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Hey guys i want to ask you this(may sound silly) is it too late for me to become a great jazz player starting this late? I want to get good and play gigs at bars while im young. I played guitar from 16-18 and now my interested spiked again big time. Thanks in advance to everyone!
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03-21-2024 09:02 PM
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I might consider the framing of your immediate goals.
Originally Posted by Zlobert98
Being a great jazz guitar player is also very much not an end goal. There is not a point afaik where you will feel ‘great’ and if you do, you probably aren’t haha.
If the idea of working very hard on jazz music for fun works and you have a hunger for learning over the long term, I’m sure you’ll develop your skills. Also, play with the best musicians who will hang out with you and learn from them.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 03-22-2024 at 11:36 AM. Reason: Slightly less awful grammar
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Thanks for the reply. Well the goal is just to be a beast of a jazz guitarist in my young years. On the side of playing live/finances i would like to play in bars,that would be enough for me.
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My guess is that with 2 hours a day effective, purposeful practice, every day, you might be good enough to get to play with top players by the time you're 40. But without the prerequisite skill, talent and hunger, I'd say all bets are off.
But don't let that stop you, even if you only end up half as good as you hope, it won't be time wasted if you persist. I say go for it!
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Work on only one song for 10 hours a day, everyday for one year. At the end of the year, I'm pretty sure you're gonna be a beast in that very one song. Do that over the next 20 years with a new song each new year. By age 46, you will have a repertoire of 20 songs in which you are a beast. Enough to cut two CDs of 10 songs each. Enough for one night's performance. Noone need ever know that you can only play 20 songs. But the crowd will go: what a great player! Originally Posted by Zlobert98
Howard Thurston: I know only ten tricks. But I am the best in those 10 tricks.
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Hehe, pretty sure that's takin' the piss after my seeing my (unintentional) snarky post... but not only do I stand by what I said, I believe your advice to be even more on the money, as in, I wish I'd have done that myself! Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
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Too late to be a great jazz guitarist starting at 26 years old?
If you were ever going to be great you'd have been great at something long ago :-)
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Maybe if you could start putting in 8-12+ hour days every single day for at least the next 4-6 years which makes you 30-32 you might have something but you're already late to the game and there will be guys five and ten years younger who already did all that ahead of you. Who gonna feed you and pay your rent in the meantime? And you quit once already so you're a quitter by track record so you'll quit again. The scratch horse don't make the race cause he acts up before it get started.
Everyone I know who got serious about guitar in their 20's quit by their early 30's. They haven't made it a life habit. You should find something else to do because the business will sort you out of it and you'll be left disappointed and have wasted a bunch of time. You don't have what it takes or you would already be doing this in some sweaty bedroom, not asking us or giving a shit our opinion. Find a decent paying job and be a working stiff, it's easier.. It ain't about playing when it interests you big time. It's about putting in the time when it doesn't interest you at all, and you didn't see it through once already. Just cause college sucks doesn't mean it's time to play guitar pretend for a couple years.
You want to gig in the industry on guitar and make it a career? Go get a pedal steel and master it you'll get more gigs playing country that pay well than you can stand to do. Not many guys play pedal steel so there is an opportunity there for some 30 something year old guy to get a gig. Steel players are always older so you don't need to be a whippernapper to get cred as a player.
The reality is roo many people play six string, the market is flooded. You don't have your own band or any gig connections so you'd be working for someone else. Everyone here who wants to play jazz plays country because the market for jazz is small, almost non-existent, and if you want to get paid to play it's gonna be mostly country music. How does the reality sound? How's your chicken picking? You got a tele? Welcome to the music business. You really have no idea what you are even asking tbh. Hopefully my post has induced some rage and inspired you to say "I'll show that asshole". If you're annoyed now, wait till you get a taste of the business firsthand. You got no idea my man.....
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I have no idea what a "beast of a jazz guitarist" looks like, and I'm rather certain that I don't even want to find out
But as a general rule of thumb I'd say that you would have to be a late-blooming prodigy if you started to play musical instruments at 16 only and hope to become a great player without an added who got a very late start.
At least you still consider yourself young at 26, so maybe your timeline is still shifted by 10 years compared to others
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Dawgbone speaks the truth, unfortunately. It's easier when you're 16 because someone is usually feeding and housing you, so if you treat any schooling as secondary to your Jazz learning, you can put in 8 hrs a day no problem, may of us did!
But unless you're a kept man (nice gig if you can get it), at 26 you'd be lucky to find a decent 2 hours per day. But seriously, aim for that anyway, you most likely won't end up being a "beast" on the instrument, but you will get a reward commensurate with your investment if you stick at it. Artistic expression through Jazz, whether there is an audience or not, is it's own reward. Fair dinkum.
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I would say you are not mathematically eliminated.
The thing will be, once you have some stuff together, will there be anybody to play jazz with in your neck of the woods? Jazz is communal music.
I spent my 20's getting decent at "solo guitar." But solo guitar really isn't jazz...
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I've posted this one before, but it's appropriate again (towards the end) Originally Posted by DawgBone
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Well this post is........ something. One of the worst I have seen on the forum. We're calling people quitters now who are looking for advice? Originally Posted by DawgBone
No, it is not too late. To reach heights of fame and tour the world? Maybe, but that is unachievable for most if not 99.999% of us. I think Christian nailed it above. If you truly LOVE the music and you feel that this music is something you want to spend your life time pursuing, regardless of fame or success or labels like "great" then go for it. If it is only to gig, make money, etc then maybe not. It is a ton of work and there really are no shortcuts or "hacks". I played guitar since I was 12/13 and was in successful "rock" bands, but got the jazz bug later as well and did not really seriously start working on it until 26 or so. I couldn't shed the bug, and jazz became all I listened to and practiced for awhile. So I went back and studied it academically over the last few years. Some will hate on the an academic path for learning the music, but for me it was exactly what I needed to play with those better than me (which truly is an amazing learning tool), to be in ensembles and groups I would not have had access to while learning, and study with amazing teachers and players. I would never consider myself "great" or having "made it", but now in my 30's I get to gig (typically for little pay outside of lucking into corporate stuff) and perform the music I love regularly with good friends starting in my 30's and its taken me on some great adventures.
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To be fair, the OP wanted to know if it was too late to be a "beast". DG was just telling it like it is, tough love and all that. It's the way some of us choose to inspire others. Your story should be an inspiration to the OP also. Originally Posted by Paulie2
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If you go to a jazz school in your late 20's, you'll get to play some corporate gigs in your 30's. That's true. Whether you can get real jazz gigs in venues where the real jazz listeners go to really depends on the city you live in and how good a player you become. Originally Posted by Paulie2
You went to a jazz school which means you got several advantages:
- You could dedicate many hours a day with full time focus on practicing and playing with higher level players for 3-4 years.
- You get to meet people who'll be valuable contacts to get gigs.
- Let's admit it, being a jazz school graduate also gives you prestige and a sense of entitlement which makes getting gigs easier than a homebrew guitarist.
So unless the OP is considering going to a jazz school, your experience isn't gonna be too relevant for him.
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Here's a flip side, you can totally do this. I can find 2 hours a day with a real grown up career job, a wife and 2 kids aged 6 and 8. Don't drink and watch youtube at night, practice instead. Most of the TV shows people talk about I have no idea, sports... forget about it. I'll be practicing.
As far as gigs, make your own band or else you'll be playing stuff that's not what you like. You can find gigs as a jazz band, I'm 60 miles south of Chicago and I can find gigs out here in the corn fields for my band.
Also, at this point, I'm not even that good. Once you leave your house it's not all about being a beast of a player. You have to be a reliable team player and someone that people want to be around. If you can get a band through a tune, you're good enough to be out there.
Dawgbone is right that the market is flooded with guitar players, but a lot of them are old alcoholics who turn their amps up too loud and forget the songs they've been playing for 30 years. Just try to be better than that.
I moved from rudimentary Johnny Cash and The Kinks rock to Jazz 4 years ago, when I was 36. I was just terrible at guitar then, didn't even know the major scale. I went to the local music store and got lessons with a very talented blues and rock player. He showed me how to practice, how to learn things by ear on youtube. I brought in a lead sheet for Stardust once, we read through 4 bars in a half hour, he showed me how to take on something big and just chip away at it little by little. COVID ended that, by the time things opened back up, I could record myself and hear what I was missing, another thing he showed me. I took a few video lessons with a forum member and they helped a lot too. I still use the things we talked about and practice modified versions of the exercises Del showed me.
It's a long winded way to say, yeah, you can play jazz if you start at 26. It's a lot of work, but if you enjoy the work, it's a whole lot of fun.
Also, find your personal strengths and exploit them. For me, I had a job where I had to cold call and email places for sales, it was a bidding process... anyway, my job was to contact and follow up with places who said they wanted our services. I had to track when I contacted them what they said, when to call back. It's exactly the same way you get gigs. My strong point is I can book the gigs, and if you can book gigs, the guys won't mind propping you up a little when you play, it's how I can play with guys so much better than myself.
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Holy crap! Man, some of you guys really are depressing and discouraging. Make sure you make it clear if/when you're applying sarcasm to your responses, because some of them read like "no, you're already too old;" "younger guys already have you beat;" "you'll eventually become discouraged and give up, realizing that you wasted your time," etc.
Sheesh. . . years of emotional therapy in the making!
There are several different (and some almost mutually exclusive) fundamentals at work in this scenario:
1. In your mid 20s, you are roughly 10 years older than someone who starts practicing seriously in their teens. So what?
2. People live longer now than they did decades ago. Wes died at 45. You may hopefully have a LOT more years to put into it.
3. Age is just a number
4. NOBODY on this forum has perfected playing jazz, or is an "expert," or has nothing left to learn, musically or otherwise. NOBODY. There is no such thing. Improving is a life-long endeavor.
5. There isn't much of a market for playing jazz in "bars." That has nothing to do with you.
6. The "music business" has nothing to do with personal fulfilment, unless your goal is to make a living and support a family playing jazz in bars, in which case a closer evaluation of the economics may be in order.
OP, if you LOVE to play, and you were born with some inherent talent, and you're focused and determined, you'll get to where you want to (and are able to) go. Maybe that's not going to be achieving worldwide fame and a following that empowers you to become wealthy playing jazz guitar. But there is a whole world of opportunity out there to do something you love and have FUN and maybe make a few bucks in the process.
To discourage that is irresponsible and unconscionable to me. You guys that say "don't bother..." I hope you don't teach.
It's one thing to say that the music business sucks or that there's no market anymore for jazz or that it's gonna be tough... but it's quite different to advise someone in their 20s that it's not worth pursuing a dream. If that were the case, there would be NO WALT DISNEY WORLD and no HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE!
The key to living is in the TRYING. OP, if you're willing to do what it takes, including making some sacrifices, do it. Don't let anyone stop you.
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I agree with most of this, except the many hours a day part.... did while having a full time job and a family so the hours were whenever could be fit in with that schedule, typically with 4-5 hours sleep a night. Also I dont think the entitlement from having a degree helps in anyway getting gigs. No one booking at a club or venue could really care on if you have a degree or not. Most of the best players in my town on gigs do not have one. Originally Posted by Tal_175
By no means is school the only way. In fact for some it is the worse way, just depending on what someone needs. It is what I needed to have the discipline to stick with it and practice, and i also had a goal of teaching in the future so the degrees were needed. Without school you could still follow a similar path:
- Study with a teacher to speed up growth
- Find those who are better with you and try to play with them and seek their advice
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Agreed...but we need to know if that's even a possibility for the OP. Originally Posted by Paulie2
I mean, does he live in NYC or rural South Dakota?
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Plenty of online options now a days for a teacher, but yeah the musicians to play with part can be a challenge depending on location Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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My biggest pet peeve is someone coming up to me at MY gig, telling me I can't get gigs playing jazz. When we are literally at a gig I booked and I'm playing jazz. Originally Posted by Fusionshred
It does depend on the jazz, I'm doing Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington tunes. Not Ornette Coleman or Love Supreme Coltrane.
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Guys, he said his goal is to be able to get some gigs at bars. This is hardly an unachievable feat at 26
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if you're willing to put in the work, you can certainly get good enough to play jazz in bars while your "young." I'm not sure how you're defining young: 27? 35? Originally Posted by Zlobert98
Learn tunes. First and foremost. Learn the chords ( make an effort to learn the correct chords, not the chords in the real book 5th edition, which are not necessarily correct). Learn the melodies. Learn the lyrics, if any. Listen to as many different recordings of the tune, your learning as you can, so that you can hear what the variational possibilities are. A couple of months ago I was hired for a gig, which included tunes I already knew but three tunes I didn't, one of which was "Moment's Notice" by John Coltrane, another was "Spain" by Chick Corea and the third was "Joy Spring" by Clifford Brown. I shedded those three tunes intensively for weeks before the gig and found that it raised my level of playing everywhere else.
Get a teacher. Somebody who already knows how to play jazz can steer you through learning what you need to learn in terms of the basics and to have the foundation necessary. I think it's best if that teacher is a local player who you can take lessons in person with, but if you can find someone who knows how to teach online that might work too. if you want to learn to sound like "jazz" in the sense of having strong roots in the tradition of the music, the Barry Harris approach might get you there quicker than just about anything else.
It's really helpful to learn how to read music well. I don't, it has made my development as a guitarist much more difficult. If you can read, it's a lot easier to use resources to learn some of the stuff. Go through the Mel Bay and or William Leavitt series of books, if you haven't already, to get the basics of the instrument under your fingers.
Learn how to set up a practice session so that you're not wasting time with it. The greats among jazz musicians are known for their ability to practice 8 to 10 hours a day in a focused and purposeful manner.
Connect with local jazz players and start playing with them. They will point out your deficiencies, give you helpful tips, maybe kick your ass when it's necessary. If there is a rehearsal band that you can join in the area, that might be ideal. along with this, it's also important not to be a dick. It's already been mentioned above, but being reliable, easy to get along with, having some humility when dealing with others, will go along way to helping you have the opportunities you need to have. If you're good enough and a little bit lucky, a bandleader might start using you in their band and that's the ticket to getting your foot in the door. Everybody starts as a side man.
Understand that bar gigs suck. Club gigs are a little better because the audience is there expressly to listen to music, but jazz clubs are rare these days and you have to be a known name in the area to get gigs there. Also, getting gigs is more about your hustle offstage than it is about your hours in the practice room. The business of the music business is completely divorced from the skill set of becoming a good musician. As Hunter S. Thompson observed, "the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
And last but not least, "mastering" jazz is an infinite goal and no one ever gets there, although a lot of people have gotten farther down the road than me in my 40+ years of playing guitar. But for me, it's always been an enthusiastic avocation while I enjoyed having a really positive career (from which I'm just retiring) and played the music for love and enjoyment.
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There's plenty of time to become a good jazz guitarist, maybe even an excellent one, if you put the work in. Listen, transcribe, practice, get out to jams, be very critical and honest with yourself about your skill level and where you need to improve.
Also important to understand just how saturated the market is. Here in NYC there are dozens and dozens of really great young guitarists who could all be playing gigs at the top clubs, with jazz undergrad programs pumping new ones out every year and people from all over the world moving here. When I was in Philly there were probably still 10-20 and a lot fewer gigs. The chances of really standing out on talent alone are pretty low. Getting gigs seems to be a lot more about knowing the right people than being the best. None of this to say don't try, but it's important to understand the magnitude of the task lol.
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Best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.
Second best time ? Right now!
Just try to be the best player that you can be.
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