I still feel like I'm missing something. How can I practice the most efficiently?

[ccroft]

Lots of great advice and good opportunities for learning posted here. On this particular thing:

....since I am high school right now, I'm not sure if I can pay for ear training lessons...

Let me say I couldn't afford it when I was your age either. Let alone know where to find such a thing. What you can do is spend a bunch of time trying to play along with some recordings of music that moves you. Allow yourself plenty of mistakes and keep at it. You will find a way. I think it's one of the best ear training exercises you can do. And it's pretty much free with something like YouTube. Back in the day we had to scrape up lawn-mowing cash to pay for large plastic discs in cardboard sleeves that carried the inspiration :-)

[Alter]

Besides guitar work, i would work a lot on repertoire. Try to keep learning as many standards as you can. Also, ask your teacher to organize a discography for you to listen to, meaning there are a few classic artists from each instrument (plus singers), that you just have to listen to, if getting into jazz. Listening to the classics can complement practicing the guitar nicely, and once you 've heard a few hundred classic jazz records you 're really on the right track! Enjoy the ride!!

[Reg]

Yea... generally most give same advice. If OP is still around, I'll say it again... get your technical skills together, develop chops.

If you don't get it together while your young....generally you won't. Give yourself the chance to be able to play jazz tunes in a jazz style.

[Sam Sherry]

I'm always trying to learn more about jazz guitar because I really want to be better, but everytime I click on a youtube video or post, I get so lost and I feel like I'm missing out on really valuable information that I could apply to my playing. So my question is, what are some steps or a method I can use to make sure I definitely get better (and maybe do the cool things guitarists like Jens Larsen do on youtube)? Any help would be appreciated!

BT, here's an alternative viewpoint FWIW.

Efficiency is vastly overrated. A gigantic portion of your development as a musician is derived from your development as a person. That would be the part that moves you toward being an artist who 'has something to say,' rather then a mere guitarist whose only message is, "Look at me!!!" There is nothing you can do to hurry that.

You can and should put in the hours and years of work to improve as a guitarist which folks have covered so well above. While you do, keep touching the joy of playing -- the joy of making that noise, of making it with people and making it for people. That joy is part of your artistic nugget. Some night you will up there, lost and befuddled as everything sounds wrong and people glare at you. The joy can help get you back from there.

Finally, with respect to the innumerable examples on YouTube and TV and radio and school and sessions and everywhere you turn: Every single one of them was a beginner. They've all been where you are now. Let them inspire you, let them inform your quest to be . . . you.


We now return you to JG.be's normal programming. Stay tuned for today's installment of, "Barney Kessell Or Tal Farlow: Who Was Thunkier?"

[citizenk74]

BT, here's an alternative viewpoint FWIW.

Efficiency is vastly overrated. A gigantic portion of your development as a musician is derived from your development as a person. That would be the part that moves you toward being an artist who 'has something to say,' rather then a mere guitarist whose only message is, "Look at me!!!" There is nothing you can do to hurry that.

You can and should put in the hours and years of work to improve as a guitarist which folks have covered so well above. While you do, keep touching the joy of playing -- the joy of making that noise, of making it with people and making it for people. That joy is part of your artistic nugget. Some night you will up there, lost and befuddled as everything sounds wrong and people glare at you. The joy can help get you back from there.

Finally, with respect to the innumerable examples on YouTube and TV and radio and school and sessions and everywhere you turn: Every single one of them was a beginner. They've all been where you are now. Let them inspire you, let them inform your quest to be . . . you.


We now return you to JG.be's normal programming. Stay tuned for today's installment of, "Barney Kessell Or Tal Farlow: Who Was Thunkier?"

Spot on! If joy is absent, what is left?