How To Use The Mick Goodrick Almanacs

How To Use The Mick Goodrick Almanacs

Mick Goodrick was a jazz guitarist, teacher and author who lived in Boston, Massachusetts.

Initially a student at Berklee College of Music from 1963-1967 Goodrick later became a professor at the same school.

His students included a who’s who from the jazz guitar idiom and include luminaries such as Mike Stern, Jullian Lage, Bill Frisell, John Scofield and Lage Lund.

Mick also played with many major jazz players including Gary Burten, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow, Jack De Johnette, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Randy Roos and many others.

It is perhaps American jazz guitarist Ben Monder who knows the Almanacs the best. Ben has devoured the 3 volumes and has even written a long solo guitar piece which is based on the content found inside the Almanacs.

The Voice-Leading Almanacs

Volume 1 of the 3 volume almanac voice-leading series was published in 2000 and the initial private run of books was quickly snapped up by Berklee College of Music students who were all fascinated, perplexed and stunned by the contents.

Due to further demand a limited number of books were printed and these books sold out in short order.

This caused the Almanacs to be an underground phenomenon with some out-of-print rare copies selling on eBay for around $250-$300 or more!

However since this website has legal rights over Mick’s material the almanacs are now available for free from our Resources page.

How The Almanacs Will Help You

Through using the Goodrick almanacs you will improve the following skills.

• Fingerboard knowledge
• Chordal knowledge
• Hearing skills (especially inside chords)
• Theoretical knowledge
• Your individuality on the guitar
• A new awareness about music
• Knowledge of scales (harmonically and melodically)
• Ability to improvise using chords and triads
• Knowledge of chords with open strings
• Teaching skills
• Much more!

Despite these awesome benefits you must also know that each volume of the almanacs comes with a Disclaimer/Warning/Caution page!

As some of the chords in the almanacs will be new to you, and may involve some lengthy stretches, you are advised to proceed carefully so that no pain occurs in either your hand, wrist or forearm.

If you feel any discomfort, STOP, and let your hand recover. Don’t try to play too much at the start despite hearing some very beautiful harmonies.

Remember you can also play any difficult to finger chords as arpeggio’s.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s dive in!

What Is Inside The Goodrick Almanacs

On a basic level the Almanacs consist of  voicings for a particular set of chord scales and include triads, 7th chords, Triads over bass notes, clusters etc.

These voicings are then voice-led through cycles in the major, melodic minor and harmonic minor scales.

A chord scale is when you start with a particular chord based on the 1st degree of a scale and then move each note of that chord to the next note in the scale.

For example the following triad chord scale in D major shows you how a chord scale works.

Starting with the D major triad you move each note of that D major triad up to the next note in the D major scale. This results in an E minor triads. When we move all the notes of the Em triad to the next notes of the D major scale we get a F# minor triad. We do this with every triad in the scale.

 

 

 

 

 

What Are Cycles

The D major triad chord scale above is called a Cycle 2 because you are just moving to the next triad.

Cycle 3 would be the order of the following triads;

D  F#m  A  C#m  Em  G  Bm  D

Cycle 4 would have the triads moving up in 4ths.

D  G  C#m  F#m  Bm  Em  A  D

You can see that the Cycle 4 progression contains one of jazz’ most played progressions which is the iii  /  vi  /  ii  /  V  /  I progression (F#m  Bm  Em  A  D).

Voice-Leading Cycles

When playing the Cycle 4 progression with the triads in D major you can immediately see the problem of movement. You need to move up or down to each chord by a fair distance.

Voice-leading is the principle of using the least movement. Starting with a triad, or chord, you move to the next chord by the least distance possible. Preferably we will try to keep as many of the notes of the previous chord in the new chord.

Let’s make our triads a little more interesting and turn them into Drop 2 chords on the 4 highest strings and let’s play them through Cycle 4 in D major.

We are starting with a D major 7th chord in the middle of the neck.

Intervallic Voice-Leading

The Almanacs represents two types of voice-leading through diagrams.

Intervallic voice-leading is shown in the diagram on the right.

These numbers mean that that the first triad is spelled 1 – 5 -3. So the root of the triad is on the bottom, the 5th of the chord is played in the middle and the 3rd of the triad is on top (the melody note).

Each of those notes then ascends by an interval of a second diatonically (within the key).

Functional Voice-Leading

Whereas intervallic voice-leading diagram shows the intervals in horizontal movement the functional voice-leading diagram shows how the intervals, or the voicings of the triad or chord, in a vertical way.

You can see that again the first triad is spelled 1 – 5 – 3.

This triad then moves to the next triad which is also spelled 1 – 5 – 3.

Melodic Strand Replication Procedure (MSRP)

One thing that you’ll find when reading the almanacs is that Mick liked to make up terms.

In volume three he says that you might fool people into thinking that you know something by making up terms and that you could fool them into thinking that you know something by NOT explaining what these terms mean.

This is the exact case with MSRP.

The reason that Mick doesn’t explain too much in the almanacs is because he wants people that use these books to discover things on their own. This is what David Lee calls ‘Aha’ moments.

Let’s just say that Melodic Strand Replication Procedure is the same as intervallic and functional voice-leading however we are now taking the point of view that all voices chords and triads are also melodies.

By using the intervallic and functional voice-leading diagrams in addition to the MSRP notes on each page you now have a very good idea of which way the harmony is moving.

How To Use The Mick Goodrick Almanacs

There are two main ways to use the Mick Goodrick almanacs.

1. Write your own tunes or etudes using the cycles
2. Using cycles within existing tunes

Writing Your Own Etudes Using Mick Goodrick Cycles

A great benefit of writing your own material using the almanacs is that it allows you to find your own unique voice on the guitar (in our opinion this is the most important thing that you can do on the guitar but more on this in future blog posts).

As described above the Goodrick almanacs are basically only voicings put into cycles. You can play them as written which many people on Youtube seem to do but, of course, the idea is to make music with both the voicings and the cycles.

So how can you make your own music with this material?

Here are 7 tips for using the Mick Goodrick almanacs.

1. Fill in the space with a diatonic passing note whenever there is a distance of a third between a voice in a chord
2. Play a melody in any voice or voices before changing chords
3. Use a cycle for a few chords before moving to another cycle
4. Modulate through the piece
5. Mix different playing styles such as block chords and arpeggios
6. Use a counterpoint approach
7. Use passing chords within the cycles

This stuff works really well for beautiful, unique, dissonant ‘jazzy’ music and classical music (try the cycles in harmonic minor).

Writing your own tunes or etudes using the material in the almanacs is really only limited by your ear and imagination.

Here is a short example of a modulating original etude in harmonic minor.

 

Using The Goodrick Almanacs For Existing Tunes

You can also use the Goodrick cycles within existing tunes.

If we take a popular chord progression such as a ii / V/ I  which is actually a cycle 4 you can insert a cycle 2 for one of the chords.

Using basic chords a ii/V/I in the key of C major would be Dm7 / G7 / Cmaj7 which is a vanilla change. You can spice this up with, for example, a cycle 2 on the Dm7 Chord. Now the progression would look like this.

(Dm7/Cmaj7/Bm7b5/Am7) / (G7) / Cmaj7

Obviously this is a very basic idea as you need to experiment with different voicings, rhythms and cycles in every chord progression.

The ultimate aim is not to go from point A to point B as fast as possible but to stop, have a look around at the scenery before moving on.

Autumn Leaves Application

Typical harmony of Autumn Leaves is tertiary harmony with the melody notes falling on the thirds of the chords which is a pretty standard method of writing tunes.

If you want to try something different try subbing all chords at the end of the phrase with their relative majors and minors.

The chord progression for the A section now looks like;

Cmaj7  / D7  /  Em7 /  Cmaj7  /  A7  /  B7  / Gmaj7  /  Gmaj7

Now the melody phrases end on the root or the fifths of the chords.

What you can do now is to insert little 3 part 4th triads.

These 3 part 4th triads (which start volume 2 of the Goodrick Almanacs) are actually Sus2 or Sus4 triads.

Since you have one bar to fill before moving onto the next chord you can choose to either stay on one type of suspended chord or combine both types of chord in the same bar.

You can use spread triads as well as closed triads or you can mix them up of course.

You can see that we subbed some chords in the Cycle 4 chord progression of Autumn Leaves and replaced tertiary harmony with quartal harmony.

Polka Dots and Moonbeams Application

Polka Dots and Moonbeams, like so many other jazz tunes, is such a beautiful tune. It sounds great just played with a simple bass line against the melody.

However we can make it more interesting by just adding a few chords using cycle 2 to the melody.

The tune starts with a G bass note which is followed by the melody notes of D, E, F#, G, A, B – a nice scalar motion!

We can easily insert the following triads to harmonize the melody notes.

The G triad harmonizes the D melody note.

The Am triad harmonizes the E melody note.

The Bm triad harmonizes the F# melody note.

The C triad harmonizes the G melody note.

The D triad harmonizes the A melody note and the Em triad takes care of the B melody note.

You could, of course, make this more interesting by swapping some of these chords for their relative major and minor chords.

This would create the following chords;

Bm  C  D  Em  F#dim  G which is another cycle 2 movement.

Obviously the relative chord method is the same as playing 7th chord triads as Gmaj7 is spelled G  B  D  F# and Bm7 is spelled B  D  F#  A. Since we are playing the F#  B and D notes the name of these triads is interchangeable (You could also call it a D6 no 5 triad amongst other things).

The relative chord method is shown below. Using the 5th chord method the triads would be called Gmaj7, Am7, Bm7, Cmaj7, D7 and Em7.

The above examples are certainly not set in stone. Experiment with all the quartal harmony voicings that you can think of and use your favourite ones.

To paraphrase Mick Goodrick in The Advancing Guitarist “A good horse runs at the shadow of a whip”.

Finding Your Unique Voice On The Guitar

As stated above probably the most important thing to do on the guitar is to find your own unique voice.

Of course this takes courage and dedication to stay on the path (you are already on the path) but the benefits are so worthwhile that there are no alternatives. After all doesn’t your favourite guitarist(s) have their own unique voice?

Here are some things that the almanacs don’t include.

• Instructions
• Tempos
• Dynamics
• Time signatures
• Rhythms
• Names of chords (from volume 2 onwards)

Like Mick’s very popular book The Advancing Guitarist the almanacs are a do-it-yourself book. You can only approach it how YOU approach it (although at the start much thought may go into it).

By approaching these voice-leading books your way, you will develop your own unique voice on the guitar.

Everyone will approach the cycles and voicings differently which is great. We are looking forward to the future when there’s a whole school of ‘Almanac Alumni’ who have put out their own unique approaches to these great books.

Identical Cycles

A very important point is that some cycles are the same however one ascends and the other descents.

Cycle 2 and Cycle 7 are similar.

Cycle 3 and Cycle 6 are similar.

Cycle 4 and Cycle 5 are similar.

Cycle 2 ascends in 2nds. For example in the key of C major the triads are;

C  Dm  Em  F  G  Am  Bm C

Cycle 7 ascends on diatonic 7ths which is the same as descending 2nds. Again using C major triads the cycle is spelled;

C  Bm  Am  G  F  Em  Dm  C

Using this knowledge you can then vary the direction of the harmonic line that you are writing.

Triads Over Bass Notes (TBN I and TBN II)

Every 7th chord is a triad over a bass note.

For example a C major 7 chord is spelled C E G B. This is essentially an E minor triad (E G B ) with a C note in the bass (but what a sweet sound!).

It is standard practise to remove any triads over bass notes where a note is doubled. For example a Dm triad ( D  F  A ) over an F bass note would be made redundant.

What are TBN I and TBN II

According to Goodrick we can think of these TBN’s as being build on the 3rd of a 7th chord.

We saw above that a C major 7th chord is an Em triad over a C bass note.

If we move the Em triad up a 3rd we get a G triad ( G B D ) over a C bass note or G/C. This is TBN I.

TBN II occurs when we move the G triad up another 3rd to Bdim ( B  D  F ) so we get Bdim/C.

Another Two Ways To Think Of  TBN I and TBN II

You can think of TBN I as being on the diatonic 5th of the root and TBN II as being on the diatonic 7th of the root.

You can also think of the TBN’s in terms of spellings.

TBN I would be spelled 1 5 7 9 or C G B D for G/C.

TBN II would be spelled 1 7 9 11 or C B D F for Bdim/C.

Follow The Leader

You can see that some voices in the cycles stay the same for two chords then another voice stays the same for two chords.

This is ideal territory to write a little canon inspired piece of music.

The simplest form of a canon is a round where a line repeats.

 

Who Is Modern Guitar Harmony?

Modern Guitar Harmony (MGH) is a non profit educational website dedicated to bringing modern guitar harmony concepts free of charge to all guitar players around the world.

MGH has the legal rights over Mick Goodricks materials. We use these materials, and other harmonic materials, to spread the joy of harmony worldwide.

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