Customer Reviews

Howard Morgen / The Ellington Collection for Solo Gui (Howard Morgen Fingerstyle Jazz Series)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really like this book. The arrangements are very interesting and well presented. Although it's not a book for beginners, some of the arragements are well suited for intermediate players who are just starting to learn solo jazz guitar. Others, though, are challenging even for a fairly advanced player (which is what I consider myself). If you find this book too challenging, make sure to stay away from Morgen's book on Gershwin. Even the simplest of those arrangements are hard.

I bought this book a while ago and Howard Morgen's arrangements look quite different from pieces arranged by other jazz masters: they are very elegant, incredibly melodic, and grab the ear by unusual combinations of chords and single note solos with harmonics. I agree with other reviewers that Howard's arrangements are technically difficult to perform and fretting hand fingering is quite challenging. However, playing his arrangements is not impossible! This is my advice how to work on them. First, when working on the piece listen to it on the CD alone with reading the notation to link the audo signal with its notation's spelling - do it until you can hear the music just by reading the notes. Second, practice playing the most challenging measure until it sounds very close to what's on the CD: don't jump to practicing the new measure until you are good with the previous one because if they both sound "bad" you may become easily frustrated. Third, if you find it difficult to play chords requiring stretching fretting fingers over "15 frets" you can re-arrange these parts by either skipping some notes in the chord or refingering them into a more comfortable position: it will not sound as nice as original arrangement but will be good enough to walk through the entire piece.
The reason I gave it 4 is that it appears that there are few places where notation does not match its CD sound (check Satin Doll), and I hope this will be corrected in next editions of this wonderful book.

... or even intermediates. I went through a handful of the arrangements in detail, and I found that the fingerings are much more demanding than necessary to perform any of these pieces. The flourishes and single-note non-melody material should be marked optional and instead is treated as essential, making the arrangements pretty, but also pretty tricky. Best for an intermediate guitarist, who is probably already able to make decent money gigging and who already owns a handful of fake books, who is looking for alternative arrangements.