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Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
There's value in having a good teacher. One aspect of this value is that the teacher will help you stay focused on an approach.
Getting advice on-line is the opposite of that. There are great players who learned in very different ways and give very different sorts of advice. In my experience, theory (a poorly defined term) is one of the more difficult subjects. Some players/teachers seem to feel that learning more theory is the solution to a wide variety of problems. Others, not so much.
My recommendation, to get started, is based on simple theoretical concepts like tonal center and chord tones and then making melody with those concepts. With just major scales and their modes you can get started and, actually, play good solos on a lot of tunes.
Then, you learn the sounds of other notes -- and there's more than one way to do that. By then, you'll have an idea how you want to go about it.
As far as playing the sounds in your head, I guess there's even a divergence of opinion on that. My view is that my goal is to be able to imagine a good line and play it instantly. If I'm getting bored with the results, which happens, then I look to recordings and/or theory for ideas.
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11-01-2022 02:27 PM
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Yea... Do you have any examples of your playing. Not classical or memorized pieces... just playing over basic Chord patterns or simple tunes. Do you know how to comp, not just punch out simple vanilla chords.... how to comp in a jazz style. If you post something.... I can easily tell you what to work on. Don't worry about getting something worked out of perfect.... just playing. I can tell ...Your obviously not a kid... so I'll skip the babysitting etc... It usually takes about 6 months for each different skill and understandings of how to play in a jazz style.
There's some great advice above... but you need more than basic technical skills to play at the speed of jazz. It's difficult to get from books.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
There's value in having a good teacher. One aspect of this value is that the teacher will help you stay focused on an approach.
Getting advice on-line is the opposite of that. There are great players who learned in very different ways and give very different sorts of advice. In my experience, theory (a poorly defined term) is one of the more difficult subjects. Some players/teachers seem to feel that learning more theory is the solution to a wide variety of problems. Others, not so much.
My recommendation, to get started, is based on simple theoretical concepts like tonal center and chord tones and then making melody with those concepts. With just major scales and their modes you can get started and, actually, play good solos on a lot of tunes.
As far as playing the sounds in your head, I guess there's even a divergence of opinion on that. My view is that my goal is to be able to imagine a good line and play it instantly. If I'm getting bored with the results, which happens, then I look to recordings and/or theory for ideas.
2 new & excellent Jazz Comping Truefire...
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