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Reducing it to 3 is arbitrary but on that basis, for someone who can play and is attracted to jazz guitar
1. Get a good teacher - who reads - and avoid all the auto-didact timewasting, enjoyable though it may be at the time.
2. Get good at reading.
3. Get to know some good players who if you fit in, might let you sit in.
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10-14-2023 04:27 AM
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I don't get why you continually lie that you learned guitar 100% by ear when you clearly know theory at an advanced level now, and you've said you formally studied other instruments in your formative years. Of course you can enjoy applying an aural approach now that you ALREADY HAVE YOUR FUNDAMENTALS DOWN.
Originally Posted by pauln
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 10-14-2023 at 11:15 AM.
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This is the guy on my other forum who knows little to no theory and has been playing for over a couple decades I believe. He sounds like he picked up guitar last week lol. He doesn't even know how to play modally in a key center. Shouldn't he be good if he's been playing by ear for over 20 years? :P
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Man I have to ask. What forum is this?
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Seymour Duncan
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I think you may be calling the horse before the cart as theory and the dependent cart behind the horse as being able to play, including playing by ear. In my world the horse before the cart is being able to play by ear with the cart behind the horse gradually filling up with spurious accumulated ubiquitous but ignored theory. I am curious and fascinated by music theory in and of itself, but it is like a totally different field of interest to me from playing the guitar. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
I did not start with theory in order to learn to play; I learned to play without theory, but it naturally accumulates. I discovered things while learning by ear. Through time, some of those things that I learned I later found out correspond to named canonical music theory concepts. Every now and then I continue to additionally discover that some of the other things I learned by ear also have formal names in music theory. After five decades of playing guitar a lot of what I've learned has come to be passively "back filled" as theory concepts into my cart, especially with the exposure to theory conversations in places like this where I read things and recognize I have heard, learned, and played those things without knowing or needing to know what they were or what they were called.
Knowing theory does not prevent one from learning or continuing to play by ear - it is as simple as eschewing all verbal, numerical, and visual modes of thinking and just hearing music as music itself. When writing or talking about music, my cart full of theory may be obvious, but when I am listening, learning, practicing, composing, rehearsing, performing, or in the studio recording, the horse is disconnected from the cart and runs theory free; I just play by ear.
If it is hard for you to believe that I play music without mediating verbal, numeric, or visual proxies, imagine my difficulty in grasping how others manage to do so.
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Yes, pauln, I can't imagine how you can play by ear, while knowing theory at an advanced level. Noone can do that.
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Assuming fretboard awareness and good technique as per Mr B.
1. Learn the melodies really well until you're bored of them (so can base your early improv foray on embellishing the melody
2. Lift language (sing it first, to connect ears to instrument or at worst at the same time). Better if you sing it and then transcribe your singing.
3. Start with voice leading shell voicings then drop the root and add notes above the guide tones concentrating on melody. I think adding some theory into this process is a good thing: where are dominants typically altered, what minor chords can handle a 9th etc.
Bonus: (bc I couldn't help myself)
1. Learn to read. Sight singing preferred but that's extra credit. Start simple, it's not a race.
2. Some kind of ear training. Could be intervals at first but if that's a drag do functional ear training. Could also play games like play the roots, sing the melody, sing the roots play the melody.
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The advice of many famous jazz musicians takes a variation of, "Learn everything, then forget it and play!" Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
I think the usual verbal, numerical, and visual path serves to provide concrete handles for accessing and developing of the abstractions of the musical mind and ear. I think the famous jazz advice intends that once those abstractions are in place the concrete handles having served their purpose may be unnecessary.
I play the same way as everyone else; from abstractions of the musical mind and ear, the only difference being the different path along how I acquired them.
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My three:
Call
and
Response
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Presumably this comes after - Originally Posted by Lionelsax
1. Neck pickup on
2. Tone all the way down
3. Throw a blanket over the speaker cab.
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Maybe Jimmy is confusing playing by ear with learning to play by ear. I play most jazz standards without any visual aids (which I call playing by ear), but I learned all of these songs using, what you're calling, the numerical and visual path. Originally Posted by pauln
As you might recall, I stepped-in-it with you with a lame assumption, because I didn't understand how one could learn to play jazz standard chord progressions without use of numerical and visual aids (e.g., chord diagrams, lead sheets). I.e., at that time, it was just beyond my limited imagination.
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1. Let the guitar in its case Originally Posted by Sean65
2. Turn off the amp
3. Post in JGO
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^ Lol!
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There are six types of chords that cover almost all jazz tunes. Major, minor, minor7b5, dominant, altered dominant, and tonic minor.
1- Learn to move inside and between these chords across the fretboard and in different string groups. This should be applied to all three aspects of playing jazz guitar: comping, soloing and chord-melody in the jazz style.
2- Learn tunes.
3- Learn to express tunes using using the skills and language learned in item 1 with a good time feel.
Did I miss anything? Lol.
Of course there are different organizations of these six types of chords. For example you can group minor, minor7b5, dominant, and altered dominant within the dominant umbrella (with the use of tritone substitution). You can even put tonic minor in the dominant category, Dom9 = Min6. You can treat them separately or group them differently. You can even split some of them up further.
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Are you putting Augmented in with Altered Dominants?
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Altered dominant or tonic minor, depending on the context. There are various voicings that arise when moving inside chords. Moving inside a chord type involves chord patterns, passing chords, substitutions, inversions, tonazitions etc. that work within the sound and function of the chord. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Gonna throw a different idea in, not with the intention of starting arguments but for intelligent discussion...
How about learning the blues first? I mean bb king, that kind of blues...
- simple strong structure
- easy to improvise with
- lots of scope for passion and expression.
- theory and scales learnt can be extended to jazz by ( literally!) filling in the missing notes.
Basically as a means to get u up and running improvising and enjoying ur playing before extending it into jazz stuff.
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BB King style blues is bends and vibrato.
Robben Ford would be a better starting point because he bridges blues and jazz like no one I've heard and has many videos out there where he shows you how to slip in a bebop line etc.
Just found this solo on "Straight no Chaser". Not shoddy.
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OK, so what I mean is start off with a simple 12 bar blues , as in 1 , 4 , 5 progression, as a quick way into improvising . Whether or not u go for bends , vibrato etc is up to u, but there's plenty of scope for that in jazz music anyway, depending on what u like. Originally Posted by Peter C
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Starting out with some facility on the instrument assumes coming from classical (sometimes) or rock/blues (most times).
Based on that..
1. Learn enough theory to apply the right notes in the right places. This is how you transition from pentatonic.
2. Learn the tunes including how the melody relates to the chords. Start with Jazz 101 tunes.. move on from there.
3. Practice scales, arpeggios, and the chord types Tal 175 listed up and down the fretboard to gain the extra facility needed
Candidates for number 4: Reading (really.. you have to.. and just like C said, it gets fun after awhile), learning licks (some need to do this more than others), learning the basic recurring chord progressions (e.g. ii V7 I, et al) and recognize them in the tunes you're learning.
What I disagree with.. ear training because you're going to be playing set tunes in certain keys and sheet music is readily available. Transcription.. there's plenty of time to kill your soul and turn jazz into a grind later. Playing all things across all keys.. umm.. why? Better to get a copy of Advancing Guitarist and do exercises designed to improve fretboard skills.
Finally, on getting a teacher.. maybe it would seem a better idea if I ever encountered one that focused more on what I needed to learn with my mixed bag of skills rather than following their preset notions, what they already have prepared, and wanting to show me stuff rather than listen.
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