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Thank you everyone for all of your amazing comments so far!
It's great to see so many people interested in jazz and to see so many people striving to constantly improve.
I haven't been a part of this community for very long but I'm happy to see that it's a supportive group of people and I'm very grateful to be here!
Keep it coming!
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01-30-2017 11:26 AM
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Nice to hear back from you!
Originally Posted by Noah D'Innocenzo
So, how would you answer your own question?
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For many finding a way to become motivated/highly interested/passionate about playing guitar is important.
I think the first step is for a player to play and enjoy playing a tune well and then a handful of tunes well. If someone can't do that then they should take a step back and put jazz on the back burner.
There are much better genres to start with... classical, playing and singing classic rock, folk, country, blues. Playing and enjoying something is where to start. I think classical is the best though, there are nice sounding easy tunes and there is a emphasis on learning to reading music. After that, trying to learn some classic rock, folk or blues is a good second step. And then trying to pick up some classic rock, folk or blues by ear is a good third step.
Jazz is just too much to swallow initially, all those chords, scales, arps, theory, up tempo... There is a big difference between a beginner guitar player and a beginner jazz jazz guitar.
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I think this is an interesting point. I certainly agree that it always needs to be fun or at least SHOULD be fun. But anything worth having in life is eventually going to come to a point where it causes you frustration (job, guitar, wife etc.) It's the teachers job to find your balance for proper progression. Originally Posted by fep
Some teachers will go, as I've heard someone say on this forum, all "Whiplash" on them and cause the student to never want to play again and there's also the teacher that doesn't push hard enough and allows you to keep working on Mary Had a Little Lamb for 6 months, in which case the student gets bored and/or feels like they're "stuck."
If you manage to find the right balance, you will be challenged but you will enjoy the challenge!
I also don't necessarily agree with what you said about it being too much to learn at the beginning. One of the cornerstones of my ideology is comparing all genres to a language. If you were to Google the top 10 hardest languages to learn, you'd get something like Mandarin, Russian, Arabic and English up at the top. Well, I speak English: always have and always will and to me, it's very easy. Can speak it, understand it, write it and read it. To a Chinese person, they won't think it's that easy. Why? Because it's my NATIVE language: it's the first one I learned and it's the one my parents spoke and I HEARD it all the time. So, if you had made jazz your first language and learned entirely by ear, I don't think you'd be saying that. I'm not saying that's how it went for me (I wish it was!) but I do believe that if you gave me a 5 year old, I could have them really "speaking" jazz in a few years (downside of young kids is the motor skills aren't quite up to par: it's easier to coordinate your tongue than your fingers at that age.)
I'd like to point out one more thing since you brought up reading at such a young age. As I said, I constantly compare music and jazz to a language. So, how did you learn your native tongue? When you were 3 years old were you entirely mute until you started reading books and then you started to speak? Heck no!
There is an order for learning a language and it is as follows:
Listen(transcription)-->Attempt to speak(practice): fail-->attempt again: fail-->attempt again: says "momma"
What happens next? The parents freak out! They react with joy and excitement and that's how the baby learned they did it right. The brain releases dopamine as a response and then you're hooked on your parents approval for a long time! lol but jokes aside, that really is how we all learned our first language.
Only after we've listened to it and spoken it for about 5 years do we begin to learn how to READ it, WRITE it and UNDERSTAND the "theory" behind it (diction, syntax, subject, predicate etc.)
Now if someone tried to teach you how to build a sentence in Mandarin before you had ever heard it or spoke it, how do you think you would do? Probably not too well. Well, this is what happens with a "theory first" perspective on learning jazz and then people wonder why they can't do it and it just "doesn't sound right." It's because they've done way too much reading and not enough listening and speaking!
To wrap up this rant, believe it or not, in the beginning you don't need to know that the chord you're playing is a Cmaj7 or that the line you just learned is a II-V lick. You just don't need to know. All you have to do is hear it and copy it and get it into muscle memory. The issue is, because most of us start learning an instrument so late, we've already developed our "first" language of english or "other" and therefore can think enough to WANT to know what the stuff is called and to WANT to understand it. But, had you started learning guitar at the exact same time you started english, you wouldn't be complaining about wanting to understand the theory and learning how to read as a 3 year old. So, as much as I advocate guitarists that can read, listen first and then speak a whole lot! Then read
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For me, the hardest things in the beginning were
-ears
-theory
-mindset
When I say beginning I mean beginning of jazz, not guitar in general. I had already been doing the 80's hair metal thing for awhile and had decent chops so I wasn't worried about technique. I had also played Cello for a long time so I knew my key signatures and note names.
Looking back, all of this was so easy to fix.
1) Ears: just listen a heck of a lot more and transcribe a lot and then practice those transcriptions until you're bored of them.
2) Theory: At that stage, I shouldn't have been concerned with theory.
3) Mindset: As a 14 year old, this would've been hard to master! haha it's a lifetime battle just like learning music, but I've found reading and reading the right stuff and learning how to tune out the noise and just FOCUS is almost always the cure for this. Whenever I can't focus, I remember my personal vision for my future and think on that for at least 10 minutes and then get to work. We all need to remember our "WHY" because without a strong enough why, you just won't do it.
So that's my 2 cents on the subject! I believe to be a successful musician, all you need is great ears, great hands and the right mindset! Is theory nice? yes, but you don't NEED it. Is reading nice? yeah, but if your ears are good enough...you don't NEED it.
All we have to do is copy the masters! If you think about it, all we're doing when we transcribe is copying "public speakers." If jazz were english, that's what the musician would be: a public speaker. So we want to copy more than the words: we want to copy their pauses, phrasing, up and down of their tone, the words the choose and how they choose to place them. If you want to become a great public speaker you don't copy the kid next to you in class, you copy a MASTER of public speaking. So, remember when you're looking to transcribe that you copy a real master and not the kid next to you in class
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Throughout the school year, I frequently remind my students that most of what they have learned (and will learn) comes from the best teachers they will ever have: Originally Posted by Noah D'Innocenzo
All we have to do is copy the masters! If you think about it, all we're doing when we transcribe is copying "public speakers." If jazz were english, that's what the musician would be: a public speaker. So we want to copy more than the words: we want to copy their pauses, phrasing, up and down of their tone, the words the choose and how they choose to place them. If you want to become a great public speaker you don't copy the kid next to you in class, you copy a MASTER of public speaking. So, remember when you're looking to transcribe that you copy a real master and not the kid next to you in class
1. Imitation
2. Repetition
3. Calamity
Hopefully, calamity will only have to teach you something once.
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I think the difficulties are the same as playing any other kind of music on the guitar:
1] Lack of understanding how the guitar works as a musical instrument - This comes from trying to apply theory as if the guitar were like other instruments; it's different in unique ways that must be discovered.
2] Not hearing sound as music - This comes from trying to grasp music without listening to it; music is phenomenological and one must use audiation to grasp it.
From Wikipedia,
"...audiation is to music what thought is to language."
"...comprehension and internal realization of music, or the sensation of an individual hearing or feeling sound when it is not physically present. Musicians previously used terms such as aural perception or aural imagery to describe this concept, though aural imagery would imply a notational component while audiation does not necessarily do so."
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Man, I love this!!! Originally Posted by snailspace
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From my own adventures as an almost eternal jazz beginner, here's how it went for me, in terms of easiest to hardest...
1) Chord voicings/inversions/grips. These were pretty challenging coming from a PowerChord/Open G background, but once I got them down, you can get by with using a lot of the same grips over similar chord progressions and it sounds passable.
2) Comping with chord charts. Upon joining my first jazz bands, my role was basically play the right chords over the right changes, which I could do a decent amount of the time.
3) Soloing. I can finally play what I think is a decent sounding solo over songs like Just Friends and ATTYA. For years, I struggled just to keep in the right key using only major scale. I think in order to play a good jazz solo, you have to 1) be able to sing whatever you can play on guitar, and 2) have listened to so much jazz that you can sing phrases/ideas upon recall. That takes a lot of time/effort.
4) Transcribing - Once you know the ideas that the players use, it is easier to transrcribe, but I still have no idea in hell where a lot of the ideas come from that I transcribe.
5) Reading - Granted I haven't put a lot of time into it, but reading on the guitar is a @%$^&. At least I can get through a lead sheet put in front of me if it's a song I already know.
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- Realizing / Obtaining a decent guitar / set up on a guitar
- Developing arm / hand strength
- Not enough hours in a day or days in a week to practice/play
EZ
HR
.Last edited by Hurricane Ramon; 02-24-2017 at 04:23 AM.
- Realizing / Obtaining a decent guitar / set up on a guitar
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It's been a long time since I was a beginner (not that it means I'm advanced now!), but I'm taking lessons again for the first time in 30+ years, and I'm reminded the things that are difficult now were difficult then:
1. Learning and becoming fluid with difficult chord positions
2. Memorizing tunes
3. Playing smoothly, relaxed, in time.
4. I didn't get that far back then, and haven't yet now, but reharmonizations & substitutions seems intimidating
I do think there's a trap that the teaching of jazz guitar falls into, of getting too deep into the technical side at the expense of just being musical, and that it's not just how much you know, but how you play it. I got into jazz quickly, after learning basic folkie chords, rock bar chords & pentatonic scales. So I didn't learn much fingerpicking, or how rock/blues players made those sounds- players in other genres may not know half as much guitar, but they are making music with a distinct style. I could play chords & scales up the neck, bebop heads- but I didn't have a formed style. It took me both watching and listening to other kinds of players, and teaching myself things like fingerstyle picking, to develop my own touch.
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Playing jazz requires a series of skills. I'll try to enumerate.
1. You need to be able to think of a melody and play it without hesitation and very few mistakes.
2. You need to be able to think up good melodies.
3. You need to be able to comp in a way that makes the group sound good.
How hard these things are depends on your gifts. This is a point of disagreement, but I've seen enough very young guys with talent (and not much time in on the instrument) to know that talent matters.
For #1, pick a random finger and fret and play Happy Birthday. Can you do it without making a mistake? That's the kind of thing I'm describing.
For #2, you can probably make up some kind of melody, but it may not be as sophisticated as you want to sound. This is where transcription and theory can help.
For #3, you have to spend as many hours as possible playing in groups. I would strongly recommend recording everything and critiquing it carefully. Speaking for myself, after years of doing this, I've improved, but I still regularly find that I didn't sound as good as I thought at the time.
One of the things that's not spoken of very often is the issue of getting accurate feedback about your playing. It's usually difficult. If the phone isn't ringing with people wanting to play with you, there's probably room for improvement, but other musicians don't want to hurt your feelings, or may not be sure of what's wrong or don't feel it's their place to say. But, the opinions of your fellow players matter.
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There's always room for improvement. I think after a while you notice the things on gigs that you aren't comfortable with, aren't flowing etc. These are little signs telling you that you need to work on those areas. I don't expect I will ever play a gig that is free of these things though... And I kind of hope that this is so, because I would run out of things to work on! Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I also find that working with a regular group of musicians that you know well means that feedback can be passed both ways without rancour... It's still a tricky one. It's hard also to let go of one's ego and accept feedback.
Beyond the shoulds and shouldn'ts which you have posted, with which I agree, professional musicians play the gig. Not everyone knows everything. Guitarists - even some pros - are sometimes quite weak at melody playing compared to horns, because they don't have to do it that much.
But beyond that - I know pros who struggle with stuff. Everyone struggles with something.
And while I believe there is such a thing as natural aptitude, hard work is important too.
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What do I think is most difficult for beginning jazz guitarists?
Since I fall into the category, I would have to say that it is staying the course once you have settled on it - there are many attractive paths forward in this journey. Having patience with the process is another big one. Advancement comes, well, as fast as it comes and I can't seem to rush it - although more hours devoted to practicing each day does have its rewards.
What has helped me so far? Putting tunes at the center of my learning and surrounding it with music reading, fretboard theory, improvisation, recording my pieces before I call the work 'done,' playing with others as often as I can, and I have a teacher that I visit a few times a year to check-in with all of the above.
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Chords at first, can certainly be a pain. But as you've stated, they can be overcome. In terms of soloing ideas, transcribing is initially hard but that's why it's important to start with something simple (a Mile's solo) versus starting off with the bebop stuff.
I don't think it's very important to know where the lines come from. As much as it can be interesting to understand, you don't need to understand. For example: in our own English language, for the most part, nobody really cares where the words and sentence structures we have come from, we just use them to communicate and have absorbed them by listening to people over and over again and then we just "steal" their phrases. Jazz or any genre is no different. We don't need to know how or why they constructed their lines, we just find ones we like and figure out where we can use them in different situations.
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Yes, a lot of players take this attitude, but for some of us it's just more rewarding to construct ideas that make sense as well as sound good. I find that if something sounds good to me and I decide to "borrow" it, then it sounds good for a good reason- 90% of the time- and if I can find out what that reason is enough times, I can start to construct my own ideas that may appeal to other people in the same way. Originally Posted by Noah D'Innocenzo
Rewards in Jazz are few, the joy of understanding through analysis and applying knowledge gained to one's own advantages is, I would have thought, one of the main rewards in Jazz. If you're happy to just cop licks and stitch them together where they sound good, then you might miss out on some satisfaction...
So, to exaggerate extremes, what's more important to you, sounding good to others without really understanding what is going on under the hood? Or understanding everything you're doing, at the risk of maybe not sounding so impressive to others?
It's gotta come down to personal satisfaction, whatever blows your hair back, no right or wrong, right? Just saying' it's possible to sound great but be left feeling hollow....
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This is a very common misconception, Originally Posted by princeplanet
I believe. I'm sure it may be annoying to some extent because I say it in almost all of my replies and everything I post but we're trying to learn a language here. Do people make up their own words? No. Why? Because no one will understand what you're trying to communicate without you having to stop what you're saying to let them know what your word that you invented means. You may argue that slang comes in and out of style, which is true. But it's always young people and anyone over the age of 20 never knows what kids are talking about.
The fact is, once you have copied so much of great, amazing sounding and feeling language, eventually, you will begin to play with the rhythms NATURALLY and your ear will be to a point that it will make very well informed choices and not guesses. And this will happen on the fly and that's the true definition of improvisation.
And I think you answered your own question. Would you rather sound amazing and not understand why a line works or not sound so good but know exactly how you made your own line? You're playing music. All we have is sounding and feeling good. To me, it's not an intellectual sport and no one will want to listen to you if you don't sound good. And to me, the whole point of making music is to not only enjoy it for you but to make other people enjoy it with you.
I will agree that there are no music police and that each person may do whatever they want but if you want gigs and you want people to enjoy and maybe even buy your music, by gosh it's gotta make them feel something. I'm not saying there's no room to explore and expand; because there certainly is but it's a step by step process. People want to have their own sound before they can even actually fit into the style they want to learn and that's the pitfall I warn people to watch out for. Once you've sunk yourself so deep into the language you will naturally create your own lines with your ear and not your intellectual brain and at the point you will have made your own sound without even trying to.
There's a quote that I love and I believe it's from Wayne Shorter. He said (paraphrasing) "serve the music first, the audience second, your band mates third and then, and only then, if you're able, serve yourself."
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Jazz doesn't have to serve anyone or anything, neither does any music, fine or otherwise, or any other creative pursuit for that matter.
"All art is essentially useless" - O.W.
"L'art pour l'art" - some dead French guy...
And yes, Jazz is a fine art to some, just a "gig" to others. I wouldn't assume that everyone here wishes to play standards in restaurants...
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I, uh, don't really know what to say to you buddy. This seemed to take a rather negative turn where there was no need for it to. I didn't even call jazz art and I certainly don't assume it is everyone's goal to play standards in restaurants. Although, if you could get a free meal, a few drinks on the house and maybe $100 to enjoy yourself playing with friends, I don't see why you wouldn't. Originally Posted by princeplanet
The point of this forum is for people to learn how to play jazz and whether it be a hobby, playing jam sessions, having a few, what you consider, lame gigs playing standards in restaurants or even the pursuit of becoming a well known jazz musician, the groundwork is all the same. Anything I add to this forum is in the pursuit of helping others learn to play jazz and to save people time that I wasted doing things that didn't work.
All I know is that when I was just trying to create lines, I wasn't satisfied and it did not bring the fulfillment you speak of because it didn't sound right. It didn't swing right and it didn't sound like the stuff that pulled me into the genre in the first place. Only after I started copying great players did I start to sound a heck of a lot better and therefore, also enjoy myself a heck of a lot more. After all, does anyone really enjoy sounding bad?
if they did, I don't think this forum would exist. I specifically said that there are no music police and each may do as they see fit. I don't know what jazz is to you but if it is an intellectual exercise, as long as you enjoy it, that's your prerogative.
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From my experience studying and teaching jazz for many years, the first difficulty i would say is learning the music. It is hard to approach jazz if you haven't really listened to it. Second would be the chords, and playing over them. There 's just more of them, and it takes a while to be able to hear them, and the melodies around them. Third, there has to be some discipline to learn all the technical stuff, scales, arpeggios, chords. For some players, this is just not enough motivation (or work ethic, or preference?) to accomplish that.
I have never found theory to be a hindrance, as long as it follows the actual ability of playing something. If theory is ahead, than sure it's complicated, but if it follows and explains things you already play on the instrument and hear, it isn't that hard to grasp.Last edited by Alter; 03-26-2017 at 06:12 AM.
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So in conclusion the difficult thing about learning jazz for beginners is the jazz. And also the guitar
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... as well as sifting through advice about both on the internet. Apart from that, it's a piece o' cake... Originally Posted by christianm77
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I really like this. Especially the last part about theory. That's what I was trying to explain to princeplanet but obviously didn't do so well. Is there's nothing wrong with learning theory and understanding what you're doing but it isn't "necessary" or the most important step. For example: we begin to listen to and process our native language and start to speak for five years before we go to an institution that tries to teach us how to "correctly" build sentences and spell words. It takes many more years to get to the point where we're taught the concept of subject and predicate and all of that. Were we not able to speak our language for all those years up until middle school because we didn't comprehend grammar fully? No, certainly not. We just didn't logically understand it and that was my only point, that it's not necessary, right away or at all, to understand the theory. Originally Posted by Alter
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