Howard Morgen VS Robert Conti training

[lw216316]

Originally Posted by oldhippiegal

I appreciate all these posts. They're instructional.

On the issue of what chord do you pick to harmonize with X note, that was answered well, but I wanted to mention that there's a decent series of interviews with Paul Simon on youtube, the Barnes and Noble channel, and among the interesting things he discusses regarding his songwriting is how he was noodling around with staying on one note and then harmonizing it with as many chords as possible to end up with a listenable song. His guitar is in hand, and it might be interesting, Larry, for you to listen to it. (or not--sounds like you have plenty to fill your time already!) I only wish he'd gone on longer with it.

Again, thanks for the info.

Hey GAL,
Thanks for the link to the Paul Simon interview !
I'm listening to it now -
part 4 of 7 is where he starts talking about composition.

It was interesting in the first ones to hear some background of how he got started in the music business.
The history of ' Sound of Silence ' was interesting -
although disappointing - I was hoping to hear some deeper meaning etc.
at least more background on where the lyrics came from.....

He gives more insight into his song writing than I've heard from most.

- Larry

[oldhippiegal]

I know, on Sounds of Silence. I'll never hear it again without thinking of a kid sitting on a toilet! lol

[lw216316]

yeah, said, he turned out the light
"hello darkness my old friend"

...that's not the deep meaning I was expecting !

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by lw216316

Tony,
Thanks for your response.
Yes, I understand Conti's approach. I'm fine with it.

I'm not clear why he includes F sharp and G sharp
in his list of 'all possible notes' in a C major.

He basically follows the diatonic 7 note scale for C major
but then includes a couple of sharps...
Why include the F and G sharps ?

If he is going to do that -
why not cover the entire 12 note chromatic scale ?

Does it have something to do with diminished and / or augmented
chords used with C ?

Also,
it was a little confusing at first when he said there was a chord for each melody note -
but then he covers almost 2 octives -
and he has different fingerings for the 2nd octive-

...but I think I see what he is doing-
the first octive covers the melody note falling on the 2nd string
that's why the 1st string is not played in those chords
and the second set covers the melody note falling on the 1st string
and those chords show the 1st string being used.

So he uses a chord that will have as its highest note - the melody note
(the highest note in the 'stack' )
and the chord used depends on where the melody note falls - 1st string or 2nd.

On a few occasions the melody note may fall on the 3rd string-
in those cases he uses what he calls a half-chord-
In other words he plays all the lower notes stacked under the melody note but none of the chord notes that would be above the melody note.

- Larry

Larry:

Good questions (hopefully, good answers below)...

The F# is also Gb (see my posts on theory and the term "enharmonic"), which is the "flat five" in the key of C (G is the fifth of the C major chord - as per my chart on chord spelling in another post here in this thread, and Gb would then be the b5). The G# is the #5, also for the key of C where G is the fifth. These are important notes in the jazz idiom, as you will see in "The Formula". An augmented chord does have a #5. A diminished chord has a b5. But both of these are also often used in dominant (7th, such as "G7") chord voicings too, as you will see both here in "Assembly Line" and later in "The Formula".

As for spanning two octaves, he is giving enough to show that these forms really repeat themselves and also more forms for essentially the same note (i.e. two different forms for two melody notes an octave apart are interchangeable).

Conti does not cover the entire chromatic scale because he is dealing in the concept of "keys", which the chromatic scale isn't. Look at what the "chord groups" (as Conti calls them) are. There is the C major, F major, G7, D minor, A minor, diminished, augmented, and minor 7b5 groups. Now look at what I posted about the "harmonized major scale". For the key of C, it contains C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G dominant (G7), A minor, and B minor 7b5. So, the only group Conti left out of his chord groups was the E minor. Why? Because he already more than covered it in the D minor and A minor chord forms (you only need to move around any of the forms from the D minor or A minor groups). Now, you can harmonize ANY melody note in ANY key. Any exceptions are covered in "Assembly Line" where he talks about "b5 subtititions" - the so-called "tritone substitution" and also subbing a dominant chord built on the 5th of the specified dominant chord when the melody note is not related to that chord. With these pieces and all the rest of "Assembly Line", you can harmonize any melody note in any key.

Hope that helps...

Tony

P.S. There is a VERY important thing that Conti says on the DVD that I missed the first time around. Before you go on to "The Formula", apply "Assembly Line" to at least 20 or 30 tunes so you REALLY have the process and the forms well in hand (so to speak...). That will greatly help your ability to internalize and readily make use of what he teaches in "The Formula".

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by oldhippiegal

I appreciate all these posts. They're instructional.

I took two years of composition/theory at university and some of these concepts are familiar though I haven't integrated them into my guitar playing fully. (Indeed, I often have to translate, as I do in languages, where if I want to say something in French, I have to subvocalize it in English and translate it and then open my mouth--not a good habit. With guitar practice, I thinking, okay, what's Db augmented, and I swear, I cannot get my brain to quit bringing up a visual of the keyboard, where I pick out the notes, name them, then find them on the fretboard. The more I do arpeggio work, the more this is driving me bonkers. That's what fifty years with instrument A--the piano, for me--costs. I hope sooner rather than later, when I ask myself this question, my brain pops up a shape on the fretboard rather than on the keyboard, which is truly my native musical language.)

The one quibble I had with a video I watched, and it's minor, is with the descending/ascending bass line video I watched on youtube is that he intimated (or that's how I heard it) this is the only way to arrange...and it's certainly not. Perhaps later on, he gives other options. It certainly creates a pleasant sound, but if that's all I heard from a guitarist, about song seven or eight, I'd notice and grow bored with it.

On the issue of what chord do you pick to harmonize with X note, that was answered well, but I wanted to mention that there's a decent series of interviews with Paul Simon on youtube, the Barnes and Noble channel, and among the interesting things he discusses regarding his songwriting is how he was noodling around with staying on one note and then harmonizing it with as many chords as possible to end up with a listenable song. His guitar is in hand, and it might be interesting, Larry, for you to listen to it. (or not--sounds like you have plenty to fill your time already!) I only wish he'd gone on longer with it.

Again, thanks for the info.

oldhippiegal:

What you are doing when you use the bassline to "drive" the harmony is to get various chord progressions that "work" under the melody. However, you don't have to play a chord under every melody note, nor do you have to play the whole chord under every melody note. The chords will suggest all manner of moving lines and you choose how you want to play it. But having as a basis for the harmony being the bass line driving it, you have a wonderful starting point for all manner of exploration. Conti does not delve into that, which brings us back to my first suggestion to Larry in another thread -

Start with Conti and fully grasp what he is doing. Then, within the context of playing songs on the guitar, start adding in other ideas and approaches. Howard Morgen has a lot of great ideas for deriving moving lines from chord progressions. Conti has a lot of great ideas for coming up with your own chord progressions under the melody. Can you see how these two lines of thought can complement each other?

Conti never meant for people to just plunk along slogging one chord after another for every melody note, but his materials do not delve into all the fingerstyle stuff that can be done with all those wonderful harmonies he shows you how to generate. He has a whole series of books full of chord melody solos of standards that come straight out of what he teaches in "The Formula". In the intro to these books he says to feel free to experiment with leaving out chords, arpeggiating chords, playing only partial chords, etc. That is his intention. If you do work through "The Formula", you really don't need those books of arrangements (though having one or two as examples of how he arranged some more tunes is not a bad idea), because you can then do it all yourself anyway.

Oh, one other thing with regard to several possible chords under one melody note...

Conti addresses this a couple of ways. At the back of "Assembly Line", he has a whole section showing several other possible chord forms for each of the melody notes he earlier provided only one chord form for (see his reasoning in an earlier post of mine in this thread). Then, in "The Formula" and (as I recall, in one or two examples in "Assembly Line"), he shows how to play a series of chords under the same melody note for effect.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

Here is a link to an mp3 that I created to illustrate what a small section of a standard sounds like played according to "Assembly Line" and then a straightforward application of "The Formula" on the same section:

http://www.box.net/shared/mgcc95m4du

The guitar is a CA Guitars Cargo (with strings that badly need changing) played fingerstyle and recorded acoustically using the builtin mics on the LS-10. I just laid it on a TV tray, hit RECORD, and sat in my chair and talked and played (mistakes and all in one take).

My intent was to keep it really simple and NOT prepare for this ahead of time at all to show the spontaneity of the process. The changes made according to "The Formula" were only to make the harmony flow more smoothly under the melody instead of staying on one chord through several melody notes. Also, there are two identical groups of 4 eighth notes, the first occuring in the first measure, and the second in the third measure. In the "Assembly Line" version, I only used a Bb7 as called for in the lead sheet for the first group, and the Fmi7 for the second group. In the "Formula" treatment, I used Gmi7, Cmi7, Fmi7, and Bb7 for the first group and Gmi7, Abma7, Ami7, and Bb7 for the second group.

I messed up when listing the original chords, saying that the Ebma7 in the 4th measure was an Ema7 and the last Fmi7 was an F7. Here are the original chords:

Bb7 | Eb6 Cmi7 | Fmi7 Bb7 | Ebma7 Edim7 | Fmi7 ...

Here are the "treated" chords:

Gmi7 Cmi Fmi7 Bb7 | Eb6 Cmi7 | Gmi7 Abma7 Ami7 Eb6 Fmi7 | Ebma7 Cmi7 Gmi7 Edim7 | Fmi7

These are very "straight" chords but they do make the whole thing flow more smoothly. These are the most conservative treatment using ideas from "The Formula" that I could give this progression. There are literally millions of other ways to play these changes.

One can easily add all manner of fingerstyle "treatment" to this and really make it sound good. All the movement of inner lines that you might want can be done simply by changing the bassline to suggest new ideas.

One thing to think about here is this:

Joe Pass said that every jazz guitar player has their "favorite grips that they use over and over again", and that this makes their "sound". Conti says essentially the same thing in his DVDs.

We all in this group speak English. For some, it is their native language while for others it is a second or third language. But one thing we all have in common when speaking English, no matter how long we have been doing it, is that we all have a vocabulary that we draw on. That vocabulary does not contain EVERY possible word in the English language. A study once showed that we all have vocabularies of approximately 200 words (give or take...) that we use in everyday communication. Some of us have specialized vocabularies for our careers, but even those have a limited vocabulary. This is how it is with our vocabularies for playing chords, improvising leads, etc. It really is what we are able to do with these vocabularies that will determine how well we are able to express ourselves.

I believe that if we were to pick, say, one guitarist and listen exclusively to that person's recordings or live for a period of time, it would become quite apparent that this person uses the same vocabulary again and again in creative ways to keep it interesting.

One of the things that Conti shows us how to do, whether on his chord melody book/DVD packages or in hos improv book/DVD packages, is to get the most out of a surprisingly few number of "words" that we learn for our initial vocabulary. We can add to that vocabulary as much as we want, but we will always use certain techniques to get the most out of whatever vocabulary we develop.

Regardless of whether we study Conti, Morgen, or any of the myriad other learning materials out there, we will form a vocabulary that we always draw from when expressing ourselves musically. The more resources we avail ourselves of (as long as we REALLY work with them long enough to get benefit from them), the more capable we become of expressing ourselves musically either through expanding our musical vocabulary or through expanding our "toolset" for utilizing that vocabulary - or (hopefully) both.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

Here is an example of those same bars from the previous mp3 example, using the same treatment from "The Formula" with an intro made up on the spot, but done in a bit more "fingerstyle" feel that is certainly not the way the song is usually recorded...

http://www.box.net/shared/171smkj6ha

This is just one possible treatment that is not quite the "plonk plonk" of chord, chord, chord...(which I am reasonably sure Conti really didn't intend us to stay on anyway).

I could continue coming up with different chords under the melody and different ways to present the tune with these, but I think the point is made now.

Tony

[oldhippiegal]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

Here is an example of those same bars from the previous mp3 example, using the same treatment from "The Formula" with an intro made up on the spot, but done in a bit more "fingerstyle" feel that is certainly not the way the song is usually recorded...

http://www.box.net/shared/171smkj6ha


Tony

Pretty. Where does your Conti "moving line" start--on what note and where's it moving to, chord by chord, in this clip? Thanks for taking all the time to explain this.

[tbeltrans]

The first part of the recording is an intro that I just made up to add something extra. The first chord is an Ebma7, followed by a Bb7, followed by an Abma7, followed by a Gmi7, followed by an Fmi7, then Cmi7, then Bb7, then Eb6, and ending that part on an Ebma7 with the D on the 2nd string third fret as the melody. I didn't write these down, so I had to play back the recording and remember it.

After the ending of that intro on the Ebma7, the tune starts. That is the same as the second of the two times I played it for the earlier post (the one that was treated with stuff from "The Formula". The differences between this one and the earlier one are that I left out some of the chords, playing just the melody note instead and the rhythm changed to give it some feeling.

The bass line for the tune part was:

Gmi7 Cmi Fmi7 Bb7 | Eb6 Cmi7 | Gmi7 Abma7 Ami7 Eb6 Fmi7 | Ebma7 Cmi7 Gmi7 Edim7 | Fmi7

But I didn't play EVERY chord this time. Notice that the first measure has the bass notes moving by 4ths. The Bb at the end of the first measure to the Eb of the first chord of the second measure (just looking at the bass notes) is also a movement of a 4th. The movement to the C is a 6th, and the next movement is a 5th (which is not the best choice, but it worked in this context and setup nicely for a chromatic bass line of G Ab A, then a b5 sub, which would really be seen as a continuation of the A bass, but the Eb sets a chromatic movement to the F at the end of the measure. The choices of the chords I play and where they are on the fretboard are intended to produce something of what Howard Morgen teaches in the course that the OP in the first thread on this subject mentioned, "Fingerboard Breakthrough". Personally, I think one can get that from "The Formula" too, but from a different approach. It is a matter of what works for the individual.

I hope that made some sense. I don't want to "steal the thunder" from Conti's "The Formula", but this should give you a taste of the kind of stuff it covers. There is a central theme about how harmony moves throughout "The Formula", but if you study it the way Conti presents it, you will start to see all the possibilities much better than I could explain it here. It is REALLY fun to go through tunes this way. When you have the tools in hand, it is not at all frustrating and is really an adventure as you explore the tune and the many ways it could be played. If there is a cure for GAS, I think this is it.

What I do with tunes is to use Conti's ideas, but play it more with the sensiblities of a fingerstyle player, rather than a pure "jazzer". A person expecting to hear "real" jazz might not really care for it, but what I am after is a sort of marriage between fingerstyle and a "jazz sense". I can get that from a combination of what I have done with fingerstyle over the years and what Conti teaches about harmonic movement and voicing.

I would like to play through and record the whole tune, but I am not sure about the copyright stuff. I know we can play a few measures and that is fine, but I also know that music companies have really been clamping down on people playing songs not in the public domain. I don't want either these forums, myself, or box.net to get into a pickle over nothing. So I hope these snippets have been helpful for hearing what we are talking about.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by oldhippiegal

Pretty. Where does your Conti "moving line" start--on what note and where's it moving to, chord by chord, in this clip? Thanks for taking all the time to explain this.

I completely messed up in answering your question here...

The final note of the melody that I played in each example was the first half of the fifth measure - the G melody (a half note) with the Fmi7 chord. In the final example, I played the Fmi7, followed by an Ebma7, followed by an A7. All of of these had that G melody note on top. Then, to finish off the recording, I started in on the second half of the melody (the group of 4 eighth notes) by playing a Gmi7 with the D melody on top, the Eb melody note, and then just stopped the recording by playing an Eb6 to come to a resolution instead of finishing that measure. So it was at the Fmi7/Ebma7/A7, all under the same G melody note near the end of the recording that I had those chords form "moving lines" under the melody. That is a common thing that Conti does.

Tony

[lw216316]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

Here is an example of those same bars from the previous mp3 example, using the same treatment from "The Formula" with an intro made up on the spot, but done in a bit more "fingerstyle" feel that is certainly not the way the song is usually recorded...

http://www.box.net/shared/171smkj6ha

This is just one possible treatment that is not quite the "plonk plonk" of chord, chord, chord...(which I am reasonably sure Conti really didn't intend us to stay on anyway).

I could continue coming up with different chords under the melody and different ways to present the tune with these, but I think the point is made now.

Tony

I just got back online after being off of the post for a while.
I had a small crisis - my FLOATING pick up on my Eastman
FLOATED off ! -
I took it to my pro-tech guy and it was a simple matter of gluing it back on !
I'm glad that's all it was - I was very concerned about it.

Anyway, Tony, great comments !
Yes, I was hoping this study would lead in the direction you gave examples of.
I'm a fingerstyle player (not a jazz player) and the example you played is what I would aspire to play.

So I'm hoping to study Conti and Morgen and take what I learn and apply it to a more folk or popular style but come out of it with nice progressions, voice movement and beautiful and interesting chords.

I aspire to make my own arrangements of my classic favorites.

I was curious about what I could do with what I've learned from Conti
so far.
What would happen if I took a simple 2 chord song and tried Conti's chords ?
so I took Mary Had a Little Lamb - in the key of C - Conti's 1st group
and worked with it a little -
Then I thought - what if I found my own chords in the C group
and tried using them ?
I had one version using some minors and it gave Mary a very sad tone
- I laughed and call it " Mary Lost Her Little Lamb "

Silly and simple - but I"m beginning to see the potential and application
of these things.
That's good motivation to keep working at it

I have one concern-
If a person takes the time to learn all the chords Conti gives
and applies them to 20 or more songs ...
it seems there might be a danger of creating a mind-muscle memory
that becomes a habit - that might be hard to overcome later.

Since I understand now what Conti is doing-
could I not move on to the next step ?

After all I would never really have an interest in playing a song
with CHORD-CHORD-CHORD every beat.

- Larry




- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Larry:

You certainly go in any direction you wish to go. I can only give you a sense of my own experience and you can determine, based on your means of learning that work best for you whether any of what I say might apply to you.

First, I reacted at first to Conti's "Assembly Line" pretty much as you did. This seems easy, I get it, let's move on. One difference was that I did memorize all the chord forms. The reason is that the book arrived just before my wife and I went on a Caribbean cruise for ten days. That isn't really my idea of a vacation (I would rather have spent it at a Bed and Breakfast on the cost of England somewhere so the whole two weeks would be spent really getting a sense of another place). But I took along my Soloette travel guitar and the "Assembly Line" book and worked on it every day for a few hours. So that cruise turned out to be the best choice for a vacation after all. By the time we got back, I had all the chord sets well in hand and was beginning to get through tunes using strictly the approach in "Assembly Line".

But then "The Formula" showed up. I figured that I pretty much had "Assembly Line" well in hand, so right away I dove into "The Formula". What I found was that I really was not quite fluent with the "Assembly Line" yet, so I was spending to much "mental bandwidth" trying to get the chords under the melody notes.

However, as is usually the problem with self-teaching, I did not realize yet that this was the problem. I was floundering with "The Formula". I "got it" mentally, but couldn't REALLY do anything with what Conti was teaching. It was not the fault of the materials, but it was my fault for not really being prepared.

Whenever something like that happens, I tend to start looking for something else to work on because I figure that maybe I am just not getting it from the perspective of that particular book or DVD. In a sense (sorry if this sounds to blunt), having too many choices to turn to is not necessarily a good thing. I have shelves full of books and stuff I have collected over the years. Much of it didn't REALLY make PRACTICAL sense because I could not figure out what should come before what.

In college, we had prerequisites for the upper division classes. For example, in order to take Advanced Algorithms, we had to have taken Finite Math, Calculus, College Algebra, Algorithms, and at least one programming class. When I got to that class, the professor announced that many of the students did not have all the prerequisites and that they were wasting their time in this class because much of what was being taught simply would not make sense. That turned out to be true (not in my case, luckily) and many dropped out by mid-term. At least, they knew what the trouble was because they were told straight up.

When self-teaching, it is very difficult to REALLY know what needs to come before what and why we are having trouble with something we may intellectually understand, but still can't put to work for us on the fretboard. Without a teacher to guide us, it really can be a case of "the blind leading the blind". It is a catch-22 situation in which we don't yet know the material (which is why we are self-teaching to learn it), but we need to know the material well enough to make decisions as teachers as to what to teach and when, and how to determine that we have mastered something before moving on to the next.

To me, I considered myself to have mastered "Assembly Line" when I can open a fakebook and put those chord forms under each melody note with a minimum of "hunt and peck". That takes work, consistent work for several weeks once you are easily able to play through all the chord forms, which I still do every day because they are the basis of my vocabulary (just as I still do the note finding exercise I mentioned in an earlier post every day too).

I periodically go back through both "Assembly Line" and "The Formula" because it really helps keep my thinking straight. What I am hoping to achieve is such a fluency with these ideas and the vocabulary that I can open a fakebook to a tune and immediately come up with a fine sounding arrangement on the spot. That will take some years of consistent effort. I am choosing to stay with "The Formula" for this because I don't want to flounder. I am easily distracted by all the "cool" stuff I hear people do on the guitar and I will take little "side trips" to explore that. But I always come back to "The Formula". Unfortunately, all those little side trips only serve to make the journey to my personal musical goals take that much longer.

There is a lot to be gotten from "The Formula" once you have truly mastered "Assembly Line". It really isn't just plonking from chord to chord. You make it anything you want. Even if you are not playing the full chord or even the bass note at all, that is still guiding you. I have heard Conti's chord solo playing and it definitely isn't plonking from chord to chord - but you can clearly hear the ideas from "The Formula" at work.

For me personally, skipping around from one book to another, one DVD course to another, only results in my taking longer to get from where I am to where I want to be musically. It took me some serious time with "The Formula" to realize that it presented me with a whole world of harmonic possibilities, leaving me free to play them any way I wanted to. Adapting fingerstyle sensibilities to those harmonies is the part that I bring to the table.

As I said in my opening statement to this post, this is my own experience. Yours may be entirely different. Though I like Howard Morgen's materials, I have found that Conti's presentations just seem to make the most sense to me. His style of teaching seems to match my style of learning better than other teaching styles do.

If you feel that you have the mechanics of putting chord to melody note and can actually take a song from a fakebook and play it all the way through, then you probably are ready to move on to the next thing. Whether that "next thing" is Conti's "The Formula" or Morgen's "Fingerboard Breakthrough" is a matter of personal preference and matching of learning style to teaching style.

One thing I will say (and this is purely personal preference)...I have never enjoyed Howard Morgen's playing, while I listen to Conti's CDs nearly every day. I don't know what it is about Howard Morgen's playing, but it just doesn't appeal to me. I do like his ideas of moving lines and arranging for fingerstyle guitar, but for some reason, I don't like what I hear when he demonstrates these ideas. He is a great player and instructor, but I just don't connect with him somehow like I do with Conti.

I would say that, from what I have seen for myself and every other person I have known to engage in self-teaching, the biggest problems seem to be:

1. Knowing what order to take materials in, as well as what materials work best for us individually.
2. Knowing when we have mastered the material we are currently working on enough to be able to efficiently tackle the next thing. Sometimes we move on too fast, other times we might stay with a thing too long and get bored.
3. Getting frustrated and not knowing what the problem is, so we skip around from one course of study to another, hoping the next one will solve that kind of problem. I honestly think that one of the symptoms of this kind of problem can be the GAS (guitar/gear acquisition syndrome) that people joke about, but most admit to, in these and other guitar-related forums. I know for a fact that when I am actively engaged in (and satisfied with) my current musical activities, I am not "gassing" after a new guitar, book, DVD, or gadget.

Trust is another BIG issue. Everything looks compelling and promising in the beginning. I have discovered that, regardless of how good a particular book, DVD, or "real live" teacher is, the bottom line is whether that material or teacher matches your goals and learning style. With teachers, one issue can be whether that teacher will be around long enough to take you musically to the skills you want to develop. I had the experience a number of years ago with this. I had a guitar teacher that had me spending an entire summer, hours a day, playing through the Johnny Smith book with the "carrot" being that in the fall we would use that material to make "real" music. I spent hours every day playing all manner of scales, arpeggios, and chords all over the fretboard, constantly drilling. As summer came to an end, that teacher got a job in Japan and I was left wondering what to do with all this stuff I had done. For me, trying to connect it to playing music was like trying to jump across the grand canyon. I tried other teachers, but they all had their own teaching methods and I would have to start over again. I didn't, and since then have worked at self-teaching. Self-teaching is fraught with pitfalls and lots of floundering - losing your way and finding it again, wondering if you are wasting your time with this or that book, etc. That is why I am so enamored with the Conti materials. They work. I am sure other materials do too, but I am no longer willing to take that risk. I trust the Conti materials because I have gotten real results from them.

I am not saying that Conti's materials are the only ones that can teach you, but I am using my experience with them as an example of the kind of trust one needs to have to avoid the floundering and be able to settle down for the long term and dig in without all that second-guessing. If Howard Morgen's materials are that for you, then that is what you need to go with.

Tony

[lw216316]

Self-teaching is fraught with pitfalls and lots of floundering - losing your way and finding it again, wondering if you are wasting your time with this or that book, etc. That is why I am so enamored with the Conti materials. They work.

Yes, I do like the way he provides practical application right away....
I think I will give the time to study Conti and follow through with it and follow his recommendations (and yours) and see what happens.

I've gotten started with Morgen in parallel study and so far I'm not seeing any 'conflict' - and I'm learning some things from him that I like.

So I'll probably continue both studies unless problems develop.
If I'm ahead of myself by getting into Morgen then I can always put it on hold or go back over it again later -
If things with Morgen start getting confusing or I'm lost in it then I'll stop
until I finish with Conti.
That's a nice thing about having it on disk to play whenever and as many times as you like.

Thanks again for your comments, suggestions and sharing your experience.

This is all a 'means to an end' for me.
I look forward to applying these things to my favorite songs
and developing my own style.

- Larry

[tbeltrans]

Larry:

That definitely sounds like a workable plan you have there. Stay in touch here. We can compare notes as we go along. I think it will be helpful to each other and to anyone else reading these threads.

Tony