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Today I was thinking about the fact that in most of the things I've done in life, there was information I acquired later that would have helped immensely back when I was starting out. Are there any books, methods, scales, tidbits of information, etc. that you think would have helped you a lot back when you were a beginning jazz guitar player?
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08-27-2011 05:29 PM
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Band In A Box, computers, jazz theory studies....
wiz
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Internet.
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+1 on that!!
Originally Posted by Vihar
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Don't play jazz.
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Great topic for a thread. I'd say go to see lots of live music. If you're going to listen to recorded music listen to non guitar players, sax players, trumpet, piano (especially) and acquire the skills needed to hear what's going on around you. Play along with records, and I'm not talking necessarily about play-alongs, but good jazz records, George Mraz, Hank Mobley, Clifford Brown, Joe Lovano, Josh Redman, Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch... Listen to these guys play and play along like you were invited to sit in. You'll pick up on phrasing, you'll learn how to get sounds on the instrument and you'll get a lesson every time you do it.
These things really helped me break out of my own "clouds of practice."
David
Yeah,
this is good advice too! Originally Posted by Stackabones
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Originally Posted by Stackabones
Polka, Here I come!!!
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That's some interesting advice right there. Originally Posted by Stackabones
I'd probably be perfectly content to go back to playing solely acoustic fingerstyle stuff, but I feel like I need a more creative, social outlet for music. Besides, I'm sure playing in my school's combo and big band this year will be great fun. The vastness of knowledge on the subject out there is really intimidating right now, but I'm trying to immerse myself in the music and theory as much as I can.
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That is more than most 16 year old's I know do!! Good for you!
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I wish someone would have turned me on to jazz much earlier.
On a related note, at one point, my uncle was bemoaning a similar "when you're young, nobody tells you ..." and my mom retorted, "We were telling you - you weren't listening."
Whenever this topic comes up, I always think about who might have been telling me something valuable when I wasn't listening (or was thinking I knew better) ...
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I wish that I had first learned simple 2-note voicings for chords (as shown in Fareed Haque's TrueFire course), instead of killing myself memorizing all drop-2s in all inversions on all string sets for all 7th chord types. I would have been a lot better off assimilating a couple of simple voicings, and then working on my time feel. The fancy sh*t could have waited.
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I still consider myself a "beginner" haha, but uhh I guess there are 3 things I wished I would've known when I first started out.
1) Disclaimer: playing the guitar well is deceptively difficult.
It's one of the easiest instruments to pick up on, yet one of the hardest to master (and even then, there's still more to learn).
2) Keep it simple stupid.
Maybe it's just me, but I try to take on way more than I can handle. It took me a while to realize that slow and steady (and baby steps) wins the race :P
3) No, you can't play *insert favorite guitar solo* in two weeks
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Man- I wish I'd found so many things! I am a slow learner, so it is best for me to learn the right things because it takes a LOT of time just integrate the new material into my playing.
I wish I'd found Bert Ligon's work on "Jazz Theory" and improv instead of Mark Levine's book. I spent a decade getting things wrong and improvising meaningless lines that never fit the music in a way I truly liked. Knowing "modal interchange", secondary dominants, and neighboring keys eirlier would have been nice. A little functional harmony mixed with modal thinking goes a long way!
I also wish that people didn't push their "beliefs" of what is expected as a guitarist. "Oh yeah- so-n-so is a serious LA studio shredding MONSTER; you have to like him and aspire to exceed his abilities!" In the end, I still love the ideas and restraint that Bill Evans, Miles, and others had while they innovated their art. Being a "badass" is such a waste if you're doing it just to get a testosterone fix, IMHO. Play what you like and emulate your heroes; be yourself! There is no competition.
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I wish someone had told me to learn bebop sooner. I finally started to understand jazz when I learned some great bebop licks.
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When I was 12-yrs-old I learned D, G, and A. G was such a tough chord for my little fingers. My schoolmate showed me how to play "Sylvia's Mother" which was top of the charts at that time. I dreaded the chorus which was when the big move to G happened. I wish I had known that playing the guitar is so much easier when all 4 fingers are strong and energy is properly balanced and distributed. It would have saved me years of hard work at a later age getting my pinky developed correctly.
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Likewise. That's where Bert Ligon and Bird came in for me. Originally Posted by Kman
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1. Start transcribing asap! Originally Posted by happa95
2. Be patient with yourself, jazz is a deep art form.
3. HAVE FUN!!!
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Originally Posted by FatJeff
I, too, wish I had been told early on about those moving 2-note 3/7 voicings. It's a profound, fundamental, yet digestible concept that would have made jazz guitar seem much more approachable for me when I was younger.
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+1 Originally Posted by Jazzpunk
1. Start transcribing asap!
2. Be patient with yourself, jazz is a deep art form.
3. HAVE FUN!!!
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12-bar blues progressions
12-bar jazz blues progressions
16-bar progressions
8-bar progressions
TriadsLast edited by edspyhill01; 08-29-2011 at 10:57 PM. Reason: Add
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"It's times like this that make me wish I had listened to what my mother told me!" Originally Posted by M-ster
I wish someone would have turned me on to jazz much earlier.
On a related note, at one point, my uncle was bemoaning a similar "when you're young, nobody tells you ..." and my mom retorted, "We were telling you - you weren't listening."
Whenever this topic comes up, I always think about who might have been telling me something valuable when I wasn't listening (or was thinking I knew better) ...
"Why? What did she say?"
"I don't know, I wasn't listening!"
I spend a good deal of time just noodling without any real direction, probably should fix that sometime soon...
And lack of people to play with.
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I wish I would have practiced with my right hand alone. Once I started to concentrate on my picking exercises, and switched from the larger Dunlop XLs to the smaller sized Stiffos, I made more progress in 3 months than I had the entire year before that time.
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Learn as many tunes as you can. Play with other musicians as often as you can (esp. if they're better than you).
When improvising, try to hear what's in your head and play it.
Imagine yourself singing or humming and play what you imagine.
Practice like h*** so that you can execute what you hear in your head.
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Hey guys, anyone give tips on what double stops to use in major, harmonic minor, diminish and pentatonic scales. I worked my own methods but wonder of other peoples methods. Here's mine- major I use 3rds+b3rds or 6ths+b6ths resolving any 6th+root with a 5th+root. the same with harmonic minor. Diminish I use either b5ths or alternate 4ths and 3rds. Pentatonic I use alternate 4ths and 3rds. over Blues or dominant 7ths I use a Diminish scale without the b2nd b5 notes and harmonise the remainder as 5ths+b5ths. These seem work to my ear. I use this method to create extra harmonies over a particular chord.
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Learn arpeggios! Say the scale degrees out loud as you play: "one, three, five, seven..."
Play arp's through a chord progression that you know well, but stick to one area of the guitar neck to force you to use all possible arp shapes. This will also help your solo lines to flow as you learn to connect guide tones by starting an arp on a note other than the root.
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Any other bakers on here?
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