Are we players here? Listeners? Guitar aficionados? Builders? Something else?
I’ve been playing guitar for about 25 years, jazz guitar for probably 20 of those, doing a mix of gigging and just jamming (not teaching per se myself but I’ve enjoyed working with teachers to organize jam sessions to create a fun environment for students to learn in). Lately I’ve been getting into woodworking as a hobby and I’ve been working on building a guitar for myself, too.
What’s your jazz guitar experience like?
I hear other people play jazz guitar, and I think “I should practice more to get good enough to play jazz guitar!”
At the moment, not. I’ve always been a fan of Jazz, so I have a goal, learning to play it.
I’ve just digged out the Bass (Ibanez) and guitar (a frankenfender and an acoustic) that I bought years ago and never mastered and I’m trying to learn how to play,with at the moment the bass as main focus point (less strings) to learn how to play, fret, mute and even basics as to hold it so I don’t overstretch my wrists.
After this, I’ll dig out a trumpet, French horn, my synths and maybe even fix up the clarinet I have and try to get some music out of it.
Hi! I’ve only recently gotten into jazz guitar. I’m still figuring it out, but I’ve been playing for 16 yrs, writing, recording, playing shows etc. I’m actually more of a drummer I suppose.
I’ve been incorporating some bebop approaches and lots of chromaticism to my otherwise conventional psychedelic/roots/blues approach.
But when I’m practicing, I usually like to spend a good amount of time on writing jazz progressions on my looper and doing some fusiony inprov over top. I come up with ideas this way, and try to work them in to my written stuff.
Thanks for making this, I’ve still got so much to learn!
Nice! I started out in a very similar place actually (working with a looper, trying to build interesting progressions to practice soloing over).
Do you record/post any of your stuff?
Yea I’m kinda just getting my stuff together. Had a pretty bad drug problem, so I’m kind of relearning how I want to approach music as a functional adult. I used to do a lot of home brew sample type stuff with guitar etc. I slimmed it down to more conventional set-up and have buckled down on my guitar playing. Just been slowly writing stuff as I practice my actual musicianship and figuring out my own style. I have one bare bones guitar bass drum thing recorded that’s just the progression. It was more of a test of my studied capabilities and me learning everything over.
So ya it’s a slow process. I have a bunch of stuff from when I was younger that I treated more as a vehicle for my poetry. Now I’ve got ideas slowly forming new songs and I’m just having fun and doing it for therapy yknow.
I’m following here to learn, as I’ve just recently started diving in to jazz. I’ve been playing for 16 yrs but alot of that was active addiction so I’m kind of a newborn musically. Been focusing for year and I’m starting to get it down and have 6 or so songs almost put together.
That track sounds good!
I feel ya re: life changes. The great thing about music, in my experience, is the way it can connect you to a community that can help you navigate the sort of transitions in life you’re talking about. I divorced an addict many years ago and really struggled to put my life back together after all of that, but I found a community in the local jazz scene that was supportive and healthy in a way I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Being around those people in that moment and having a reason to keep improving myself probably saved my life.
I hope your musical journey is a happy and healthy one, friend.
Studied it in college. Drifted away. Come back again.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of my journey to learning Jazz but I would like to some day play at least some basic standards. Anyone got any resources? Like a lesson book/plan that’ll start off with the easy stuff.
If you haven’t already come across him, Jens Larsen is a great teacher with an excellent YouTube channel. He’s got loads of beginner-friendly videos but a lot of advanced stuff to think about too, and he puts out a lot of fresh content here and there for picking up tricks and chord voicings.
Maybe not exactly beginner-level stuff but Ted Greene was also an incredible teacher, particularly of chord melody playing. His students have assembled a bunch of his material online in a way that’s fairly accessible at tedgreene.com. He wrote a lot of stuff in a sort of idiosyncratic notation but once you figure it out, his arrangements are amazing. There are really powerful ideas in there about sticking to small movements for pleasant voice leading, using voicings that support lots of different choices of melody note, etc.
Thank you very much! I’m looking forward to checking it out, but that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
