn new tricks !

I'll repeat this message in private just in case you happen not to
read it here.

- Larry

[lw216316]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Hi Larry,

I have three of Howard Morgen's books and have greatly enjoyed learning some of his arrangements. Even a hacker like myself can sound halfway competent and knowledgeable with his arrangements.

I've also corresponded a bit with Howard Morgen. Seems like a very nice guy, in addition to being a guitar and harmony whiz.

Thanks for the heads-up on his YouTube vids. I look forward to subscribing to his channel.

Gary

Gary, you are welcome !
I'm an old dog learning new tricks - (a senior with no music training
...just now beginning to study things like this)
it's going slow for me but I'm enjoying it !

As Tony suggested - I'm going to explore Robert Conti's material also.
Are you familiar with him ?

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Larry:

Here is a link to Conti's books that I mentioned:

http://www.robertconti.com/store/sho...-Code-Series.2

The two books I am recommending are:

The Chord Melody Assembly Line
The Formula

A third possible book is:

Intros, Endings, and Turnarounds
(though to me, this is optional and since you intend to move on to Howard Morgen, I don't see it as being a necessary part of what you will want/need to learn, though it is a very good book too)

All three of these books are really book/DVD combinations. Conti intends that you work through a lesson in the book and then go to that lesson on the DVD (similar to preparing for a class in college by reading the assigned material first).

What Conti focuses on is jazz. But whether you are really ultimately interested in playing jazz or not, his chord melody materials start you playing songs at a level that is basic from the standpoint that there is only one solution to each melody situation, but you apply this process to any tune you want instead of playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" type stuff for a few months. The chords you learn in this book are the typical sophisticated, nice sounding jazz chords normally associated with chord melody, and not something scaled way back for a beginner. So the sounds you are getting from day one are very satisfying to "adult ears". This is the "Assembly Line" book. In "The Formula", you begin to expand your harmonic vocabulary USING THE SAME CHORD FORMS from "Assembly Line", but now in a variety of different harmonic contexts so that you can play an infinite variety of chordal progressions under a given melody instead of having to stay with the printed chords. The result is really quite beautiful settings for ballads and the like. It is truly "cocktail piano" played on the guitar as instrumental solos of your own making.

Conti presents his approach as playing a chord under every melody note. It is not his intention that you always do this, but instead that you begin to explore ways of playing just part of the chord, or no chord under some melody notes, or arpeggiating the chords, or whatever you feel like doing at that moment - and in the process, create your own style. But by showing you how to put a chord under every melody note, he is giving you the harmonic underpinnings from which to find your own way of presenting a tune.

But the most important thing about Conti's approach (to me) is that he focuses an entire book on one specific subject and makes sure you learn it, rather than trying to give you the whole panorama of what is possible with chord melody in the space of one book. All other materials I have seen, including Howard Morgen's, give you a whole lot of stuff and it is really up to you to apply it in various contexts. This is fine, once you already have some sense of how to do it, but that part always seems to not be quite addressed well enough for the self-teaching student to REALLY grasp.

Playing somebody else's arrangements can be fun and rewarding and you really don't need much more than the stick-to-it-iveness to stay with it until you can play the arrangement. I am not saying this is particularly easy because the techniques needed to do this can be quite challenging. But if you want to REALLY learn to make such arrangements yourself, ones that really sound good and not "hacked", then you really need to be able to internalize what a particular book or DVD or whatever is teaching AND be able to go beyond intellectually understanding it so that you can actually use the knowledge on a day to day basis to make your own arrangements. That is always the gap that is so hard for the self-teacher to bridge.

I can't emphasize enough the way Conti starts you out with only ONE solution for each melody note. Do this and this and this and now you are playing your own arrangement. Yes, it is limited, but it sounds good and actually gets YOU directly involved in the process of creation rather than just playing an example provided by the author that you might or might not understand and then being left to your own devices to make use of it as you move on to the next concept. You really get both the process of matching chord form to melody note down AND the forms well in hand by arranging 20 or 30 tunes that you select from your own fakebooks before going on to the next step in "The Formula" where you are essentially reshuffling these chords in new sequences to get entirely new sounds under those melody notes. You can then take one tune from any fakebook and play it many different ways, never running out of ideas.

Then, once you have accomplished all that, you are ready to begin exploring the concepts that Howard Morgen teaches. Bridging that gap between what Morgen shows you and being able to actually apply it becomes much less of an issue because you are already able to arrange any tune in any fakebook with any harmony you want as you learned with the Conti materials. This means that every concept that you learn in Morgen's materials can readily be applied in the context of what arranging you are already doing, so in effect, you are continuing Conti's method of teaching by making sure you can actually USE what you are learning in your own music before moving on to the next idea.

I realize that Howard Morgen starts out the "Fretboard Breakthrough" saying that the approach of going from one chord to another breaks up the flow of the lines that chord progressions actually present, and that this is quite the opposite of what Conti teaches. But in reality, as you become familiar and comfortable with the process of creating chord melody arrangements as per Conti, you naturally start getting to where you look for these flows on your own. I see Howard Morgen's teaching as a natural progression to go TO FROM Conti. By doing as I suggested, you avoid the frustration of getting stuck in that "gap" between what is on the printed page and what you want to do with it on your guitar.

The reality, as you will find if you read over years of posts in various guitar forums, is that few people ever finish (or even get very far into) a given book or DVD. They get bored or frsutrated because the material just isn't connecting with what they want or need to do to get where they wanted to go in the first place. Then they are posting asking what else is good material to try (i.e. what material "really works"). Some people interpret that as the person is looking for the "easy way out". But I have come to realize, especially as I look at my own history, that it is really a matter of not being able to REALLY grasp the fullness of the information and make use of it the way we had hoped when we got it in the first place. This is not so much our fault as it is the approach to teaching that such materials take.

Conti talks about that a lot in the DVD to the "Assembly Line". He talks about how important it is to remove the confusion the student will have when confronted with too many choices too early in the learning process. A book that shows you several things in succession but does not stop and show you step by step HOW to apply each (breaking each idea down step by step so that YOU create your own working examples before moving on), will create that confusion. Conti spends an entire book and DVD on providing you with a vocabulary of chords that enable you to harmonize EVERY melody note in any key and situation. He has a system that makes it VERY easy to memorize these chords and become fluent with them in all keys - by playing music rather than rote memorization and exercises.

I have the Howard Morgen TrueFire course and it is a very good one - worth buying. But in my own experience, it is a bit of "putting the cart before the horse" if you can't already arrange and play tunes as solos on the guitar yourself with any fluency.

I really can't emphasize this enough. I have studied for a long time this idea of adults learning on their own. I worked with the Sudnow piano method for a few years and learned to arrange and play a form of cocktail piano that way. Conti's approach to teaching (in "Assembly Line") is really quite similar. The guitar presents different sorts of problems than does the piano, and Conti's approach addresses those differences very well. It took me a long time to really understand about that "gap" I talked about before, so I honestly wonder how many people are actually aware of it in concrete terms. Most people, from what I have seen and read, know the frustrations, but the real cause, and therefore what to do about it.

There are most likely many people who would disagree with what I am saying here and possibly with the materials I am recommending. So my recommendation is to do what you think is best and if you do run into the problems I discuss here, then go back and reread these posts and decide whether at that point it is worth trying what I am suggesting.

You can ask for a lot of opinions and you will get a lot of opinions here. Everybody has different learning styles and what works for one may not be the approach for another, so clearly everybody's approach and opinion is certainly valid (i.e. I don't have a corner on "the truth" as some religious folk will claim for their beliefs). But what I do have is a lot of years of experience with self-teaching and during that same time, a lot of reading posts in forums of people, whether they realize it or not at the time they are posting, a frustration with being caught in that "gap" where what they are trying to learn from some book or DVD is just not translating to their own musical aspirations. When I went back to square one and carefully moved forward step by step instead of "putting the cart before the horse", things started making real, practical sense for me.


Regards,

Tony

[Ryler]

I loved reading your input, Tony...and know all too well what you mean by "the gap." Larry, I'll be curious to hear your assessment of the Howard Morgen instructional, and, if you get it, the Robert Conti.

[lw216316]

Tony,
I am going to research Contin and probably order his material.

Ryler- I will report back on my results !


- I am so thankful for guys like you to give me advice !

I love the old classics and I am so happy to play them !
....arranging them in my own style is such a great hope ....

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Let us here know what you have decided to do. Exchanging information is really helpful to all concerned. If you decide NOT to use Conti's materials, it would be helpful to people reading here why you chose another route. I don't mean that as you having to "defend" your decision, but other perspectives on this subject are always helpful to the rest of us who are going down similar paths. If you do decide to go the Conti route to start with, it would be good to know that too. It would also be interesting to stay in touch once in a while as you progress. Any issues in the learning process that come up would be well worth discussing. Everybody involved would come away the better for it.

Whatever you choose to do, I wish you all the best - and enjoy the journey!!

Tony

[guitaniac]

Sorry for duplication - skip to next post.

Gary

[guitaniac]

Hi Larry,

I'm not familiar with the Conti materials, but have no reason to doubt Tony's advice.

I can tell you that Howard Morgen's "Preparations" book does start with the basics, and that the followup "Concepts" book uses various arrangements to illustrate specific concepts. There's also a great deal of suggested reference material listed for anyone who wants to further explore a particular concept. I personally skipped over much of the basics and ignored the suggested reference material. Learning a bunch of cool instrumentals was my immediate priority. My vague "plan" was to return and study the basics later, after I had a decent repertoire of material to work with. That never happened. Instead, I ordered his "Fingerstyle Favorites" book and learned some more cool instrumentals. At the time, I was having a lot of fun simply playing his sophisticated arrangements. It didn't concern me much that I wasn't learning the concepts as intended. In any event, I certainly can't blame Howard Morgen for my very selective and haphazard approach to his materials.

Gary

PS I suppose I can blame Howard Morgen for coming up with some interesting arrangements which are so clever and easy to play that even a hacker can have fun with them.

[tbeltrans]

The difference between what Howard Morgen does in "Preparations" and later in "Concepts", and what Conti does in "assembly Line" is a bit difficult to explain, but I will give it a go here. I do have both of these Howard Morgen books as well as the "Fingerstyle Favorites" arrangements.

What Morgen does is explain a concept (really, several concepts) and then give you a finished arrangement to play that is supposed to contain music that the explained concepts are about. However, it seems it is up to you to make the correlations for yourself. Without a teacher there to answer your questions as you try to make those correlations, you really don't know if you really "got it" or not. Morgen's materials are really, really good, and I am not discounting them here at all. What I want to do is show that some preparatory work with Conti's materials will go a long way to helping you be more successful working later on with Morgen's materials. Conti's materials are also very good and if you want to focus on straight chord melody playing, are fine by themselves. What you can get from Howard Morgen is the fingerstyle aspects and another perspective and approach to arranging that really complements what Conti teaches.

What Conti does in "Assembly Line" is give you a chord form for every note in the C major scale so you can harmonize every note. He does this for each type of chord represented in the harmonized major scale. All of these are very good sounding, full, harmonically rich chords. [Note: you don't need to know that this is what he is actually doing, and he doesn't bury you in the theory behind it as he does it]. Then, he uses a well known song in "lead sheet" (fakebook) format as the vehicle with which YOU directly line up each melody note with one of the chord forms. Any arrangement YOU make using these chord forms, and there is only ONE possible chord form for each melody note, so you can't screw up. also, he gives you the "answers" in the back of the book so you can check yourself. There is absolutely no way you can go in a wrong direction or miss what he is teaching you. He then shows you how to transfer these forms and practical knowledge to all keys and melodic situations. So when you go to a fakebook and pick out a song, it doesn't matter what key it is in. Watching the accompanying DVDs is like going face to face with a really good teacher. He has been teaching for so long that he anticipates exactly what you will want to ask as a typical student, and addresses it all from motivation to mastering this material and approaching play the guitar in general.

Conti is the only author of this kind of material (i.e. self-teaching) that seems to REALLY get it - eliminate ALL possible confusion in the early stages until you are sure the student fully "gets it" before introducing the type of material for which there is more than one way to deal with and interpret it.

That is HUGE, and I never really understand why I was seemingly "missing the boat" when it came time for me to do what all these other books were supposedly showing me.

Once you can actually put a song together on your own that sounds reasonably decent, and do so consistently with any song, then going on to the types of materials for which it is up to you to make the connection between the explanatory text and the music you want to make on your instrument with your own arrangements, you will succeed in making that connection. But until then, bridging that "gap" is like trying to cross the grand canyon by jumping from one edge to another.

After you are comfortable doing what "Assembly Line" teaches you, you can greatly expand your harmonic vocabulary (using the same chord forms - or others if you prefer) using his follow-on book "The Formula". Both of these books have DVDs in which he walks you through step by step while further explaining the material to make absolutely sure you "get it".

One of the hallmarks of Conti's books (not just the chord melody materials) is that he does not try to tackle everything there is to know about a subject in one book. Each book focuses on one thing and makes sure you can really do it. Learn a few good things very well and you can really play. Get exposed to a whole bunch of ideas and you might get something from it, but will probably not REALLY internalize much of anything. It is what you REALLY understand and can make use of that will come out through your fingers as you play.

Conti's idea is that you should really learn to play your instrument, playing songs on it, and then learn the theory behind what you are already doing, rather than learn theory in isolation from your instrument and then try to make sense of it. I have to agree, after having done it the other way around for too long.

There seem to be some people who can just bridge that gap right away, but for most people I have encountered, it seems to be nearly impossible, and that is why we guitar players are always looking for that next book or DVD to show us the way. I can no longer count how many times I have seen discussion surrounding guitar players' collections of learning materials that "gather dust on the shelf" because the person just couldn't REALLY get what they needed from it. I honestly believe that what I am talking about here is the reason in all too many cases - because I do believe we as a group are motivated to learn, rather than being just stupid or too lazy to put in the effort. Effort without some real result is really demotivating after a while. Also, I think it is this problem that is at the root of so many talking about how, when they finally found the "right" teacher, they really began to make progress. The "right" teacher can help a student bridge that gap that I am talking about here.

Edit: I should also address what the previous poster said (correctly) about the "concepts" book from Howard Morgen. Morgen does, throughout the book, give you references to other books that further explore whatever concept he is discussing at the time. However, you can have all the information about a given concept in the world, but until you can make that connection between all that information and what you are actually DOING on your fretboard (as Conti says again and agin in his DVDs: the action is here on your fretboard, not in some book), the material doesn't do you any good. Once you get that connection with your fretboard as a one-to-one correlation between what Conti is showing you and what you do yourself on the fretboard with that information, that "gap" is bridged and you can then move on to the Morgen books successfully.

Regards,

Tony

[lw216316]

Tony suggested Conti's - Chord Melody assembly line.
I have researched it -
found a sample from it on youtube,
read some reviews
...
So...based on those positve things.
Today I ordered it.

Morgen's dvd was ordered previously and is on its way.

I'll preview both and decide which to study first.
There is a possibility I may study them in parallel -
sort of like a committee approach with me being the chairman

I was hoping for a less expensive USED copy from Amazon or Ebay -
but could not find it or even a new one from those sites.

I ordered directly from his site.
One thing that concerned me was getting a 'some items unsecured' message
while going thru ordering and checkout.

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Larry:

I can't comment on the unsecured items, but you might want to email Conti about that. I purchased my copy quite some time ago, though I still periodically go back through it - and pick up something new each time. You will find that you will be memorizing a number of chord forms that are used over and over in both "Assembly Line" and "The Formula". The way Conti organizes these makes it REALLY easy and logical to get them memorized. Then, by using them over and over, they really get into your hands in the context of playing songs.

Whether you work on the Howard Morgen course and the Conti course in parallel or one after the other is certainly up to you. I would advise that the main thing is whatever gets you REALLY understanding in a usable manner, each of these courses. For me, getting a handle on the process of creating chord melody arrangements was where I needed to being, so it was the Conti course for me. I see other materials as expanding what I am already doing through Conti's materials (i.e. if I am already able to consistently create chord melody arrangements, then everything else I learn will serve to add to that ability).

Tony

[Berf]

I'm really enjoying the discussion in this thread having delved into "self-learning" for quite some time.

A quick question Tony... can you give any indication of what level of playing you need to be at before tackling the Conti material?? Should you already have a good grasp of music theory, a grounding in jazz chords, competent fingerstyle technique... or can you come at it with a fairly basic level of knowledge and skill (hope this makes sense)

Cheers, Berf