Experienced rock guitarist needs some direction playing jazz

[Reg]

Can I dump my post from earlier...

So I reread your question, Being able to play through the changes.

It's all about what or how you organize what you decide to use as melodic and harmonic material to solo with... over or through the changes.

There is what is called Common Practice, basically what has been done before, and then copied by someone else etc... eventually a standard approach or Common Practice, Jazz Common Practice becomes established.



The complicated aspect with jazz is there are choices... but I'll give a few examples,

Your playing through some changes and the melody just reflects the chord tones, the melody is constructed from chord tones from the progression. just an eight bar phrase.

Bb-9 / Eb9#11.... / C-9 .............. / F7#9b13 /

Bb-9 / Eb7#9, A13/ Abma7, G7b13/ Gb13, F7#9/

So you generally need to make a quick analysis from the melody and changes... try and understand what the compositional organization could be. so the melody is chord tones and I'm saying for simplicity, the melody implies standard harmony in a jazz style.

So The basic tonal center or "I" would be "Ab". Bb-9 to Eb9#11 is basic II V , the C-9 F7alt could either be a deceptive resolution of the V chord or and extension of subdom function if you choose to play off the Bb-9 chord.

Lets call the changes...

II-9 / V7#11...... / III-9 .......... / VI7alt,
II-9 / V7alt,bII13 / Imaj7, VIIalt / bVII13, V7alt /

So as a jazz player and as these changes suggest... I'm going to use modal concepts, each chord is going to have the possibility of being a tonal target in it's self... and the guideline of how I use the notes of each tonal target have their own guidelines, what notes are going to imply the chord characteristics.

I can also have different organizational guidelines... that are going on.... that influence all the chords, or groups of chords, maybe just the II V's, or whatever Chord Patterns I choose. I VI II V etc... This on top of the modal tonal targets.

These could be, as the changes also strongly imply.... use of Melodic Minors and Blue Notes...How I chose to organize the use of those influences has common practice.

And I could also use Modal Interchange... for organization of how I play through the changes.

So generally to get outside, your usually just using a type of relationship that creates the least amount of common tones, but still has an organized application.

Personally I use, I'll just give scales for complete note collections, I don't generally play scales etc... but they're great for verbal descriptions,

Bb dorian, Eb lydian b7, C dorian, F7altered,

Bb dorian, Eb altered, (A lydian b7), Ab Ionian, G altered, Gb lydb7, F altered

So the cool part is using the blue notes to somewhat tie the different scales together, The basic One chord or Ab would become very bluesy, not rock, but jazz bluesy or use of Melodic Minor to pull Blue notes from.

Or you could just play an Ab blues feel through all eight bars, create call and answer type of feel, one bar each. Using a maj blue sound as the call and using different answers, minor blue feel, pentatonics, blue V chord sound, whatever you like to create tension resolve with some detail to the changes.

It pretty easy for that type of improv to stand on it's own, and the changes almost become ornamentation.

I'll check my youtube site and see if I have and example... if not I'll post something simple.
Reg

[fleaaaaaa]

If he's into certain players who play certain sounds he should learn his favourite licks by ear or from a tab book - then he has the sounds he wants under his fingers.

[Kenneth]

Princeplanet, you are making judgements on excellence when we just wanted a little guidance on where to start with jazz guitar. And tough love? Tough love isn't for forums because you come off sounding like a donkey.

I'm trying to learn jazz guitar later in life. I'm very much a beginner. For something that I both respect and get a lot of joy from, some of the responses are really off putting.

What I've been trying to do is learn a jazz tune I like. Be able to comp the changes well. And then I plug that into my looper - or parts of the song. Then I apply simple ideas to each of the changes - often just a few notes. Triads, or arpeggios. Little rhythmic motifs. And, I spend some time practicing various scales I get from a teacher I meet with every 3 weeks. Often, something he shows me, I can apply to some changes I know. Approach tones...little chromatic or other 'outside' ideas. I know I'll get there, and it's fun.

Sometimes I feel discouraged by the volume of 'stuff' to learn. A couple weeks back, I was at a party. Someone asked my to play a ratty acoustic they had sitting around. I was embarrassed, but ran through Satin Doll. First just the changes...then the melody in between a few of the chords (I don't know how to fingerstyle properly)...and then riffed around a few scales/arps I knew fit the changes and a few whole-tone lines I've been practicing. The non-musical, wine influenced crowd was impressed.

It doesn't have to suck - and if it did, why bother. I have a 'job' already.

[fleaaaaaa]

Thanks for that post Kenneth, do what your doing and just have fun with it. I think one of the most satisfying things for me personally is to sit in front of friends/colleagues/family and play chord Melodies and you know what, I play them pretty much note for note. I know that some people on this forum would say "that isn't jazz then" as jazz is about improvisation, but at the end of the day it's whatever makes you feel good.

[Reg]

It's all good, and if my post put anyone off... sorry, really. There are obviously many different reasons for playing jazz guitar, and defining what that actually is. Whats good, OK fun etc... It's just music, and most people don't even really enjoy it that much.

Generally my posts aren't really for beginners, maybe even many experienced players. I have what makes me happy and feel good also...it just may be different, no right or wrong. I get great enjoyment when I make other musicians sound great in ensemble situations.

Anyway somewhat of a disclaimer... If my post don't work for you, don't worry about my BS...just skip them.
Most of my post are with somewhat becoming a proficient jazz guitarist as an end result or goal.

Its all good, do what works for you.

[AlainJazz]

It's very difficult to learn how to play outside from reading all these surely well meant, but difficult to follow textual descriptions. Take a few lessons from someone who knows how to do this and let them show you how to do it with a guitar in their hands. The DIY approach with books etc. will take a LONG time. Do yourself a favor and take some lessons from Jimmy Bruno. He has a simple approach that is easy to understand and a system for making it work. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I really believe that will truly help the OP.

[Average Joe]

My advice is simple - use your ears and sing the melody. Can you play the melody to the songs by ear in any key? Can you harmonize the melody in any key? For now I would forget about "determining which modes to play over what chord in the progression" nonsense. Until you can play what you hear, you will waste hours and years of valuable time playing "hunt and peck" with the CST business. Learn specific songs. Once you can play them by ear, then you can improvise.

If you do want to learn an approach to harmony that works pretty well, learn the harmonized scale of the major and minor keys. For example, in C: Cmaj7 - Dm7 - Em7 - F - G7 - Am7 - Bdim7 - Cmaj7. That is major. Learn the equivalent chord colors in Cmin. Start there. Don't worry about "dorian, locrian, mixolydian"...unless you want to learn to chant the modes as you play - although there is an audience for that here.

Above all else, learn specific songs, as Bucky Pizzarelli and Frank Vignola said. Bucky says "Learn one song a week for 52 weeks." Then, you can reappraise modes and CST. As far as learning the songs, start by playing the chords as arpeggios - think about it. If you can play the arpeggio, right there is a "pool of notes" in the context of which you must understand the intervals of the specific chord and the melody will "lie under your fingers". Chord study is an important element to this enterprise. But don't overintellectualize this deal - unless what you play sounds lyrical with good voice leading, it won't matter a hill of beans whether you are in dorian or mixolydian. Nada.

I'm a recovering rocker as well and very much a student rather than master of anything so take it for what it's worth: I think the highlighted is spot on. i probably learned more learning and analyzing Charlie Parker heads than from any method book. Not that those don't have valuable information or that there aren't much to be gained from for instance the Levine book, but to me things only started to make sense when I stopped focusing on CST and started focusing on songs.

I must be somewhat daft cause it took me forever to realize it too. I've been beating my head against the CST door for years without making much headway. Once I resigned myself to "oh well, I'll never be able to solo like that but at least I can learn the tunes", it started coming together. Including the soloing

[Reg]

It all comes down to you making your own choices and living with them. The more information you have from which to make these choices... generally the better the results.

You also need to understand yourself, what your capable of, how you work. Then have a plan, long term with check point and be able to adjust as needed. The length of your plan would reflect your age, where you want to get and how fast.

If we're just talking about learning or memorizing some tunes or coping some jazz examples and being able to perform them, presto call yourself a jazz player... play some jazz tunes. Nothing wrong with that.

It's just music, and it's not that complicated.

[Kenneth]

Generally my posts aren't really for beginners, maybe even many experienced players...

I don't know about that. I subscribed to your youtube channel. A lot of what you are doing, I don't understand. But, right away, I was able to get some rhythmic ideas from your comping video and apply them to both comping and the simple lines I'm trying to work out over changes. I watched it a few months later, after studying a bit, and picked up a few more things that I now understood.

[snoskier63]

Very simple suggestions. Listen to as much jazz as you can, practice playing the melodies of what you are hearing, and then practice improvising around the melodies. You can work on learning chords, modes and scales as necessary, but that should get you moving in ther right direction. Best of luck!

[matt.guitarteacher]

Generally my posts aren't really for beginners, maybe even many experienced players. I have what makes me happy and feel good also...it just may be different, no right or wrong. I get great enjoyment when I make other musicians sound great in ensemble situations.

I think I've always had an understanding that you're talking next level stuff a lot of the time, but it doesn't seem condescending . Even as a pure, living room, hobbyist, I've gotten a lot of benefit from your contributions. Most of the frustrations expressed were in response to some of the posts right before yours.

As an aspiring amateur in many respects to playing Jazz, I share that frustration, but I don't think it was aimed only at your post.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Btw, I don't know where the general tendency to crap on first time posts comes from, but I just wonder if this elitism is as prevalent among horn players for example. I just don't see that attitude elsewhere. Shouldn't we have some kind of "do no harm" clause for members with fewer than 5 posts who put up the ever popular "Where do I start?" post? (This was the OP's #1.) Goodbye.

In my own experience, I've had the good fortune to have spent small amounts of time with real jazzers who were very patient and generous. Rather than warning me in some somber way about what I was getting myself into, they dismissed my apprehensions and gave me entry-level approaches to use to be able to jam with them. I see them as true ambassadors for the music. That would have made me a bigger jazz fan even if I had stopped playing.

I'm sorry, but amateurs comping on a standard or improvising over a blues using a simple approach don't hurt the cause of jazz anymore than rec center football players "hurt" the NFL. That's just pretentious BS. Honestly, the idea that you can't enjoy jazz at different levels of competency and development is the real threat to the music. I don't see it in other disciplines/arts the way I see it in jazz, or at least here.

My kid was in jazz band in high school. He learned to play charts in a Jazz feel and improvise using a very simplistic approach. Forgive me, but that is no less jazz than the pros at the club. It's just at a different level. I don't think Miles or Louis Armstrong would tell them it isn't real music. They know what they're looking at when they see someone learning at a lower level, and most real players encourage that. If anything, those guys are at the very least your future audience. Most normal people don't appreciate a great artist who hates or disdains his fans.

Let's be real. The audience for all professional sports and music is made up of, at least to some degree , people who are actually amateur participants in said sport or musical genre, and in most disciplines where they actually care about growth of their sport etc., that's actively encouraged. The NFL knows that it helps grow the audience for professional football when they promote football at all levels. I don't think that they're concerned that amateur play will hurt their bottom line.

I know there are plenty of players of all levels on this forum as well. I personally would count myself a happier, more fulfilled person for having attempted to learn some jazz, even if I died today, having wasted all of that time and never having reached a "real" level of playing. Please.

Meanwhile, Jazz audiences shrink, and we're irritated when people "jump to the conclusion" that we're elitist bastards. Where do they get that idea from?

[fleaaaaaa]

Hi Reg. .. I watched your video lessons on youtube... to me it felt like a whirlwind. You played a lot of ideas, great ideas that I feel really only a pro would know so I can see you have played for a long time. However for me I would have to rewind it several times to get a small segment. I don't mind that element as it's really just transcribing yet I would have preferred to see fewer ideas shown and at slower tempos in chunks. The video I saw that I liked most was comping jazz blues. I can accept that you may not want to write tab out or music for a video lesson and I don't mind if you don't tell me the chord name (though that is useful) or where to put my fingers (sometimes that can be confusing) but I wish you had shown a few tricks rather than all your capable of. I guess I'm still fairly new to jazz guitar and maybe your not aiming at me, I also accept the fact that you can't judge the level of every viewer, it's impossible. I actually think that's the hardest thing about video tuition that you want to make sure people grasp the idea or concept your trying to convey. .. be it a lick or scale or theoretical concept. Judging the pace can be tricky however I felt I couldn't keep up when watching you though perhaps thats more to do with the fact I've played jazz only one year.

I don't want the above to seem critical and if it does I apologise in advance. I would say I found watching your videos a little overwhelming as it gave me the feeling of watching somebody who is a pro jazz musician who you can get new ideas for the feel aspect of playing. I feel that I prefer videos to show me bit by bit how to play something cool at this moment in my learning cycle. I think guys on here call it spoon feeding. .. I am newly born jazz musician though so for now I enjoy having it made easier as jazz can seem extremely complex.

[fleaaaaaa]

Hi Reg. .. I watched your video lessons on youtube... to me it felt like a whirlwind. Your videos are for experienced players for sure, you played a lot of ideas, great ideas that I feel really only a pro would know so I can see you have played for a long time. However for me I would have to rewind it several times to get a small segment. I don't mind that element as it's really just transcribing yet I would have preferred to see fewer ideas shown and at slower tempos in chunks. The video I saw that I liked most was comping jazz blues. I can accept that you may not want to write tab out or music for a video lesson and I don't mind if you don't tell me the chord name (though that is useful) or where to put my fingers (sometimes that can be confusing) but I wish you had shown a few tricks rather than all your capable of. I'm still fairly new to jazz guitar and you're not aiming at me, I also accept the fact that you can't judge the level of every viewer, it's impossible. I actually think that's the hardest thing about video tuition that you want to make sure people grasp the idea or concept your trying to convey. .. be it a lick or scale or theoretical concept. Judging the pace can be tricky however I felt I couldn't keep up when watching you though perhaps thats more to do with the fact I've played jazz only one year.

I don't want the above to seem critical and if it does I apologise in advance. I would say I found watching your videos a little overwhelming as it gave me the feeling of watching somebody who is a pro jazz musician who you can get new ideas for the feel aspect of playing. I feel that I prefer videos to show me bit by bit how to play something cool at this moment in my learning cycle. I think guys on here call it spoon feeding. .. I am newly born jazz musician though so for now I enjoy having it made easier as jazz can seem extremely complex.

[Reg]

Yeaaaa, it's all good, and thank you for your comments.

I'm not or haven't been a teacher for years, Im just a musician, basically. I do have a lot of expertize from years of study, composing ,arranging and way too much performing. But I'm aware of my many downfalls and lack of teaching skills, and am trying to improve those skills. What would you like to see a vid of... blues, in a jazz style.

Personally you can break it all down to just playing over any I to IV chord pattern. Bb7 to Eb7 or F7 to Bb7.

There just a lot of approaches to doing that, most begin with some type of call and answer type of relationship and then development.

But this is one very major aspect of performing jazz, blue notes. Anyway..... moving forward.

[pingu]

hi Reg,
I think your contributions are great
You are a very generous person with your
insites .....

[pkirk]

Btw, I don't know where the general tendency to crap on first time posts comes from, but I just wonder if this elitism is as prevalent among horn players for example. I just don't see that attitude elsewhere. Shouldn't we have some kind of "do no harm" clause for members with fewer than 5 posts who put up the ever popular "Where do I start?" post? (This was the OP's #1.) Goodbye.

In my own experience, I've had the good fortune to have spent small amounts of time with real jazzers who were very patient and generous. Rather than warning me in some somber way about what I was getting myself into, they dismissed my apprehensions and gave me entry-level approaches to use to be able to jam with them. I see them as true ambassadors for the music. That would have made me a bigger jazz fan even if I had stopped playing.

I'm sorry, but amateurs comping on a standard or improvising over a blues using a simple approach don't hurt the cause of jazz anymore than rec center football players "hurt" the NFL. That's just pretentious BS. Honestly, the idea that you can't enjoy jazz at different levels of competency and development is the real threat to the music. I don't see it in other disciplines/arts the way I see it in jazz, or at least here.

My kid was in jazz band in high school. He learned to play charts in a Jazz feel and improvise using a very simplistic approach. Forgive me, but that is no less jazz than the pros at the club. It's just at a different level. I don't think Miles or Louis Armstrong would tell them it isn't real music. They know what they're looking at when they see someone learning at a lower level, and most real players encourage that. If anything, those guys are at the very least your future audience. Most normal people don't appreciate a great artist who hates or disdains his fans.

Let's be real. The audience for all professional sports and music is made up of, at least to some degree , people who are actually amateur participants in said sport or musical genre, and in most disciplines where they actually care about growth of their sport etc., that's actively encouraged. The NFL knows that it helps grow the audience for professional football when they promote football at all levels. I don't think that they're concerned that amateur play will hurt their bottom line.

I know there are plenty of players of all levels on this forum as well. I personally would count myself a happier, more fulfilled person for having attempted to learn some jazz, even if I died today, having wasted all of that time and never having reached a "real" level of playing. Please.

Meanwhile, Jazz audiences shrink, and we're irritated when people "jump to the conclusion" that we're elitist bastards. Where do they get that idea from?

matt.guitarteacher. I assume you're referring to my comment as pretentious BS. The thread got derailed, so in fact I was reacting to princeplanet's comments, not the OP. Like you, I've been the frequent recipient of help and support by more advanced players and I try my best when I can to help along those behind me. The OP asked "how to learn play changes" apparently in a rock context, and the first few answers were to a completely different question: "how to play jazz". This was followed by a number of suggestions which presumably don't interest the OP, including some like "take so and so's online classes", to others like "it takes a long long time to learn to play jazz." I and a few others ran with the latter point, and the thread later was framed as crapping on beginners. But the OP seemed like neither a beginner nor asking about how to play jazz, so that the conversation went where it went, without addressing the OP for the most part.

I wasn't crapping on beginners. Here's my point again, which perhaps not related to the OP's question, addresses your complaint. Jazz is a high art form, but it is so frequently butchered, often by well meaning, but ill informed people. So many jazz gigs are played by less than mediocre players who display little interest in learning or getting better. I read so much wrong or misleading information about playing jazz on this forum, and see respect gushed at participants who give confusing advice or don't play that well. I see elitism displayed by players who seem oblivious to the chasm between their level and the standards of the art form. As you point out, elitism comes much more frequently from the less talented than the better players.

I am totally overly sensitive to this, partly because I'm an academic and a teacher and understand that hard work and a long long time is needed to achieve anything of depth, partly because I'm painfully sensitive to how lame my playing despite the amount of work I put in it, and partly because I'm a huge jazz fanboi in awe of what the masters accomplished and have a chip on my shoulder about how casually some people take it. In that respect I'm envious of the classical world: virtually everyone who is serious in that realm fully understands that the road to competence is long and difficult, and that standards are high.


And I know, from talking to non-jazz fans, that poorly played jazz leaves them bored. Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean. Last week I was called to play a gig. The horn players were not particularly good, but they called tunes at fast tempi, got the forms wrong and played solos which were little more than scalar runs in the key signature. No tension and release, weak swing feel, etc. Nobody listened or gave us much attention. A few days later I went to hear Jason Palmer quintet with Donnie McCaslin and Clarence Penn. They were playing very advanced stuff (all original compositions based on Messiaen's modes of limited transposition) which you'd think would just turn off the non jazz snobs. But they played with such a deep groove and abandon and joy and competence that everybody in the hall was completely transfixed.

Maybe this view makes me a pretentious jerk, so be it; I love this music and it pains me to see it dissed.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Honestly, the problems you're talking about are multi-faceted. There's less skilled players undercutting pros in terms of playing for free or less money. Probably exacerbated by the general public's and owner's lack of knowledge of what jazz is.

But all l of that is a separate problem from what i was talking about. Gotta go.. half composed...
Accidentally hit post...:-)

[matt.guitarteacher]

First of all, my original wasn't really aimed at any one person or even this thread alone.

Back to it...I think people generally don't understand jazz. They think it's
1. Background music
2. Elevator music
3. The music generally played at wedding receptions
4. Songs from musicals/great American song book

A lot of musicians get jobs playing background music or standards/ wedding gigs, especially in less jazz savvy markets like where I live, without really being jazzers. Then people play for little to nothing because the people hiring don't know the difference or don't care, leaving many jazzers generally pissed at the world and irritated at amateurs who are a realistic threat to getting gigs and who further confuse public concepts of what jazz is.

Now, I don't know how you fix ANY if this, (from the public's ignorance to jazzer's bristly attitude toward everyone), but imho the problem persists: the failure to reach out to beginners and grow the jazz community.

We can't really do anything about the entire world of jazz, but we could say that on THIS forum we agree not to let an educational, "where to start" inquiry from a beginner somehow turn into or own personal therapy session re. all of our personally unmet jazz "needs".

Again if they haven't posted more than once or twice, how 'bout we don't dump on them.

[richb2]

First of all, my original wasn't really aimed at any one person or even this thread alone.


We can't really do anything about the entire world of jazz, but we could say that on THIS forum we agree not to let an educational, "where to start" inquiry from a beginner somehow turn into or own personal therapy session re. all of our personally unmet jazz "needs".

Again if they haven't posted more than once or twice, how 'bout we don't dump on them.

Matt, good post! As you said there are a bunch of problems confused in this conversation. The one I want to deal with is the "you need to learn all the notes, scales, arpeggios, jazz standards, altered chords, diatonic chords in every key, etc before you can ask a question up here". That is a really negative type of post and more than once I personally swore never to visit this forum again after seeing it. I see this as a continuation of the "smooth jazz is trash" polyester pants thing. I would say there is probably a 1 to 10,000 ratio of people who proclaim to like bebop to people who like smooth jazz.

I had this conversation with my teacher who stated profoundly "music is music. It all works". I agree. My take, there is a huge attitude adjustment that needs to take place on this site. This site is well known, at least here in the east coast USA, as being populated by bigoted know it alls . Perhaps here on the east coast we see such top talent that we are a little more realistic. I don't know.

Moreover, perhaps the Sysop needs to remind regular posters that their comments set the "personality" of the site and they need to remember back to when they were just learning. The whole idea that being mediocre is a sin should be removed, IMHO.

[matt.guitarteacher]

i don't understand why you have not written a book (or books) at this point. There are many less talented and less knowledgeable guitar players who have.

I am requesting in this post that you find some way to put your knowledge and experience into print. You need to find a writing partner in order to put your encyclopedic knowledge in a form that is comprehensible but you need to get it out there somehow and soon.

+1000 btw

[SuperFour00]

I've been playing guitar for about 11 years now, and have been fairly comfortable in rock settings playing solos of chord progressions. I've always dug the fusion playing of Howe, Govan, Kotzen, Henderson, Holdsworth, etc. especially when they step outside. As a result, I've realized that I would like to understand Jazz theory better so that I can take a jazz approach to phrasing in my improvisation; however, I'm honestly lost on where to dive in.

I know my church modes up the entire neck. Most of my experience in soloing/improvising has been to look at the chord progression (usually just triads or fifth chords; rarely stuff with 7,9,11 intervals), determine the notes in the progression, and then pick a single mode to use over that progression that contains the underling notes of the progression. My soloing will then stick to the notes in that mode, but my note centering will shift based on what underling chord is being played. Admittedly, the latter part of what notes to center on is mostly done by feel.

I plan to take some Jazz lessons next summer when some of my free time will open up, but in the interim I've got some books to dig through: Levine's Jazz Theory, the Berklee Jazz Harmony book, and Ted Greene's single note soloing. I plan to spend more time with my nose in this books, but after a skim they haven't been enlightening for me to change my approach. I'm not looking for overnight success obviously, but I feel like I'm missing some big picture approaches to jazz harmony that I haven't been able to get clarity on yet.

I've seen some conflicting descriptions of what playing through changes truly means. Some seem to imply that my approach described above is playing through changes. Though I hear others refer to specific modes for every chord progression (i.e. 'Play Dorian over Am, and Lydian over GM7'). Are people really changing their entire note selection under every time the chord changes (e.g. for the above example, using the C when playing Dorian over Am, and using the C# when Lydian over the GM7)? Is that what I should be working to achieve--playing individually different scales/modes over each chord as it changes?

Any advice from others that cross the chasm from rock to jazz? Any nice single sources of information that would be at the right depth for me?

Sounds to me like you don't want to be a Jazz guitarist, you just want to use Jazz knowledge in Rock, Progressive Rock, Jazz-Rock or Fusion styles. Is that about right? The important parts of the knowledge you need aren't scales or modes, though understanding them helps. Think of this: as a child, you learn to speak pretty well before you start to learn to spell, and it's even later that you are exposed to rules of grammar and taught creative writing. Think of Jazz as creative writing.

The most important thing you can do first off is choose some artists that you admire and whose work you'd like to emulate and transcribe whole tunes and especially whole solos. You're learning to speak here. Learn from the greats: John McLaughlin, Allan Holdsworth, Al Di Meola etc. Learn the chords, learn the arrangements, and learn every note of the solos.

When you do this you are strengthening your ears, you're getting inside the heads of these players and gaining insight into how they approach music, and you are becoming accustomed to hearing degrees of dissonance in chords and solo lines. This dissonance will sound more and more natural as you transcribe and practice these pieces. Simultaneously, be practicing arpeggios, chords and scales. You'll find these forms in the melodies and solos, and that's the order of events ... learn to play some of the music you like, and then find the patterns within the music. Do this for some months before you worry too much about being a master of theory and harmony. Learn to speak fluently, tackle creative writing later on.

[boatheelmusic]

Listen to Alain, and get thee to the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Workshop and get on track.

[Reg]

So some nobody... probable not really a member posts some somewhat sketchy question. I mean if you really went through Marks Jazz Theory and Berklee's Jazz Harmony... and DON"T GET IT. Or at least have an idea.

You might want to change directions, playing with jazz implications might not be in your future. I suspect the post was all BS. But it did open other doors which probably need to be. And really the only suggestions for how to help were pointing the OP in some direction or BS from someone else.

So where are we now, did anyone actually get anything... some understanding of what playing Jazz is besides... hey listen to this... that's what I'm talkin about. Or here's the real shit... maybe, yea east coast dirt and lots of it.

Come on... most of this sh** is just that. You want to get get you jazz playing together... you need to get it together yourself. Generally teachers are just trying to make a living, and 99% of the books and online BS is also just that.

Disclaimer... of course not on this site or the teachers etc... it's different.

[Boston Joe]

The only thing I can really add to this is: Beware of the quicksand. I started studying jazz as a way to expand my rock playing, and now jazz is all I want to play.