Announcing Unit 7: 9th Chords Launch!
If you're fuzzy on 9th chords, I can help you with that!
This launch is an opportunity for you to obtain a complete, methodical approach to learning 9th chords. This material notched up my own playing significantly when I was first taken through it by my teacher, John Elliott. As far as I know, it is a unique approach and is superior to anything I have seen.
Do you think 9th chords probably aren't used in the music you like? You're probably wrong! Blues, Country, Rock, Jazz, Pop, Funk, R&B, Soul and more all use 9th chords. Trust me when I say that learning 9th chords will up your game no matter what genre you’re into.
As a result of going through this lesson series you'll wind up knowing more about playing 9th chords than many professional guitar players - in just a few months.
That’s months, not years.
I've guided many, many students through this material, and I can guide you through it as well.
I'm Jay EuDaly and I've been a full-time professional guitarist since the early seventies. I've done an estimated 10,000 shows since 1969. Currently, even though I'm "semi-retired" I still average 2-4 gigs a week, but I get to take a nap most days. That's a beautiful thing because I spent decades being sleep-deprived!
As an educator, I've taught anywhere from 50 to 90 students a week since the mid-eighties. "Semi-retired" also means I now teach 32 personal students a week instead of 80.
I have successfully prepared students for the University of Missouri Kansas City's Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music in Boston, Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, and the Jazz program at Miami University. Some of my former students have landed gigs in major label bands touring and recording on a national and international level. I have former students in music industry jobs in New York, Nashville, and LA.
I can't tell you how excited I am to be releasing Unit 7 of my guitar method, Vertical Truth: Chordal Mechanisms for the Guitar!!!
THIS was the minimum goal I set out to achieve when I started this process 10 freakin' years ago! Since then, I've survived 2 heart attacks, two rounds of Covid (the first of which was serious), and finally started getting my Social Security money back (yay!).
Anyway, Vertical Truth: Chordal Mechanisms for the Guitar contains my codification of what I learned from my teacher, John Elliott. He called it the "Theory of Harmony." It's a method of applying music theory to the guitar that, as far as I know, is completely unique to John, and IMHO is superior to anything else out there. John produced many world-class musicians of many instruments (Pat Metheny is his most famous guitar student). John's method is the single biggest influence on my guitar playing to this day.
Two weeks ago I published a launch blog wherein I showed a short promo of what this lesson series looks like (it's a PDF download):
I gave a screenshot of the Table of Contents. I also gave a quick free lesson on using 9th chords in a Blues context. If you didn't see that blog, check it out HERE.
The PDF contains:
* 25 lessons
* 58 pages
* 214 fretboard diagrams
* 73 notation examples
* 35 video links
Here's a little taste. In the video below, I'm going to show you 3 close-voiced 9th chords (root on the 5th string), and 3 open-voiced 7th chords (root on the 6th string); learn them here by rote if you don't already know them, and drill them as demonstrated in the video below:
Now hang on to those 6 chord shapes, because in the next blog, I'm going to put them into a very common progression. I’ll publish that blog in a couple of days.
Unit 7? What about Units 1-6?
So...you might be thinking that you're interested in 9th chords but seeing as how this is, "Unit 7" - what about Units 1-6? Is it necessary to go through all of that before getting into 9ths?
The answer to that is "No"...and..."Yes." Let me explain:
No: You can get a LOT of value out of most of what I teach by what I call "random acquisition." What that means is that you learn by rote whatever resonates with you, add it to what you already know and leave the rest of it on the shelf.
I have to say that this is not an efficient way to learn, and you'll never know what you don't know, nor will you know where your knowledge-gaps are. It also makes it difficult to communicate with other musicians or to teach what you know effectively. I don't have much participation in this process; I just throw stuff out there and whether it sticks or not is up to you.
However, I also have to say that there are plenty of pro guitar players out there who learned that way. I've performed with, and taught, some really good guitar players (and other instrumentalists) who had little-to-no idea of what they were doing. They had randomly acquired what they knew from various sources here and there and had some kind of intuitive, idiosyncratic method of putting all that together. That's how most people start out. I learned that way for 10 years and was playing professionally before I ever took a formal lesson.
So with that in mind, my approach makes liberal use of fretboard diagrams and demonstration videos to accommodate those folks. You don't have to know how to read music (or TAB) to learn from a fretboard diagram or video. So, if that's your bent, feel free to download and randomly surf through Unit 7 and cull out what you think you can use and leave the rest for maybe later. Plus, I'm always available to answer any questions you might have about the lesson content.
Yes: What does the word, "method" imply? A random-acquisition-approach will miss the beauty and the symmetry of the method, not to mention the step-by-step building process that the word, "method" should evoke. A methodical approach results in a BIG PICTURE with no gaps, that piecemeal random acquisition can never achieve.
One of the results of a methodical approach is CONFIDENCE! Confidence that you know your stuff, confidence that you know what you’re talking about, and confidence that with this knowledge your guitar playing will escalate to the next level!
So...yes, you do need to understand what comes before. For reasons I won't go into here, we can forego Units 1, 2 and 3. That's stuff that you can find anywhere, although probably not organized my way to dovetail with Units 4, 5 and 6. Nevertheless, not essential.
The essential prerequisites for Unit 7: 9th Chords are the following; I will give you links to the sales pages on the website so you can investigate - but don't buy anything! I will make some special offers during the launch next week that will accommodate you if you haven't gone through the previous essentials.
BTW: There's a ton of content, you can learn a lot on the following pages; you might check 'em out if only for that.
So here's the prerequisites you might need:
1) The 5-Lesson Foundational Series: You must have a method to find any note, anywhere and everywhere on the guitar neck. I will give this 5-lesson series away for free during the launch. Heck, you can get it for free right now - just scroll down to the bottom of this blog.
2) Unit 4: 7th Chords: 5 types of root-position 7th chords in 3 positions in every key.
3) Unit 5: 7th Inversions: All the inversions of the aforementioned 5 types of 7th chords.
4) Unit 6: 7th Voicing: Open and Close-Voiced versions of the aforementioned 5 types of 7th chords (AKA "Shell Voicings").
So whether you learn by random acquisition or you are interested in a methodical, step-by-step approach; if you're fuzzy on 9th chords, I can help you with that!
How 'bout leaving a comment or a question?
(Scroll all the way down to the comments section - or comment privately HERE)
Jay
How about 5 MORE lessons?
The 5-Lesson Foundational Series teaches the Circle of Keys as an organizational mechanism by which you ensure that whatever you learn is drilled in every key in all possible positions. It also gives you a method to find any note, anywhere, without memorizing note names on every string. That is a beautiful thing! Most of what I teach presupposes it.
You can download the 5-Lesson Foundational Series right here with no further obligation or commitment. Click on the link above or the image below to get your PDF:
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