The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I have seen on this forum where many have tried to learn to play Jazz and then gave up. Many were kind enough to give their reasons before they "resigned" from the forum.

    I am still slowly progressing after 13 years of off and on applying myself. I guess the difference with me is that when I hear my favorite Jazz songs, it just makes me want to continue. I just love this music so much that I want to be able to play it at a relatively high level - Not Pat Martino or Wes Montgomery, but just be able come up with my own lines and ideas - and be able to transfer them to the guitar.

    I can hear a lot of the lines in my head. I don't want them to go to waste. I can do pretty good on Modal songs and songs with only a few changes. It gives me hope that I can improve and slowly transfer this level of expertise ( or lack of expertise, lol) to songs with more chords and changes.

    Just my thoughts.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    It definitely gets harder with each passing year. Some of this is due to having a bit less energy each year but also from increased life stress/complications/career responsibility, etc. Whenever I get frustrated with practice, I learn a tune...or I review old tunes I haven't played in a long time.

    As for the people who give up, from what I've seen it's usually the people who never really dig into the tunes to gain familiarity with the basic harmonic concepts. Tunes are essential...one has to internalize them. Then they become like "toys" that you can "play" with for running exercises (scales, arps, applying language, comping ideas), for actually playing with other people (with different feels, maybe different time signatures...though this is hard for me! and for different keys), for trying your hand at solo guitar, and even for mental exercises (transposing to different keys in your head; hearing a solo or song form, etc).

  4. #3

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    You need to love the MUSIC first and foremost ! Also you need to learn repertoire to apply the language. For me the main connection at first was trying to broaden my abilities to play more sophisticated Blues!
    As the years ha e gone on, it's more about loving great songs and understanding harmony and music better!

    If you have limited vocabulary as far as knowing scales, modes, and their relationships. This music will challenge you to understand how music especially harmony works, better.
    You should know all the notes on your fingerboard by heart, without thinking. And forget about chord and scale shapes altogether. This really is maybe the hardest part,the mindset guitarists have!

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by jads57
    You need to love the MUSIC first and foremost ! Also you need to learn repertoire to apply the language. For me the main connection at first was trying to broaden my abilities to play more sophisticated Blues!
    As the years ha e gone on, it's more about loving great songs and understanding harmony and music better!

    If you have limited vocabulary as far as knowing scales, modes, and their relationships. This music will challenge you to understand how music especially harmony works, better.
    You should know all the notes on your fingerboard by heart, without thinking. And forget about chord and scale shapes altogether. This really is maybe the hardest part,the mindset guitarists have!
    thats interesting
    the first paragraph IS totally me
    but the last para is not how I roll at all ....
    (we're all different , which is a good thing)
    (after five decades or so , I still don't know the notes on the fb very well)

    It's not what floats my boat

    The ear thing is what turns me on

    away from the guitar ....
    to hear something and to know functionally what's going on
    (that's a ii V to the tonic ,it's gone to the IV etc etc)
    ie. how tunes work functionally , and the emotional baggage
    that the changes carry , is very interesting to me

    On the guitar ....
    'sound-shapes' ,
    I hear a sound in my head (or something someone played)
    and I want to be able to find those shapes super-quick , instantly
    on the fingerboard
    this helps hugely with playing with other people and being spontaneous
    and I LOVE playing in a group ....

    To the op ....
    I think you've got to find out what turns you on
    (which can be a process in itself)
    and just do that , or do what you need to do , to do that

    also , learn a new tune !

  6. #5
    Shrouds have no pockets, not even for a guitar pick.

  7. #6

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    Pingu,
    Me personally - as long as I can play guitar, I will have some Jazz in my repertoire.

    I wonder if it was just a case of "all or nothing" for some that drove them to quit.. I am happy playing the few tunes that I know.

    Like Jads did in his formative years, I am slowly making the harmony more and more complex, especially with the Jazz Blues. Kind of mimicking what Richie Zellon teaches. Before I know it, I will be playing 2-5-1s like a champ. I can feel it coming, finally.

    Might I add that I am just coming to appreciate throwing in the altered scale on V7 chords. I "rediscovered" it while playing an etude. I noticed that when playing modes (natural minor on the ii, mixolydian on the V7, and ionian on the IMaj7) it suddenly dawned that I was playing the same darn notes. Once I threw in Dorian on the ii min7 and the altered scale on the V7, I could suddenly harken back to many great Jazz songs that I have heard throughout my life. It was amazing, but now I have to learn the Altered Scale shapes as my training wheels for improvisation.

    Little things like this keep me going. I was hoping maybe others could find some solace in this as well.

  8. #7

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    How can you play any instrument well, without knowing where the notes are?
    Guitar is relatively easy to do this on since only has 5 strings and 12 frets to memorize.
    Spend one minute on each string for 5 minutes a day. With in a month you'll easily have it memorized.

    The main reason is to see which notes you are playing in any given chord. And then by raising or lowering them, you can easily understand what's actually going on. Other wise you are just memorizing random shapes without context.

  9. #8

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    The money.

  10. #9

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    I enjoy it. Plain and simple. There’s nothing more to it than that. I’ll keep playing as long as that is the case.

    a strong motivation is playing with others. I’d get a lot less playing done if it was just me by myself. Making musical noises with other people is very important to me. It also help pushing me in the sense that I feel I have to rise to the occasion - showing up and not having my **** down isnt an option.

    Which ties in with another aspect I enjoy, the process of learning and improving. I’ll never be a virtuoso, that’s ok. The process of improving and applying myself is easily as important in keeping me going as any goal

  11. #10

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    Good thread - I'm interested to hear from you all.
    I get frustrated more often than not and that's partly due to my ever growing ambitions. I began to try and learn some jazz guitar to play more melodically over more sophisticated blues changes and to gain a basic understanding of chord progressions in standards that were all Greek to me when I looked at a chord chart. I have progressed at both quite satisfyingly.
    Next in my ambitions was to be able to do some improvising over standard tunes / progressions - not so much at a very high level but at least without any major train wrecks. I can about do that as well by now but I feel like I keep repeating myself all the time and that's the next frustration.
    I may put the archtop away for a day or two and pick up an acoustic to fingerpick some blues for a change but as soon as I put on one of my favourite jazz albums I'm drawn back into the rabbit hole. Needless to say part of that is the music itself but also just the sound of a great sounding / well recorded archtop guitar. Sometimes I don't feel like practicing much but I keep noodling on my Eastman just enjoying its sound and if I noodle long enough I'm sometimes back in the game then and there.
    There's so many options to play over a single chord and many many more to play through a ii-V-I for example and I'm still discovering more of them.
    Learning tunes (the head/melody and chord changes) does come quite easily to me these days so that's another way to get over periods of frustration.
    Another one is to look back at what I have acchieved so far even if it took so long. I have becom a better guitar player and musician at large by learning some jazz.
    I have never seriously thought of giving up despite all the frustration. There's no deadline to meet so I can take all the time I want and need.

  12. #11

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    It's something to keep the mind occupied and practicing jazz is a of fun compared to so many other genres by being challenging in multiple dimensions (harmony, rhythm and speed)


    But I have no ambition as such. I just do my best, which differs greatly over time ... Kids and my day time job makes jazz merely my escapism. Only play for myself and while I strive to become better every year it's not like anyone will give a fuck. But I like it and it's fun

  13. #12

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    The reason I still keep banging my head against this particular wall is simply a love for the music and a strong desire to be able to play it.

    I do remain convinced that there's a method that will work for me - I'm simply yet to find it.

    Derek

  14. #13

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    Similar to members of Deathtongue, I keep playing jazz for four reasons: chicks, chicks, chicks, and dough!

    For the Tired Few - What keeps you trying to learn to play Jazz after years of trying-deathtongue-jpg

  15. #14

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    Jazz guitar is the most fun you can have sitting down.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    Jazz guitar is the most fun you can have sitting down.
    I particularly like the part where when I hit a note or twenty that are "not in the dots" the whole group doesn't stop dead in its tracks and give me the stink eye and a lecture. they just keep playing.

  17. #16

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    I might be making progress!

  18. #17

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    It's the joy of playing in a group. Being able to play, being able to solo and for the band to do something, together, that nobody knew was going to happen. Then, to have coffee afterward and listen to musicians tell stories.

    It's all my idea of a good time.

  19. #18

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    Frankly, I don't know. After 30 years of working at it, the best I can do is dead-lame chord-melody and very poor line improvisation. I can learn solos by the masters, and manage to learn virtually nothing that I can re-use in other settings in my own way. If being an accomplished player were the goal, I'd have to quit. 30 years is long enough to know I haven't got it.

    But I love the music, I love the guitars, I love the sound of them. I love the idea of maybe someday playing a half-decent bop-style solo of improvisation. But for now, I'm just tired and feeling like I can't do very much.

  20. #19

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    No other style of music interests me enough.

    It helps I was introduced to jazz in my formative teenage years, and I took a lot of guitar lessons that taught me the basic tools I needed. I probably moved beyond bar chords and pentatonic scales to maj7, m7, etc. before i even know what to do with them.

    I only got but so far, though, and I knew jazz guitar can be a worm hole of technical study I didn't really want to go down. I think it's more important to be able to play tunes musically, with rhythm and good feel, than play 16 different chord re-harms of some tired old tune.

    A few years ago I did kind of quite playing much jazz, frustrated by lack of playing opportunities and intimidated by solo playing. Unless you get good at chord-melody, jazz guitar is either plunking out chords, or single note lines, right? For a while i dabbled in acoustic styles like Travis picking, looking for both variety and a short-cut to better solo playing. Eventually I got bored with that and came back to my jazz guitar roots, and even found a teacher to fill in the gaps where I left off.

  21. #20

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    I like playing and expressing myself musically. My improvisation may be somewhat pedestrian (e.g. too pentatonic, 8 note scale driven, etc..) but within a chorus, I'm typically able to get one melody line to "sing" in the style of Billy Bauer \ Jimmy Raney, and that makes me happy. It is all I need to play the next song, and the next one.

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by lawson-stone
    I love the guitars
    The joy of owning nice guitars is grossly underrated on internet forums .. Their are art and make you happy. End of story

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    The joy of owning nice guitars is grossly underrated on internet forums .. Their are art and make you happy. End of story
    I guess it depends on how one defines "nice guitars". If by looks, I feel that is overrated on internet forums.

    I could care less how a guitar looks. E.g. over 20 years ago my just married-to-wife purchased me a nice Martin. I was playing with my friend (he purchased the guitar for her since he knew what I would like), and she said how sad it was that the guitar was now so worn out looking. My friend just laughed and said something like "those are not marks of shame, but marks of love,,, that guitar sounds better today then it did when we purchased it!". (I was sold, but I'm still not sure about my wife).

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by jameslovestal
    I guess it depends on how one defines "nice guitars". If by looks, I feel that is overrated on internet forums.

    Looks are a nice bonus ... but mean nothing is the guitar isn't a good build that plays well. My definition of a nice guitar is a good build. If you can get both then off course more power to you!

  25. #24

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    I recognize my own limitations, knowing that I do this because I enjoy it - the challenge of trying to learn how to do it. I am always a student of the instrument and will never master it in my own mind. I love the challenge of trying to understand this stuff - learning it because its important to me. It isn't always fun - its hard work and at my age (72) the brain cells and other relevant body parts don't work as well as they used to many days. But I keep on truckin, fully aware that I am trying to get better each day. I think that is what I am supposed to be doing. And it is what I want to do.

    For the players who haven't been at this as long as I have, my advice is to keep at it. You may never learn how to do certain things but that doesn't mean your efforts are wasted. Try not to be too hard on yourself. But that is easier said than done. Keep trying to improve all the time. But recognize that you are human - you'll get frustrated, discouraged, and maybe even angry with yourself. But don't quit - unless you truly believe that this path causes you more pain than pleasure. Thats my two cents for what it is worth.

  26. #25

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    I'm going with what's important to me...

    There once was a boy who loved dogs and guitars. He met a girl. The end.