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Steve Montgomery

About Me

My Jazz Story

In about 1980, I started to try to think about how to expand what the guitar could do harmonically and with its range (the bar has been set pretty high by all those great piano players out there). The two trend setters at the time (if you include jazz and rock) were Eddie Van Halen and Stanely Jordan, both of whom fretted the guitar with both hands at the same time. I wasn't looking for a rock sound, and I didn't really like the "pingy" tone that Jordan was getting. So what I did was come up with a way to use both hands for chording, which gained greater options for chord voicings, but which didn't sacrifice a nice "round" jazz tone. I was also able to find a number of chord clusters, which are not normally readily available to the shape of the hand and the tuning of the strings, alng with a greatly "broadened" range from low to high pitch per guitar chord. Visit My Blog My blog includes the following: Explainatory Text, Feedback (John Scofield has some nice things to say), Chords and Chord Clusters categorized by scale "afilliation" (which includes fingerings and MP3's), and Originals and Arrangements (which includes fingerings, MP3's, and at times notation on the staff). I make this stuff available for free, but would be interested in feedback, dialogue, comments and ideas for application. http://twohandguitarvoicings.wordpress.com Looking Forward to Hearing from You, Steve Montgomery