The Pathway?

[Stevie-A.]

Hello fellow guitarists,

I discovered Dirk's site a few weeks ago and think it's absolutely great.

I downloaded the free e-books and bought the "Chord Melody" and "Autumn Leaves" courses. And all the other detailed stuff in the blogs interests me too. I want to learn everything but recently I'm - totally overwhelmed.

Which is the right way to stay focussed?

I think to stay in one course without distraction, right? And what is the best practice routine to memorize? Shall one learn example by heart? Seems impossible to me.

I play guitar since 50 years and now I'm starting with Jazz. Maybe someone can answer my questions, that would be great.

Best wishes
Stefan, from Berlin

[Strat-itis]

My opinion is it's best to work from a tune, that way it doesn't get too comprehensive or irrelevant. You need to be able to play the head and solo, so organize what goes into this and then prioritize what aspects work best for your or you like the sound of best.

[Tal_175]

At the stage you are in I think it makes sense to have longer term goals to organize how and what you practice. That way you won't feel overwhelmed all the time.

For example you can have the following goals for the next two years:
- Learn 10 carefully chosen tunes really well.
- Focus only on the major scale and get to a point where you can voice-lead arpeggios freely over these tunes in 8th notes.
- Learn a reasonable set of working musicians voicings (Joe Pass Chords book is a great source) and make sure you can play them over the 10 tunes.
- Learn the notes on the fretboard.
- Learn 10 idiomatic single note ideas per 5 main chord types. Start alternating them with the arpeggios over tunes.

Pay attention to the intervals you play in the arpeggios and chord voicings. Don't just learn them is grips and dots. Getting good at your awareness of intervallic relationships will allow you to develop a more unified view of the fretboard later on where you can access scale notes and other voicings/extensions freely.

If you are a serios student, I think two years is a realistic goal. You won't be playing like the masters on the records yet but these will provide a solid foundation going forward.

[joe2758]

You will progress literally 3-5 times faster if you can find a GOOD teacher

[AllanAllen]

I think to stay in one course without distraction, right? And what is the best practice routine to memorize? Shall one learn example by heart? Seems impossible to me.

Specifically to this, and specifically at the beginning of your journey. Don't memorize and perfect every example before moving onto the next one. Beginner material should build upon itself and if you are familiar with an example, move onto the next one.

If you want to talk memorizing tunes, most tunes are some kind of form, AABA, ABAC, Blues. Split up the form and learn one section at a time, review it as much as possible. Small 2 minute practice sessions help here. Where you pick up the guitar and play the thing you're trying to memorize, then put the guitar down and move on with your day.

Happy to go over a specific song if you want, but I also don't want to overwhelm you with more information.

[charlieparker]

At the stage you are in it makes sense to have longer term goals to organize how and what you practice. That way you won't feel overwhelmed all the time.

For example you can have the following goals for the next two years:
- Learn 10 carefully chosen tunes really well.
- Focus only on the major scale and get to a point where you can voice-lead arpeggios freely over these tunes in 8th notes.
- Learn a reasonable set of working musicians voicings (Joe Pass Chords book is a great source) and make sure you can play them over the 10 tunes.
- Learn the notes on the fretboard.
- Learn 10 idiomatic single note ideas per 5 main chord types. Start alternating them with the arpeggios over tunes.

Pay attention to the intervals you play in the arpeggios and chord voicings. Don't just learn them is grips and dots. Getting good at your awareness of intervallic relationships will allow you to develop a more unified view of the fretboard later on where you can access scale notes and other voicings/extensions freely.

If you are a serios student, I think two years is a realistic goal. You won't be playing like the masters in the records yet but these will provide a solid foundation going forward.

Solid advice. What are 10 tunes you would recommend. I have been focusing on Blues for Alice, Scrapple From the Apple, and I Got Rhythm (Dexterity) but I am beginning to think Bebop tunes are too hard to start with and standards are probably easier.

[charlieparker]

Hello fellow guitarists,

I discovered Dirk's site a few weeks ago and think it's absolutely great.

I downloaded the free e-books and bought the "Chord Melody" and "Autumn Leaves" courses. And all the other detailed stuff in the blogs interests me too. I want to learn everything but recently I'm - totally overwhelmed.

Which is the right way to stay focussed?

I think to stay in one course without distraction, right? And what is the best practice routine to memorize? Shall one learn example by heart? Seems impossible to me.

I play guitar since 50 years and now I'm starting with Jazz. Maybe someone can answer my questions, that would be great.

Best wishes
Stefan, from Berlin

I have some of Dirk's books and face the same challenge. What I would suggest is to work through both books simultaneously but to go slowly and have a concrete plan as to how long you will spend on each page/lesson in terms of days and time per day.

[Tal_175]

Solid advice. What are 10 tunes you would recommend. I have been focusing on Blues for Alice, Scrapple From the Apple, and I Got Rhythm (Dexterity) but I am beginning to think Bebop tunes are too hard to start with and standards are probably easier.

What I wanted to recommend in the post was a way of avoiding being overwhelmed by all the things one comes across along the journey. I think that happens when one is always wondering what they should do next. I think that's a problematic attitude that leads to the problem of infinite directions. Setting longer term goals and not losing sight of them helps with not having to make decisions day to day.

The list I proposed was an example of one set of goals that one could choose. But that depends on where the student is at, what their musical goals are etc. They can shop around and gather more ideas and recommendations.

In terms of tunes to learn, I've learned about 50 or so tunes over the years. Most of it I can't play without a chart in front of me. I don't personally have a top 10 list but Bruce Forman has a good list with explanations for each choice:
Bruce Forman's list of 10 tunes for beginners

I think at least one of the tunes should be a bebop tune as most bebop heads consists of excellent collection of 8th note bebop vocabulary.

[pamosmusic]

Solid advice. What are 10 tunes you would recommend. I have been focusing on Blues for Alice, Scrapple From the Apple, and I Got Rhythm (Dexterity) but I am beginning to think Bebop tunes are too hard to start with and standards are probably easier.

Autumn Leaves

Blues in F and Bb (Bags Groove and Sonnymoon are good candidates)

Rhythm Changes in Bb (Lester Leaps In)

That’ll do it for a minute.

[Chonker]

- Learn 10 idiomatic single note ideas per 5 main chord types. Start alternating them with the arpeggios over tunes.

Silly question I guess, but where would one get these ideas from? I know the obvious answer is from transcription or Parker heads maybe. But at the novice stage (which is also where I am) I don’t know what’s what. I get lost trying to find, catalog, memorize, and access line cliches like these (when I can find one).

And stitching them together over a tune in real time? Ugh, forget it.

Is there an accessible resource for one-measure lines based on the five main chord types?

[CliffR]

Silly question I guess, but where would one get these ideas from? I know the obvious answer is from transcription or Parker heads maybe. But at the novice stage (which is also where I am) I don’t know what’s what. I get lost trying to find, catalog, memorize, and access line cliches like these (when I can find one).

And stitching them together over a tune in real time? Ugh, forget it.

Is there an accessible resource for one-measure lines based on the five main chord types?

Christian just posted an excellent video with five key pieces of vocab that can be used for this. Hopefully he’ll be along shortly to provide the link.

[Christian Miller]

Your wish is my command

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[Christian Miller]

Silly question I guess, but where would one get these ideas from? I know the obvious answer is from transcription or Parker heads maybe. But at the novice stage (which is also where I am) I don’t know what’s what. I get lost trying to find, catalog, memorize, and access line cliches like these (when I can find one).

And stitching them together over a tune in real time? Ugh, forget it.

Is there an accessible resource for one-measure lines based on the five main chord types?

There’s only three chord types really, major, minor dominant.

IIm7b5 is IVm
Valt is the tritone sub of V7


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[Tal_175]

Silly question I guess, but where would one get these ideas from? I know the obvious answer is from transcription or Parker heads maybe. But at the novice stage (which is also where I am) I don’t know what’s what. I get lost trying to find, catalog, memorize, and access line cliches like these (when I can find one).

And stitching them together over a tune in real time? Ugh, forget it.

Is there an accessible resource for one-measure lines based on the five main chord types?

What I wanted to suggest in my post is at the stage you are in, you might want to have specific goals that focus on fundamentals in different categories in order not to feel overwhelmed by the amount of resources out there. If you just stuck to some version of the list of categories in my first post, I believe in two years you'll be ahead of some people who have been dabbling with jazz for decades. That's because it's easy to get lost in the weeds. One of the categories is vocabulary. The suggestion of 10 single note ideas per chord type is one example of a coherent goal to avoid distractions. In each category, there will be various options to choose. I don't want to tell you that there is only one way to organize your chord types and that is four. The truth is there are different ways people approach vocabulary and that is not the problem. I mean you can early on be aware of the choices available to you. None of them will be perfect but they all work with different trade-offs. But once you choose a certain approach you don't want to reevaluate your choice every two weeks and go down different rabbit holes.

I know I am not giving the answer you asked but in a thread like this I suspect people will suggest loads of specific options to choose from. I think a really good approach to vocabulary for someone who is new to the language is to learn a chorus of a good solo and mine it for the next two years. A good bebop head would do that too. That way you are exposed to the language in different scopes. Single chords to whole form. You can extract different phrasal, rhythmic and harmonic ideas from the same source without the distractions of books or youtube videos etc.