hacks trying

[morroben]

Hey folks...I've been trying to be a jazz guitarist for a while. More often than not, I'm playing mediocre pop versions of standards, and not really playing proper jazz at all. Over the last year or so, I've tried to buckle down and work out my own chord melody arrangements. It's been a learning experience, but I'm still struggling. I bought a book of chord melodies today...a guy named Robert Yelin.
I know I need to keep working on my own arrangements, and arranging my own is a learning experience, but is learning an arrangement out of a book a horrible thing?
I kinda like his versions, and they're accessible. Thoughts?

[brwnhornet59]

Learn from every resource available to you. When it come to knowledge and know how, I will take it where I can get it. I hope that helped.

[pingu]

Oh yeah totally legit I think
learning other people stuff is all good !
Thats how everyone learned
As long as you do your own thing too ... which you are

[Gramps]

Learn from all sources, books, recordings, other players..........

When you learn someone elses arrangment you are building your jazz vocabulary. You can then apply your vocabulary to other songs. It's all part of the learning process.

[Double 07]

You'll learn a lot by studying how the great player's did it, their licks, arrangements etc. +1 on the other posts before this one. Gain enough knowledge from as many sources as you can possibly absorb then eventually your own voice / take on things will come out.

[pickguard]

I do look at other peoples work I may try different chords and or melody lines, But I have found it much easier to remember my own arrangements than say one of Benson, Pass or Montgomery. Don't plan on writing stellar arrangements right out of the box. It's like anything else you do in life, work out an arrangement of a song move on and some day you'll return to that song and ask yourself what was I thinking. Try for one one song a week, within a year you'll have 50 songs and you can bet your skill will really improve.

[Kman]

Books are good if they are in notation, not tab. Exposing yourself to written music is a good habit to get into and you may learn a nice arrangement in the process.

[Gramps]

Books are even good if they are in tab, as long as you learn.

[morroben]

Thanks for the input everyone. I think I need to just do a lot of different things to learn. I tend to come up with specific things and practice those relentlessly until I find the next specific thing and get distracted with that. I need to get better at breaking up my practice time into different areas of study. I used to do that, but somewhere along the way I got into the bad habit of only focusing on one thing. Learning out of this book, or other books, should just be one part of it.

Originally Posted by Kman

Books are good if they are in notation, not tab. Exposing yourself to written music is a good habit to get into and you may learn a nice arrangement in the process.

This book has both, but I'm trying to force myself to only read the notation. Sight reading is a struggle for me and my theory knowledge isn't great. I've been using this...
Alfred Music Publishing | Essentials of Music Theory: Software, Version 3 CD-ROM Student Version, Complete Volume | Software
It's helping me quite a bit.

[brwnhornet59]

You should also be going to Matt Warnock and Chris Juergensen's site. Both are extremely beneficial.

Matt Warnock : Jazz Guitar, Guitar Lessons & Guitar Journalism | MattWarnockGuitar.com

chrisjuergensen.com - Lessons and Articles

[Kman]

This book has both, but I'm trying to force myself to only read the notation. Sight reading is a struggle for me and my theory knowledge isn't great. I've been using this...
Alfred Music Publishing | Essentials of Music Theory: Software, Version 3 CD-ROM Student Version, Complete Volume | Software
It's helping me quite a bit.

That software looks like it packs quite a punch. I have some books from Alfred they have some cool stuff.

[morroben]

Originally Posted by Kman

That software looks like it packs quite a punch. I have some books from Alfred they have some cool stuff.

I'm sure it would be redundant information for a lot of the more seasoned players around here, like yourself, but I can't say enough about how much I like that software. Without a doubt, it's been the most efficient learning process I've had in my 20 year "self-taught" journey.
It seems to be designed for school age kids, but hey, there are a lot of school age kids who understand theory better than me, so maybe that's what I need. It's laid out in a lesson plan that makes sense and is working for me, so far. It show's you concepts, makes you use the concepts on staff (in various keys), gives you ear-training "problems" that apply to the concept, and has reviews along the way. The reviews actually score you and store your scores, for a teacher to use in a school environment. Every week I go through all the previous reviews in an attempt to beat my old scores and keep the information fresh in my mind.
If you know a newbie that wants to learn some basic theory fairly quickly and easily, I'd highly recommend it.

[Blue Rondo]

Your story sounds similar to my own mostly "self taught" journey. I am not 'seasoned' I love going over the basics from different sources just to be sure I've got it 'right' in my head.

I've found learning solo arrangements by different people -Andy Key, Kevan Tolley, Robert Yelin... help me identify the 'style' of chords I like to use, like I love some Ted Greene arrangements though don't find some of his chords so easy to re-use.
Something I have found helpful was, working down through 4 string chords changing one note at a time dropping the seventh note eg. in C this gives you Dm7,Bm7b5,G7,Em7,CMaj7,Am7,FMaj7,Dm..etc four times on a set of four strings. (no extensions but it gave me a good base to work from)
this helped me a lot after learning a lot of tab arrangements to recognize what chords I was actually playing - because I am a little lazy (do read sometimes BTW)

I really like Pickguard's idea of trying to workup one very light hearted arrangement a week from scratch, I'm sure that would have great benefits over time, walking bass + passing chords for spice. almost sounds easy , must try it

Best of luck with your journey!