Truefire - Focus on: Fusion (2015)

Fusing jazz, rock, funk and R&B and forged back in the 60’s and pioneered by artists such as Miles Davis, Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny, Gary Burton and John Mclaughlin, the genre known as Fusion continued to evolve and is very much alive and well today. There are many contemporary derivatives of fusion, and all of them are exciting to listen to and a blast to play, especially for guitarists.

While the genre’s waters run wide and deep, Joe Pinnavaia’s Focus On Fusion curriculum will introduce you to the style and help you form a foundation of the requisite skills, techniques and harmonic knowledge that you will build on to become an accomplished Fusion player.

Joe organized the course into four sections. In Section 1, Joe presents a brief background and historical overview of the genre and its key players, along with tips on tone and gear.
In Section 2, Joe presents five key Soloing Concepts: Extending Your Pentatonics, Using A Linear Approach, Using Triads For An Intervallic Sound, Tension and Release, and How To Fusionize Your Phrasing.
In Section 3, Joe presents five key Chordal Concepts: Fusion Chord Voicings, Chord Substitutions, and Harmonizing With Pentatonics
In Section 4, Joe guides you through four Performance Studies, which apply all of the techniques and key concepts presented in the previous sections:

Static Vamp: Two-chord vamp in the key of A Minor that highlights the Dorian sound and demonstrates the use of chord forms, pentatonics, triads and chromatics to spice up static vamps.

Two Chords Two Keys: A simple progression (D Min7 to D Maj7) with a focus on using chord tones to alternate between major and minor keys using triads and chord shapes to stay "inside" the keys resolve the changes.

Minor 3rd Ascension: Focus on developing melodic ideas over a four- chord progression (CMin7, A Min7, F# Min7 and Eb Min7) designed to develop visualization skills for playing over changes.

B Minor Jam: Emphasizes the harmonic minor scale and modal playing for hitting the change on the V chord to help develop statements with the tension and resolution characteristics of fusion improvisations.

Joe demonstrates all of the Performance Studies over rhythm tracks and then breaks them down measure-by-measure, technique-by-technique. All of the key examples and performance studies are tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes.

You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can loop and/or slow any section down as you work through the lessons. Plus, Joe generously includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own.

Thanks to psycholoko



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