Best Jazz Guitar Etude Collection You’ve Found

[AllanAllen]

It’s interesting, but other instruments don’t treat things this way. Articulation, dynamics, stylistic interpretation seem to play a larger role in the pedagogy of jazz horn players than guitarists. I think that’s to our detriment.

I have noticed a lot of horn player heads stay in almost one octave and sometimes the A is based on one arpeggio, but it sounds cool. Serenade To A Cuckoo, Circus in Rhythm, Topsy, Seven come Eleven.

[starjasmine]

I don't know of a single sourcebook that is focused on jazz guitar specifically. That's not to say it doesn't exist; sounds like Galbraith might be that book.

I got the equivalent from a number of sources:

• Basic mechanical technique and sight-reading skills built by working through the Frederick Noad books in private lessons while I was a classic guitar major first 2 years of uni. These etudes gradually increased in difficulty for both reading and mechanical technique.
• That teacher also introduced me to selected repertoire by Sor, Carcassi, Segovia, and so on, choosing increasingly difficult pieces as my skills grew. These repertoire pieces bridged the gap between etudes and a comprehensive approach to performance-ready interpretation of real music.
• When I asked Jackie King about playing scales through multiple octaves up and down the fingerboard, he presented me with the Segovia scales book. Jackie was as jazz as they get, but he had all the classical background, as well.
• After I switched from classic guitar major, the jazz performance major at another university had a list of standards graded by difficulty for each of the four years of the major. You didn't have to play everything on the list so much as have the skills to play the head, comp, and improvise over tunes of a particular level of difficulty. I'll try to dig it out. IIRC, level 1 was tunes like Maiden Voyage, Blue Bossa, Freddie Freeloader, Satin Doll, etc. The next level up was things like All of Me, Four, Forest Flower, Gentle Rain. Level 3 was something like Donna Lee, Ceora, Take Five, Joy Spring. Level Four was things like Nefertiti. There was an official list and then there were variations that certain adjunct faculty teachers created.
• I also worked through the Charles Colin/Bugs Bower rhythms book that @rpjazzguitar mentioned. I can't remember the title right now :-/ but it's a great book, very much a "graduated etude" approach to reading rhythms.
• The Aebersold play-along records and books provided a graduated approach to repertoire that you could use to build improvisational skills.
• Now, those are just materials to practice sight-reading, mechanical technique, repertoire, and basic skills for improvisation. They are precursors to "playing jazz." I wholeheartedly agree with all who've posted before me that you've got to transcribe in order to learn to think like a jazz player and sound like a jazz player. You won't get it from books alone. All of my jazz teachers were very big on transcribing (both learning to play soli and writing them out in standard notation) to grow your skill set. Although I was encouraged to transcribe every instrument (sax, piano, whatever) I got the most out of transcribing guitarists that I liked, probably because trying to figure out my own instrument was challenging enough for me. Learning sax soli would help me learn to think melodically, but it wouldn't help me to solve the problems of trying to realize melodies on the fretboard; learning guitar soli did show me a lot about how to realize harmony and melody on the fretboard, so I tended to transcribe guitarists more often than other instruments.

The above was long before the internet and youtube were a thing... nowadays, there is so much online that it might actually be impossible to try to put together a single, comprehensive study guide. You've got a zillion good-quality transcriptions from guys like Francois Leduc, and known players like Kreisberg and Mancuso are putting out their own lessons and transcriptions. And Troy Grady ... wow... I don't think there was anything out there like his stuff on picking technique before he did it.

So... this is just a taste of what I found to be helpful. I'd look at it as a useful starting point (along with the other ideas that have been posted in this thread) rather than some sort of "ultimate guide".

HTH

SJ

[wolflen]

Daily Practice..

For me at least two hours..

Technical stuff..applied to tunes and improv experiments

As far as an "Etude".. years back--the universe was kind to me..a friend gave me tix to see Miles /w Scofield on guitar..this changed
my approach to the solo line..I found a 1983 vid of Sco ripping apart the Diminished scale.

It is a wonderful scale lots of twists and sharp turns..great for rhythmic studies and target notes

C D Eb F Gb Ab A B ..and lots of chords to use as arps or scale frags

DMA-Dmi7 D7-D7#11-D7b9-D7#9 D13 etc

and of course being symmetrical the same for F - Ab - B

so you have 30+ chords to draw from-nice arp study

I use a breakdown of 7 Exercises Sco used in the vid

Melding this stuff in tunes keeps my fingers and mind busy and all the jump off points the chords imply are amazing..using the doms as secondary and tri-tones.

and of course the above is just the C dim..the Db and Ddim await

[Christian Miller]

Yeah that is an interesting phenomenon, and a gap for a lot of guitarists. I think there is a degree to which notes are more concrete. You can write down the notes in a line, and if you play those notes, you will play the line, there's no ambiguity. Articulation has a lot more variables that are harder to define or replicate. Which isn't to say it's mystical, the sound is captured and defined. But it's hard to deduce striking the string at x angle with y velocity just from the sound.

It also seems to me that sheet music is totally inadequate to communicate all the required information to reproduce someones articulation. If we're just talking about patterns of picked vs hammered notes that's pretty clear, but what about like Holdsworth legato of no pull offs to avoid bending the pitch, mixed with his subtle purposeful pitch bends? Idk you've definitely thought about this more than me, how would you communicate articulation information to a student? I guess I would say listen to the recording because that's the most concrete, but I admit that's probably lazy haha.

(Btw Holdsworth used pull offs. You can hear him do it. I know he said he didn’t like them, but I think sometimes he found them unavoidable.)

In general I don’t want staff notation to tell me how to play the guitar, I want it to somewhat indicate what the music should sound like. (Obviously it’s limited in this capacity especially with regards to time feel.)

I find a lot of published classical guitar music fantastically annoying for this reason. All those numbers! It's basically tab for wine drinkers.

This is where tab comes in. its helpful to indicate exactly where Allan plays them notes.


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[GuyBoden]

(Btw Holdsworth used pull offs. You can hear him do it. I know he said he didn’t like them, but I think sometimes he found them unavoidable.)

Yes, the Pull-Off meowing sound is unavoidable in certain situations, but thankfully not the majority.

[Christian Miller]

Yes, the Pull-Off meowing sound is unavoidable in certain situations, but thankfully not the majority.

Fwiw what I have found is that it takes very little impetus to keep things going when it’s one note descending - that can be effectively hammered on. When it’s two descending legato notes on a string a little bit of pull off becomes necessary.

But, I think you could probably get around some of this with practice and lighter strings - I’m doing this on .11s.

I guess YYMV.


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[GuyBoden]

Fwiw what I have found is that it takes very little impetus to keep things going when it’s one note descending - that can be effectively hammered on. When it’s two descending legato notes on a string a little bit of pull off becomes necessary.

But, I think you could probably get around some of this with practice and lighter strings - I’m doing this on .11s.

Obviously, the sound volume diminishes as the number of descending notes increases, so I have to resist to temptation to pick the first note with more force.

Here's Tom Quayle on acoustic, he's using pull-offs, but with very little Meowing.

[Christian Miller]

Obviously, the sound volume diminishes as the number of descending notes increases, so I have to resist to temptation to pick the first note with more force.

Here's Tom Quayle on acoustic, he's using pull-offs, but with very little Meowing.

As with an accent it’s not about applying more force, it’s about applying less force everywhere else.

I’ve come to realise as I’ve got a bit more into legato Tom’s technique looks quite different to Allan’s.

I think it was Tom who made the point that the desired effect is legato. The means is usually left hand slurs but it is possible to use slurs and not actually sound legato. It’s a salient point! Probably relates to overdoing it with the pull offs.


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[GuyBoden]

Allan Holdsworth quotes:

“I’ve practiced playing scales where you put the accent anywhere, whether on a note you pick or one you don’t. You can say, ‘I’m going to play four notes and accent the second note, but I’m only picking the first note.’ So you make the first a really gentle touch, and then you have to whack the string with your finger on the second. For the third you can be a little slower when it hits the fret, and so on, so that eventually you can put the accent where you want it.”

“one problem with legato technique is that it tends to make you play all the notes running in one direction, and that’s something I tried to stop doing two or three years ago. I try not to play more than three or four notes going in one direction.”

“You have to make your finger hit the fret just a fraction of a second apart from when the pick strikes the string, and then it won’t have the front of the note. Like I said, I’ve practiced a lot to emphasize different notes because I hated it when I used to listen to what I’d done, and I’d say,’ there’s the pick, there's the hammer, there is the pick.’ I thought, Screw that. I want to make it so you can’t tell which one’s which.”

[GuyBoden]

As with an accent it’s not about applying more force, it’s about applying less force everywhere else.

Thanks, good point
.
My interpretation was to apply less force to the first picked note, so that the slurred/legato notes will have a similar volume to the picked note.

[olejason]

I found a 1983 vid of Sco ripping apart the Diminished scale.

Is this is it?

[wolflen]

Is this is it?

that is part of the vid..the part Im referring to is just the diminished scale

Sco runs through seven variations of the Db half whole scale played over a C7#9 chord

there was a printed page of the notation of the exercises he played (can't find it online any longer)

it has some great twisty lines that work in alot of harmonic settings