The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Hi everyone!

    Do you feel some jazz music styles are harder than others for you to play on guitar? I can start to say that bebop has always been and still is a difficult task for me. I think there isn’t any short cut. Practice, practice and practice.

    Back to you, what styles of jazz music are hardest for you to play?

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bbmaj7#5#9
    Hi everyone!

    Do you feel some jazz music styles are harder than others for you to play on guitar? I can start to say that bebop has always been and still is a difficult task for me. I think there isn’t any short cut. Practice, practice and practice.

    Back to you, what styles of jazz music are hardest for you to play?
    It would be bebop for me, especially learning the melodies for the faster paced tunes (and most of them are) and having the melody 'down pat', which for me is key to a 'meaningful' solo.

    Learning melodies for jazz standards, especially II\V\I tunes is a lot easier. One main reason is that in most cases there are lyrics that I know well, as well as Sinatra's take on the song; thus I can play most jazz standard heads by ear referencing the sheet music for the difficult parts. For bebop I don't have such reference material. Of course I have recordings of the head but I just can't 'play along' with a record to get the head down-pat due to the tempo. Instead I depend a lot on the sheet music. (Another option is software that slows down the melody and for bebop heads this can be useful).
    Last edited by jameslovestal; 08-29-2019 at 03:22 PM.

  4. #3

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    Bebop for me too. But then I never really felt a strong urge to play it either. If I did I would probably ditch the guitar for a horn or something.

  5. #4

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    Bebop... anything uptempo actually, if I'm unable to comfortable play eighth notes at a tempo I'd pretty much say I can't play it. Bebop more so as not only is it uptempo the chords change quick and the tunes have complex progressions.

  6. #5

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    I actually love fast tempos! Im not a ballad guy tbh. The problem with bebop though, for me, is liquid natrure of rhythm. The beat is always implied, never defined. As a soloist I dont want drums constantly have 'conversation' with me, just lay down a groove pls!

    Now with this on record, my jazz license will be revoked for sure!

  7. #6

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    Bebop for sure, for the same reason it morphed into hard bop and modal. Even Miles mentioned it was a dead end that only led to faster tempos and more chord changes. I guess he fixed that! Still need that bebop vocab for it all, though.

  8. #7

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    Interesting, but not surprising, that so many of you at this point have bebop as your ”worst” enemy. I agree completely about your statements. Chromatic soloing and fast tempos isn’t a good combination for me. On the other side I’ve no problems with changes and chord tones. Basically, I describe myself as a minimalist composer and improviser. Guitarists and other instrumentalists who uses atmosphere, quietness and restrained tonal vocabulary have always impressed me very much.

    However, I don’t give up because bebop is still a playing style that’s important to have knowledge about. Bebop is also a quite diffuse concept to managing in perfection so there’s always space for different interpretations. Nothing is impossible!

  9. #8

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    What fep said...

  10. #9

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    I find I have no problem with fusion style playing at fast tempos..the open ability to just play over the harmonic structures without concern is very comfortable

    but bop seems to have a built in "must play it like this" attitude ..perhaps its the ridged harmonic structures that define the style more than the melodic passages..

  11. #10

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    I love Bebop. But like most, find it challenging to play at the usual speed. But I also force myself to play it, even at slower speeds because it gives me ideas on improvisation and it helps my sightreading skills. But, its just so cool to figure out how to play it. Thats the challenge for me. A lot of the bebop stuff I play I have never played before...so discovering and listening to various recordings is part of my ongoing jazz education.

  12. #11

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    Bop is hard for me, but since it's a well-defined vocabulary and feel, I think I'm getting it. What's harder for me is the kind of improvisation contemporary players like Metheny do. They use the vocabulary, but the melodic bag is really hard for me to figure out.

    Bop is funny because (a) it forces me outside my favorite scale "boxes" but (b) it is so heavily chord-tone oriented that I find there are shapes, just not the shapes I'm used to.

  13. #12

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    Er.... all of them.

  14. #13

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    Certain 60s-70s Herbie Hancock compositions, notably "Butterfly" and "Tell Me A Bedtime Story". I love this music but I do not understand it yet.

  15. #14

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    Any that has more than four chords and a bunch of notes.

  16. #15

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    All this jazz thing is pretty hard for me but it is an absolute joy when I manage to play a little something that was impossible before. It requires work, concentration and, most important, an appetite for understanding. I don't remember such things in my Ramones tribute band.

  17. #16

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    Improvising in a Boppish style at tempo is freakin' hard, been working at it for years and slowly getting there. I can remember listening to Bird or Clifford etc and just being flummoxed - had no idea what was going on - but I can decode it somewhat these days. Now the style that has me scratching my head is the post bop mid 60's period (McCoy, Shorter, Hancock etc). Would love to have those single line quartal chops but I can't see the guitar ever producing it (not mine anyway )...

  18. #17

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    I think Joe Pass said you shouldn't play anything that's "hard".. so I don't.

  19. #18

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    I find fast bop and hard bop _heads_ difficult, though I can usually blow OK. In terms of an overall style that kicks my a*s --- I find it challenging to play Monk tunes in the Monk-like way they call for. I mean actually blowing over Round Midnight or Bemsha, etc. is no harder than any other set of changes, but working in the sorts of rhythmic idiosyncrasies and dissonances that make Monk Monk is really hard (for me, anyway). And of course, Some Skunk Funk. Been working on the first measure of that since 1982. I think I might have finally gotten the first beat down.

    John

  20. #19

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    Really fast tempos. I end up thinking of lines I can't execute with good enough time.

    After that, it's harmony I can't understand.

  21. #20

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    I have no problem with bebop at all, never did have... never ever done it

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bbmaj7#5#9
    Hi everyone!

    Do you feel some jazz music styles are harder than others for you to play on guitar? I can start to say that bebop has always been and still is a difficult task for me. I think there isn’t any short cut. Practice, practice and practice.

    Back to you, what styles of jazz music are hardest for you to play?
    Don’t know really. I find electric guitar kind of tricky. All that muting.

    People find stuff adjacent to their usual thing easiest to play.

    Bebop took a few years to make a decent start in. It’s very specific though, which helps some people.

  23. #22

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    The hardest thing for me is playing the melodies of tunes in time with good phrasing lol. Bebop’s easy compared to that.