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If jazz was easy and quick, it would be boring. I got bored with rock guitar by the time I was about 20. Since then I have been an 'eternal student' of jazz and I feel I am still only scratching the surface of what's possible. (I am approaching 60 now!)
Even Pat Metheny says he is still a 'student'. I draw a lot of encouragement from that.
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04-30-2016 02:22 PM
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I feel like rock guitar is kind of hard to do well, but very easy to learn the basics. And what makes you good is generally feel, experience, tone, taste, time and elements that are less 'academic'. In fact these things are also the things that make great jazz guitarists great, but I enjoy having lots of more obvious challenges :-)
Originally Posted by grahambop
It's a funny one, I really admire great rock guitarists and love hearing really good rock guitar, but I couldn't imagine doing that job, playing the same song every night the same way. Great rock players have a battery of favourite licks, write some good songs and play that stuff every night with the same guys until they get amazing at it.
It's a different approach to music... And actually it's quite possible to just stay very mediocre that way..
I guess I get bored easy. Also it's always easy to identify things you can work on trying to play jazz, which I love.
Also the rock guitar is kind of stuck in the past a bit. I really like where some of the modern metal players have taken the instrument (I'm not talking about the shreddy lead players so much) but TBH most rock players seem like they are stuck in the '60s, '70s or '80s depending on their tastes. And given the very conservative nature of mainstream guitar based rock and pop music on one hand, and the fetishistic nature of guitar community, that's encouraged...
There are some exceptions - Matt Bellamy from Muse, maybe...
Funny thing is with all these great modern players - Julian Lage, Kurt, Gilad - I honestly feel jazz is looking into the future more than rock is.
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OP you need to set goals for yourself and select the training tools that get you to those goals. You might alternate tools, you may use multiple at the same time, you may focus on reading for a couple weeks to get you where you need to be. Be aware of all of it, but use what serves you best in attaining your goal of making and enjoying music. Focus on keeping yourself motivated and attaining goals.
Now, how about picking a song and develop your ability to read the head, play the chords, learn scales and arpeggios for the chords until you can solo through the chords. If you have a looper or DAW use it to gauge your progress and have something to play along with.
Keep it fun!
In addition: If you can put some time aside daily for reading, scales, arpeggios, etc, even if only 10 - 15 minutes is all you can do, then do a bit of each to keep them fresh until you are ready for them again.Last edited by MaxTwang; 05-01-2016 at 10:14 AM.
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What I learned about jazz involved studying the tradition and finding out that Bird, Monk, Bud Powell, Charlie Christian, and all those Minton cats were bebop experts by their mid-20s. Along came Miles, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, etc., and those cats were experts by age 19, because they had Powell, Parker, Dizzy as examples.
So...it wasn't hard to research their musical history to see how they accomplished it, over 60 years ago..... yet folks go on like it's some mystery......go to the source...
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Hey Roscoe, good for you for loving jazz enough to do it. I think your playing and hearing talents will really help you in this endeavour. But understand before it all that with jazz, it's not enough to know some phrases or even the work of another player. With jazz, each player needs to know the language. The lexicon, syntax and semantics of creating a piece of music. Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
Yes you can pick up vocabulary and lexicon of any genre so that it sounds passable. You can even understand the syntax of blues without too much of your life; and you can get those sounds from the notes you recreate. But Jazz is a COMPOSER's art. You are composing every time you are making sound. As a good player, you're spending as much time not playing what you've learned (that's called taste and space). As a great player, they take a life time's experience and make something new each time...if they're lucky.
I've thought it was important to immerse myself in the experience of live music, to easily see the collective result of many of the things you need to master. I think that when you understand how it goes together, the syntax, then you can begin to accumulate and employ the lexicon, which is vast. When you have something to say, and the means to say it, then you have the semantics. That's what jazz is about.
You can sound like you can play-and you can do this on the relative cheap. But to actually play jazz, you need to know the composer's art.
What is the most important thing to learn first? I'd say patience.
This is why it takes a lot before you begin, and why it continues to reward and challenge you as long as you're playing.
Or this is my take on it. By the sound of it, a lot of people around here get all they need from learning, loving and collecting information and guitars. I guess that works too.
David
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Beautiful, man. Yes, patience but also a restless sort of patience that constantly pushes to get better. Originally Posted by TruthHertz
Another important thing to learn is what jazz sounds like. You have to hear it before you can create it. Go listen to a bunch of Louis Armstrong stuff, he is the spiritual grandparent of every jazz player. You'll hear those lines turn up in the playing of jazz musicians 6 generations later, handed down through the years as the fundamental lore of jazz. Django Reinhardt played Louis lines; Bird and Dizzy played Louis lines; Ella sang Louis lines; Herb and Barney and Tal played Louis lines; etc. Pops permeates jazz.
Since you play guitar, also of course listen to the great jazz guitarists but also listen to the great pianists, horn players, bassists and drummers. You can learn an incredible amount about how jazz sounds from Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Hank Jones (in particular), Elvin Jones, Art Farmer, Horace Silver, Bird, Dizzy, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Steve Swallow, etc., etc. When it comes to studying jazz, YouTube is a fantastic resource- probably the single best repository for this music in the history of the world.
A good place to get a basic toolbox for playing jazz is the Jimmy Bruno online school- scale shapes, how chord progressions work, etc. I did a couple of years of that course (after I'd already been playing jazz for almost 30 years, on and off) and it was very helpful in organizing the guitar. And in terms of jazz education courses, the one whose graduates sound the most authentically "jazz" to me are from the Barry Harris approach. Harris's approach *sounds* like jazz, rooted in bebop which has been the sound of jazz since the late 40s. I wish I had known about that 25 years ago, would have saved me a lot of time.
Get the music in your ear, listen to it all the time- whenever you're in the car, whenever you have free time or are doing things like washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, etc. And most definitely play along with records. Few things improve your ear faster.
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for me its all about
KNOWING where you are in the song
the harmonic area you are in at moment
the changes of a songs , eventually all ? songs by ear
where it goes to the ii , the IV , the iv etc
internalising that stuff ...
Think of a song in your head now that you
know well in your head but have never played
before (or not for a while)
find the tonic key on your guitar ...
the key you're actually hearing in your head now
(say 'fly me to the moon' or anything else really)
now try to find the changes and tune to that song on your guitar ....
eg if say its in C major (its in a major key)
happy ...
try all the C diatonic chords out
C Dmin Emin F G7 Amin Bmin7b5
(or G first inversion G/B )
till you get it down
don't cheat and get the sheet/chords out
there's only so many chords it can be
not that many either
doing this for lots of songs will give you
the ability to KNOW where you are freedom on the instrument
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There's so much more in lessons available now days; it must be overwhelming trying to choose the right path. I like the idea of learning from your favorite players. I bought instructional videos by Joe Pass and Emily Remler 20+ years ago because I like their styles of playing.
Before that, I learned by ear, doing my best to copy G. Benson, K. Burrell, Howard Roberts etc. I also suscribed to guitar player magazine which had lessons each month, some more inspiring than others.
So my advice is to learn those melodic phrases, chord melodies, etc. that you really love. Some must be learned by ear, some can be learned from notation and tab. And with all those instructional youtube vids you can learn more. Of course, my advice is worth what you paid for it.
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Yea... you have way too many threads. There all the same thing. You might just have one thread, and put all your questions in that one thread.... really. Your posting is not a good reference of how you work... learning how to play jazz requires beginning, middles and ends.
If your organized... you can learn how to.... play Jazz tunes... in 2 or 3 years.
If again your organized.... you can actually learn how to.... play jazz in 4 or 5 years. They're very different approaches.
This is obviously after you have some basic guitar skills, what most teacher teach, or colleges etc...
It's only a life long process because of how most approach learning....
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Believe it or not I do listen to what I'm told, and if I can make it work I'll try it. I want this "jazz thing" to be my life because "if you don't live it it won't come out your horn," or in our case, amp. I did some picking practice early this morning on the major scales and I wondered if you knew only the basic scales (including diminished, whole tone, pents. and blues) could you be as melodious and improvisational just using those as a player who has greater scale and theory knowledge? This is coming from someone who wanted more and more scales for awhile until scales + the greater scope of jazz overwhelmed me: Just by using inference skills I can tell Allan Holdsworth is smarter than I'll ever have time tobe (I'm talking capacity and ken) and he admits you'll go crazy trying to "figure it all out" meaning the hundreds of thousands of scales and permutations. On The Other Hand(s) Stevie Ray Vaughan (not a jazz guy, I know, but he did know a helluva lot of chords and had wrought iron soul, so there) knew all of two scales or so said the president of Atlanta Institute of Music. I've learned to play, I won't say good, but passable blues and I've been tempted to just stick with blues, rock and metal. Jazz seems like an elite club I want to be a part of and know that I can play it---it's just I've practiced Autumn Leaves until it's almost right so the next thing be to play arps over it...just neurotic, uncertain and looking for ideas. Thanks! Roscoe
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Many of the early greats knew far fewer scales than you do. They basically knew chord tones and chromatics, some knew the basic scales, a few even knew the diminished.... but they knew what to do with them.
You could give me all the tools in the world, I would still build you a piss poor house.
Best wishes
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Roscoe, a scale is just a tool, like the alphabet. A poem is not just a better alphabet. And a song is not a scale collage. Can you read the notation of a lead sheet? Do you understand chord construction theory? Give me the name of three jazz songs you would like to play.
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A big +1 here for that! Originally Posted by vintagelove
I am often amazed when I transcribe something and realise what the greats have played. I hear a great phrase and think "wow, I've got to get that one" I work it out and think "is that all it is?"
It's all about time/feel/intent/phrasing to me. A blues lick from Kenny Burrell can blow me away whereas the same or similar phrase from someone like SRV (and I am a fan) or Jimi can leave me cold.
I often think that's what the rock guys miss about Jazz, it's not the notes, it's the intent/phrasing that only comes from listening and taking Jazz to heart.
A couple of quotes I think resonate with this topic-
"Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It's not the thing in itself; it's preparatory to the activity" - Barney Kessel - Jazz Guitar
"...regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going ..." - Wes Montgomery
"The more you know, the less you know. I don't feel like I know shit anymore, but I love it." - Mike Stern - Guitar
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I know you've been told that you've started too many threads that are basically saying the same thing. It's obnoxious to do so. It's okay to come back to threads you've started asking questions about playing and just continue to come out there. You don't have to start a new thread every day. No one else is doing this, and there's a reason. Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
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Learn the major scale, harmonized chord progressions and arpeggios in each of 5 positions, cold, without error.
Make a video or audio clip performing these.
Last edited by boatheelmusic; 05-02-2016 at 07:37 AM.
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Listen to Cannon Ball's solo over Autumn Leaves. Hear his first line. How cool is that. On first listening to me a beginner it sounds like some super sophisticated unreachable jazz thing. Then I sing it and learn it and you know what, it is a pentatonic line. How cool is that.
Keep asking and discussing Roscoe. Your not talking about equipment and other rubbish man, you are talking about making music, I like your questions and your thinkings that you propound and love the answers and discussion it stimulates.
I am gonna work out Chet Bakers and maybe Paul Desmonds improvs on Autumns Leaves (Cannon Balls is too fast for me but that first line is so cool), I have only been learning jazz blues and think I need to learn some standards so I can get to the local jazz jam.
.. and yes the main thing I am learning from reading eg Miles autobiography and transcribing, as stated above by my more learned friends, it is about the chords not the scales as well as the rhythms.
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Yep there it is. I've scanned a lot of this guys posts, and not ever, not even once does he even consider for a moment how he is going to address the rhythmic aspects of this music. It's just all about pitch with him. Surprising since you claim to have gone to a music school. Didn't your instructors mention anything about rhythm/ time? Originally Posted by stratcat
the other thing is that a lot of generous people with more time on their hands than me have offered you well meaning advice. It's time for you to post some examples of what you've been doing otherwise people that are wanting to help you don't have any guidlines to critique your playing, and are really just wasting their time as there is no evidence to suggest that you are incorporating any of the advice that's been given to you. We already have a few members given to florid embellishment and excessive hyperbole. Don't be one of them. Also bare in mind that in a real world jazz context you are part of the rhythm section. It would probably be a good idea to learn how to interact with a rhythm section, cuz the reality is most of the time your going to be accompaning other soloists. You will have limited opportunities to use all those exotic scales you've been apparently shedding.
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There really aren't that many usable scales.
If you knew:
Pentatonic/Blues scale
Major modes
Melodic minor modes
Harmonic minor modes
Harmonic major scales
Diminished
Whole tone
Chromatic
...that would be more than enough (there are pros who don't know all the modes of harmonic major cold).
There just aren't that many ways to create scales without either three consecutive half steps or leaps larger than a minor third.
If you wanted more, you could just add chromatic notes to the aforementioned scales.
If you just want to play bebop, you don't need all those scales. If you want to play more modern tunes (post-Wayne Shorter compositions, ECM, etc) you'll need pretty much all of them. Either way, it should be a relatively small part of your practice time.
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