Jazz Guitar Course recommendations

**charlieparker** · 03-25-2023, 10:34 AM

Another option is Richie Zellon's Bebop Jazz Guitar course. I'd say it's pretty good. It focuses on jazz blues, his fingering system and certain typical embellishments. For each lesson he has a practice plan including what scale fingerings to learn, what exercises to master, rhythm exercises, ear training, etc. He also has you write etudes.

All in all, it's a very thorough course in that it will prescribe exactly what you should be practicing each week.

The biggest downside is that it only explores the jazz blues up to Bird Blues in his first volume so if you are already an intermediate level player you might want more variety of tunes which he addresses in the second volume.

**himself** · 03-26-2023, 01:28 PM

Thank you all! Some of your resources I've already known, some not. I like Jens Larsen, for example, but I couldn't find anything complex, but my typical deal breaker is I cannot see from A to Z, and not missing B, C, D... step by step.
Finaly I decided to give a try Truefire and I bought one month. I will check Tim Lerch and Martin Taylor, my two heroes, and will see.
Thanks once again.

**arnie65** · 03-26-2023, 11:18 PM

All the aforementioned courses/teachers are very good, but it all depends what your goal is... Do you want to just have fun and play standards with other guys? Do you want to be able to accompany singers and play gigs professionally? I see it like this: if you just want to learn how to drive to get around and get from one place to another, you get lessons from friends or people you trust driving; if you want to drive big rigs, you have to go to a school and get a different type of education and license, and if you want to drive race cars, that's a whole different game, but it all entails driving. I'm very familiar with a lot of those teachers, and I studied for years with one of them back in the 90's. They all have different approaches to teaching jazz, but it all depends what your goal is...

Cheers,
Arnie.

**StringNavigator** · 03-26-2023, 11:50 PM

This is more of an open response to anyone reading this thread and asking the same question as the OP. I'm merely an avocational musician and I made my life work out by working in the military and then the energy fields. So, take my advice with a grain of salt. I've been paid to play music over the years, but I've never made enough to ever consider myself as being a professional musician. However, there's no medical coverage or pension for musicians of any rating... Unless you think you have a chance of duplicating Eric Clapton's hat-trick...

Here's all you really need... One Book! $35??
Deluxe Encyclopedia of Guitar Chord Progressions eBook + Online Audio - Mel Bay Publications, Inc. : Mel Bay
This book takes a couple of years to complete. While studying these grips and changes, learn your favourite tunes (Misty, A Train, Sweet Georgia Brown...) and apply what you learn in this book to them. Don't forget to also play the chord forms as arpeggios. (Add in the missing tones , of course.)

You get the modern changes compared to the basic changes. It covers tritone subs, extensions, chord synonyms, altered extensions, Rhythm Changes, common substitutions, standard changes... Complete this book and apply it to your repertoire and you'll soon be busking or playing solo at the local watering hole.

I think it has this CD included:
https://www.long-mcquade.com/files/7...0000090050.mp3
https://www.long-mcquade.com/files/7...0000090051.mp3

Look into these several videos kindly played/shared by Rob MacKillop to get the idea:

There is no magic book or magic internet lessons... It's hard work and dedication. Mostly done on one's own. As for musical colleges$$ and lessons$$, there's no use going there unless you can read music notation and are serious about arranging. (Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method is the best place for that.) Because jazz guitar is a way of playing music, not a musical style in itself. The actual music material consists of Broadway tunes, Dixieland tunes, or Big Band tunes played in the jazz style (syncopation, anticipation, dots & ties, extensions and alterations with carefully chosen inversions, back-cycling and substitutions). Even Bebop is played over contrafacts that are chord progressions from the same tunes above. You can pick up on this style by learning Rector's grips and changes.

And if you graduate, can you forge a career that will allow you to have a family?
Think at 20 as if you were 40. What you want today may be your life's regret.
Makes for a damn good hobby, though... Never ends.
::

**himself** · 03-27-2023, 02:34 AM

Arnie,

that's a good point which I should have mentioned. I only play for my pleasure (and hardly acompanying a singer). The main goal for me is having a song which I know by heart and be able to play it whatever want... once as a ballad by Bill Evans, once as a gypsy swing, once as a blues tune. Once in E flat, once in C major.... always when I ask anybody how to rescue from my stuck stereotypes, I'm told learn pentatonic scale, than other scales, then arpegios, then licks... I realized very late I need to be able to play, what I'm singing (hearing in my head). I don't want to play "their scales and their licks", I want to play MY music. But now I understand, I need to know all these things first. Otherwise I keep repeating the same mistakes...
I've followed some of Sandra Sherman's arranges (at YT), which fits best my level of skill, but learning songs for me often is a dril without understanding, what is behind (that's why I quit playing classical piano, even if I love that music). It is playing of something strange, uncommon, not understood.
Sorry for my english, by the way.

Thank you for understanding, Jaroslav