Thinking while playing guitar

[dallasblues]

Hey guys. I'm a jazz newbie but have been taking lessons from an instructor for about a year and a half focusing entirely on jazz. Prior to that, I played mostly traditional blues and occasional country or rock for about 20 years. With those styles all I needed to improvise the solo was to know the key the song was in. It was simple, as long as I knew that I just had a couple of scales in which I could play around with endlessly. Now jazz is a different animal, and a frustrating one. There are a few tunes I've learned where that process could be applied. But it seems a different approach is needed for most others. An understanding of each chord in a progression, it's arpeggios, and corresponding scales are pretty important. However, being able to instantly recall these things and to quickly know the 3rds and 7ths of every chord is proving to be very very hard for me. Are there any tricks or suggestions for how to do this? My mind simply doesn't compute this stuff quickly enough to be able to do anything. Like I said, I'm used to being able to fly around a given scale... as long as its the only scale I'm using. Not a separate one for every single chord.

[mr. beaumont]

Honestly, years and years of practice.

[hans halmackenreuter]

I have a good advice for you. Try to learn this stuff without guitar, just in your mind but with a pulse or metronome. after you know the notes just try to imagine your fretboard and than play them in time (still in your mind) the guidetones for example.

you can try this with a melody, a scale, etc.

[ecj]

With those styles all I needed to improvise the solo was to know the key the song was in. It was simple, as long as I knew that I just had a couple of scales in which I could play around with endlessly.

I think what you're going to find as you start learning more is that you were wrong in thinking that a couple scales were all you needed to solo over anything. You need to really get inside understanding the theory of how the chords move and how the notes you play above them are related. It will make you sound better in any setting.

There's nothing more cringe-worthy than a rocker playing a minor pentatonic scale over a chord progression that doesn't mesh with it. Even B.B. King knows when he's over the I, IV or V.

[MattC]

Dallas, I recall you had another thread recently expressing frustration with transitioning into jazz. Again, as Mr. B rightly says, it just takes a long time. Stick with it and focus on enjoying the journey. Work on jazz as much as you can and want to, but you're not going to forget other stuff probably. Working on jazz will likely only help your blues and other playing.

I also played trad blues primarily for a long time and for the vast majority of my paid gigs. In my personal experience slowly learning and transitioning to playing jazz, I've observed many key differences. Here are a few, some are obvious, others maybe less so. Again, this is just my own experience. Your mileage may vary.

Compared to straight blues guitar playing, jazz guitar playing involves:

-much more complex harmony much of the time. More complex and much greater quantity of individual harmonic structures, more complex progressions, quicker movement of chords, heightened importance of voice leading.

-longer lines, and more phrasing "over the bar lines"

-often (not always) more rhythmic variety in lines, and in comping

-more attention given to developing clean and consistent right hand technique. Whereas blues guitar playing usually involves lots of left hand slurs, jazz guitar often demands lots of work with picking.

-specific types of articulations and effects you will often hear in jazz guitar playing that you don't hear much in straight blues. Jazz players use slides and other slurs in ways I've not heard from most blues players. Much less bending of strings, and usually only for specific effect.

So it's indeed a whole different animal as you wrote. But, don't despair, blues is a great foundation from which to approach jazz. It does take a lot of work though.

Matt

[dallasblues]

Dallas, I recall you had another thread recently expressing frustration with transitioning into jazz. Again, as Mr. B rightly says, it just takes a long time. Stick with it and focus on enjoying the journey. Work on jazz as much as you can and want to, but you're not going to forget other stuff probably. Working on jazz will likely only help your blues and other playing.

I also played trad blues primarily for a long time and for the vast majority of my paid gigs. In my personal experience slowly learning and transitioning to playing jazz, I've observed many key differences. Here are a few, some are obvious, others maybe less so. Again, this is just my own experience. Your mileage may vary.

Compared to straight blues guitar playing, jazz guitar playing involves:

-much more complex harmony much of the time. More complex and much greater quantity of individual harmonic structures, more complex progressions, quicker movement of chords, heightened importance of voice leading.

-longer lines, and more phrasing "over the bar lines"

-often (not always) more rhythmic variety in lines, and in comping

-more attention given to developing clean and consistent right hand technique. Whereas blues guitar playing usually involves lots of left hand slurs, jazz guitar often demands lots of work with picking.

-specific types of articulations and effects you will often hear in jazz guitar playing that you don't hear much in straight blues. Jazz players use slides and other slurs in ways I've not heard from most blues players. Much less bending of strings, and usually only for specific effect.

So it's indeed a whole different animal as you wrote. But, don't despair, blues is a great foundation from which to approach jazz. It does take a lot of work though.

Matt

Thanks for the insight Matt. The way you just explained it really helps. Fortunately I've moved beyond that bout of frustration somewhat. And I've been having some success, albeit very small successes, with using 3rds and 7ths of chords in a progression to outline a solo. So far, my solos are very sparse and have lots of space at this stage. So I can see that it will indeed come. I guess I'm just kinda impatient.

[henryrobinett]

I think the approach is exactly like flying all over playing the blues. With jazz it's simply more complicated. There's just more stuff. I'd take three simple jazz tunes. Start with one. Learn the location of the notes, the 3rds, 7ths, roots, modes, parent scales and have a field day. Listen to other soloists playing the same song. Listen to other instrumentalists not just guitar players. Get the sound, notes and phrasing in your head. But you have to take one thing at a time and not get overwhelmed by the complexity. Find the 3rds and connect them from chord to chord. It's not going to feel very creative at first. That's ok. It's an exercise. Connect the modes from chord to chord. It won't feel very creative at first. But it will.

[pierre richard]

You knew you came to the right place to learn...right?

Great advice already given by others above already...

It takes time...the island of jazz is big so the coastline is long...

Proceed slowly and digest on thing at a time...yes it will take time..

but better play one song complete and sounding like jazz than play 10 or 15 songs that all need work...

time on the instrument...

[rkwestcoast]

Check out Kenny Werner - he addresses this problem directly and gives IMHO really good advice on the different approaches need in terms of practising - which is all about thinking & playing which is not!

[3625]

All good advice by the previous posters, yep, hard work, give it about 10 years - my 2c - if you play a lot of blues, check out how rockabilly players outline the three chords of a 12 bar blues (I, IV & V), those cats are heavily influenced by Charlie Christian and play a lot of his licks/phrases. It's a good middle ground to jazz, you're still making the changes but less info for the brain to process, and you can have fun while you're still learning all the heavy jazz stuff.

Dallas, which jazz guitarists do you want to emulate? Jazz guitar is pretty broad, do you want to play bebop on standards, or something different to that?

[ricflauding]

I'm new to this forum, but not to playing (and composing-arranging-orchestrating).
I am happy to help with questions. I teach guitar (mostly in the jazz arena) have many albums and have done hundreds of sessions (mostly LA - I now live in Texas). Someone above posted (I believe) about learning your chord tines and perhaps away from the instrument - good advise. I have studied with guys like Horace Hatchett who taught multiple scale choices through various chords and also with Barney Kessel who tended to focus on a general "home key" with chromatic alterations to fit chords. That is how I tend to approach things as it is just easier on the head when I am playing (improvising).
I teach composition (and all related subjects) at a college and am also a theory instructor who knows both the traditional approach and the (lets call it "commercial" - including jazz) approach. I personally enjoy the commercial approach as it is generally more practical, especially in jazz guitar. If anyone is interested, I also teach privately via the internet and through online companies (composition-realated subjects) theory / guitar. Thank you. Ric Flauding

[fumblefingers]

i would work with Garrison Fewell's books, especially the first one (Melodic Approach).

Furthermore, you must work on "jazz patterns" for specific progressions. by this i mean the obvious ones at a minimum (II-V in major, ii-V in minor, turnarounds, blues in major and minor, rhythm changes, coltrane changes, modal, etc). There are many great pattern books out there. people have mentioned Bert Ligon's as of late.

start with blues, then II-V in major, then just keep going...

[mwtzzz]

Hey guys. I'm a jazz newbie but have been taking lessons from an instructor for about a year and a half focusing entirely on jazz. Prior to that, I played mostly traditional blues and occasional country or rock for about 20 years. With those styles all I needed to improvise the solo was to know the key the song was in. It was simple, as long as I knew that I just had a couple of scales in which I could play around with endlessly. Now jazz is a different animal,

Yep trying to fit a pentatonic scale over jazz changes just doesn't work very well.

and a frustrating one.

I love helping frustrated musicians because there's an easy way for the light bulb to go on.

The purpose of a chord progression in jazz and pop music is to establish a tonality. The tonality may be the permanent tonality of the key of the song, or a temporary tonality given by a tonic chord that appears somewhere in the song. The chords that approach this tonic chord are leading up to it, the chords on the other side are departing from it.

The purpose of improvising is also to establish and depart from those tonal centers, but with improvisation you do not necessarily have to follow the "written changes." You may establish tonality by picking and choosing from a standard set of "scales" or "scale pieces" and by targeting and emphasizing the appropriate tones of the tonic chord so that the listener recognizes a tonal center.

so the first thing you do is listen to your song and identify the tonic chords.
then, ignore completely the "written changes" and start developing lines to establish each of those tonic chords. this means you will need to know which key each of those chords is in, and you'll need to play around a little with a couple scales, and learn a little about reharmonizing.

But keep in the mind the following: when playing with a group and for an audience, it usually almost never matters what notes you play, as long as there is a structure and logical order to the lines you are creating. you could in many cases be in a different key than the rest of the band but if you are sticking to a structured improvisation that establishes a tonality, then it's fine.

(of course, you want to try to establish tonal centers that correspond to the same ones the band/melody/song establishes)


now, you can successfully apply the "pentatonic" scale approach if you do the following:

- identify key modulations in the song
- for each key modulation, use either the Imajor pentatonic or the VIminor pentatonic
- work on developing an articulate "phrasing" that establishes and departs from the tonalities

this works as long as there aren't too many chromatic changes or complex reharmonizations. what you end up with here is diatonic improvisation, and there's nothing wrong with that. some beautiful lines can be made from that.

Now, once you get comfortable with that, then realize something: with the pentatonic scale you are avoiding the key's "iv" tone. This "iv" tone is an important harmonic tone because it represents a departure from the harmony provided by the pentatonic scale. At this point, you can start incorporating that "iv" tone in your improvisation as a harmonic departure. Then you can return back to the original tonality by using the pentatonic scale which avoids it. ... Again, we are still diatonic, but now we're a little more complex and a little more interesting.

[bondmorkret]

Interesting question, and an issue that most people face at first when playing jazz guitar. I guess the best thing to do is to try to always read ahead, and practice improvising at seriously slow tempos, slower than you'd think necessary. Then the thinking will gradually become automated, but it'll take time!

[docbop]

Interesting question, and an issue that most people face at first when playing jazz guitar. I guess the best thing to do is to try to always read ahead, and practice improvising at seriously slow tempos, slower than you'd think necessary. Then the thinking will gradually become automated, but it'll take time!

Write out solos and play them. Writing a solo is slow speed improv, same thought process.

[jazzuki]

The great Joe Pass,when asked what he was thinking about whilst playing was " I have to remember to pick a pint of milk at the corner store on my way home tonight".Sounds right to me

[mwtzzz]

The great Joe Pass,when asked what he was thinking about whilst playing was " I have to remember to pick a pint of milk at the corner store on my way home tonight".Sounds right to me

Same thing with Victor Borge (a virtuoistic improvisor in his younger years). In one of his live recorded performances, he joked about the tendency of his mind to wander while playing the piano. He might be playing a Debussy piece and find himself taking interest in a moth flying around the room.

[colski]

I get quite a few pupils wanting to learn how to play "jazz guitar", some from scratch, some from a rock/blues background, some formally and classically trained. Every pupil needs to be treated individually, and I need to be realistic and retain pupils by giving them attainable goals and enjoyable lessons.

But sometimes, just SOMETIMES when someone asks me to teach them "jazz guitar" I'm tempted to say "go away for 3 years, learn ALL the scales, ALL the arpeggios, ALL the chords PLUS a couple of hundred jazz melodies. Then come back to me and we can get started."

But then I wouldn't have many pupils.

[mwtzzz]

But sometimes, just SOMETIMES when someone asks me to teach them "jazz guitar" I'm tempted to say "go away for 3 years, learn ALL the scales, ALL the arpeggios, ALL the chords PLUS a couple of hundred jazz melodies. Then come back to me and we can get started."

But then I wouldn't have many pupils.

Yeah, jazz actually requires an obsessive personality to make it work. You have to go the extra mile as far as practicing stuff around the circle of fifths in all 12 keys and all of that. It requires a lot of thought, reflection and tons of devotion in the beginning stages, unlike simpler forms of music where you might be able to get away with playing more by ear or intuition. Nobody starts out playing jazz by ear (except rare people like Billy Strayhorn or Bud Powell or Hampton Hawes). And when I say "playing jazz" I mean real jazz, not watered-down diatonic version of jazz. Even Mulgrew Miller said that when he formed a jazz band in high school, he didn't realize until some years later that they weren't actually playing jazz, they were only "approximating it" (his words.)

I've known several musicians who I would classify as having an almost OCD type of personality.

[targuit]

All good contributions to the topic here. It's a bit funny to me that so often in these discussions about learning to play jazz and improvise I so rarely hear the suggestion to use your ears. People talk about "what scale to use over a specific chord". I am more in the camp of 'tonal centers' and using your intuition. In that regard I think actually learning songs (another piece of Joe Pass advice - "as many as you can") is the best approach. This is not to diss theory and technique. It is learning how to create the music you hear or would like to create in your mind. After all, theory is a kind of analytic explanation of what sounds good and why. It is not a substitute for creativity, technique, and experience.

I love that Bill Evans quote (and Bill Evans playing) from Docbop:

“Everybody has to learn certain things, but when you play, the intellectual process no longer has anything to do with it.” -Bill Evans. So true.

[randalljazz]

“Everybody has to learn certain things, but when you play, the intellectual process no longer has anything to do with it.” -Bill Evans. So true.

unfortunately, with this and similar quotes, the latter part is what is offered as truth, with the first part conveniently ignored.

[Reg]

Hey Randall...
That's a really good point, how many players get close to playing as well as Bill Evens. At least to the level of playing where his quote might actually apply.

[ColinO]

Exactly what I was thinking Reg. I can't let go of the intellectual process because I am simply not good enough. Not yet and maybe not ever. Telling me to do that leaves me wondering - well what the hell am I supposed to play then. I (and I expect most people) would have very limited success in making the music they want to make if they tried to turn off the intellectual process and just play. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little - but not much.

[mr. beaumont]

I can't help but see "use your ears" as lazy advice...if your ears aren't trained, they're useless in jazz.

All the comments about "what scale or arpeggio" over a tune are questions of practice...practice isn't just about wiggling your fingers...it's about training yourself to hear a tune and the different ways to navigate it.

THEN, you can use your ears.

[mwtzzz]

I (and I expect most people) would have very limited success in making the music they want to make if they tried to turn off the intellectual process and just play. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little - but not much.

I agree with this. And I completely agree with mr. Beaumont's post.