Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

[Guitar Toad]

For styles ranging from George Benson to Pat Matheny what are the requirements to play jazz guitar. Is it pretty much an anything goes genre?
If it sounds good play it. Jazz is a heavily blues based music. Jazz is blues without the 12 Bars...and minor pentatonic plus the other 7 notes of the chromatic scale?

What makes jazz different than blues?

 

[bungalowbill]

Re: Please advice for playing Jazz guitar

Re: Please advice for playing Jazz guitar

Jazz has a different "feel" for sure, along with the melodic content and phrasing. Blues to me is very simple music and Jazz is it's more complex relative.

 

[sufferinrewind]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

www.guitar-masters.com is the best place to learn jazz guitar on the web for free that I've seen. www.jazz-primer.com is linked to the guitar masters site.

 

[StrangeSound]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

I tend to say that in jazz it's more about chops than scales. You can shift cool chromatic licks all around the fret board. It doesn't have to be a chromatic lick but arpeggios which you shift to every 3rd fret. Half-diminished and diminished stuff is quite normal to use and that stuff kinda let it sound jazzy.

So you can find melodic motives which you can use to build tension (shift to the next fret).

For example you have a II-V-I vamp in C, so you play Dm7, G7alt. and C-major 7 you can play this:

Dm7__________G7alt_______Cmaj7
e------------------------------
b------------------------------
g-------2--5---4----3---------
d----3------------5----6--5---
a-5---------------------------
E-----------------------------

I made the numbers fat where the new chord is played. So it's jazzy to play Ab melodic minor over a G7..that has this super locrian sound.
And you can shift this thing over the fret board but the chords stay the same. It has a great effect if it's played faster..be-bop style. So a half tone from the tone "g" you find the Ab and from there you can play a melodic minor scale.

You can also play the tritone substitution (#11) over the G7 chord..play a Db7 arpeggio which builds a lot of tension but when the c-major7 comes everything's is fine

And yeah the whole blue notes are important as it is in Blues. And if you have a C7 for example you can play ths stuff:

e--11--12--------------------------
b-----------13-------------------
g---------------12---10--11--8--9-
d-----------------------------------9
a----------------------------
E-----------------------------

The blue notes are the fat numbers. And you should play it in a swing feel, which helps to play jazzier. Try the same pattern in another region of the fretboard over the same chord but be sure to "come back".

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Here's my reader's digest condensed version of learning to do jazz soloing:

1. Learn to look at the fretboard and find the note that you want to play on any string. Then learn the position of the third in relation to the note in every position. Then the 5th, 7th, 9th, 6th, etc.

2. Learn arpeggios for eveything if you're trying to play jazz. Don't just learn an arpeggio in a box position, take the time to learn how to play each arp off of the root note starting on each string (1-6). Then learn to play all inversions of the arpeggios in all areas of the fretboard.

3. Learn how to build chords. Learn how to play maj 7ths, diminished chords, sus2 and 4 chords, 6ths, etc. Since you've been working on arpeggios already, this should come relatively quickly.

4. Try to learn as many shortcuts as often as you can. For example, a min 7th arpeggio contains the 1 b3 5 b7. If you play a min 7th arpeggio built on the 5th of the chord that is playing you get 5 b7 9 11. Take a look at the chart below:

Built off of:--Notes:
1------------1 b3 5 b7
3rd----------3 5 7 9
5th----------5 b7 9 11
6th----------6 1 3 5
etc.

Using what you've learned about chords, you can see that if you want to solo on a minor chord or a minor 7th then you can build min 7th arpeggios off of the 1st or the 5th of a chord. If you want to play on a major chord, a major 6th, 9th, or a maj 7th then you can play a minor 7th arp built off of the 3rd or 6th or a chord. Want to play somthing over a dominant 7th? Build your min 7th arpeggio off of the 5th. By using just the 4 note shape of a minor 7th arpeggio, you can play over very complicated progressions by knowing where the scale degrees that you're playing over are located. You can take almost any type of arpeggio and break it down like this so that you can see what it will and won't fit over when you're improvising.

5. To keep your phrases flowing well when you're switching from scale to scale and arp to arp try making all of your phrases connect by a half step. For example, if you're playing over a Am7 - D progression you might play an Am7 arp (A C E G) and a minor 7th arp built off the third of D (Gb A Db E) you might play the following line:


Am..........D
---------|------5-------
---------|----6---------
-------5-|4-7-----------
-7-------|--------------
---8-5---|--------------
---------|--------------

By using half steps to connect different scales and scale patterns, it just sounds better for some reason.

6. Don't forget to make everything swing!


Hope there are a couple of ideas there that help you out a little bit . . .

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Hey guys, thanks for the great helps...that's plenty to keep me busy for a while. I really need to work on arpeggios and inverted arps. Thanks for offering those great suggestions StrangeSound and GuitarStv. Thanks for the helpful links sufferinwind.

 

[sufferinrewind]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Not a problem, man. Hope it helps. :fingersx:

 

[StrangeSound]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

You're very welcome!

The best thing is to listen to these great guys, perhaps you like this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldDXwOT5FzU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WH-W2KMlYMo&mode=related&search= (more funk/jazz)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ytz1ZKk9wXw&mode=related&search= (Afro Blue which is a jazz standard)

Jazz is not noodling and you can hear on the Metheny video how they shift some stuff

I really like this guy's songs
http://www.mikemoreno.com/

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

+1 to listening to people. If you go out and pick up some classic Jazz albums you'll have a much easier time getting into the whole genre. I'd suggest some John Coltrane, Miles Davis (well, his earlier stuff at least), Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Han****, Chic Corea, Art Blakely, Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt, and George Benson. That should get you warmed up at least . . .

 

[SpiderVenom]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

You could learn all the modes of jazz melodic minor:

Jazz melodic minor (first mode, parent scale)
Dorian b2
Lydian augmented
Lydian b7
Mixolydian b13
Locrian #2
Super Locrian (altered)

Then, once you memorise the names, you can spend the next 10 years trying to memorize the notes :laugh2:

 

[StrangeSound]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

+1 to listening to people. If you go out and pick up some classic Jazz albums you'll have a much easier time getting into the whole genre. I'd suggest some John Coltrane, Miles Davis (well, his earlier stuff at least), Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Han****, Chic Corea, Art Blakely, Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt, and George Benson. That should get you warmed up at least . . .

Totally! I think many jazz guitarists want to sound like a horn, so I wouldn't just cut the thing down on guitars only..amongst others trumpet and sax are very important!

If you play a jazz blues (if you need a backing track let me know) you can use the "harmonic minor" scale instead of the pentatonic scale..that's how I started many months ago. My teacher showed me the harmonic minor scale first.

 

[Al.C]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Play a wrong note once and it is a mistake. Play it twice and it is jazz.:smokin:

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Play a wrong note once and it is a mistake. Play it twice and it is jazz.:smokin:

:chairfall :laugh2: I love it.

 

[Frantic_Rock]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Practice very theoretically for 30 minutes. Think about every note and interval you play and how they theoretically interact.

Now practice very carefree for 30 minutes. Imagine you are a kid in a playground - and you just wanna go for it, and not think about anything theoretical.

Its like taking a hot shower, then a cold shower. It makes your body burn.
I once took a lesson fro 65 dollars an hour from one of the local Toronto jazz stars, and this was one of the things he taught me.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Please advice/tips for playing Jazz guitar

Play a wrong note once and it is a mistake. Play it twice and it is jazz.:smokin:

There are no wrong notes if you learn more than two chords! :chairfall The truth is that you can theoretically explain any note in the chromatic scale in relation to the current chord. Whether or not it sounds pleasing to the ear is another matter. In rock styles you can avoid "wrong notes" by picking a scale to fit the one chord that the band knows how to play! :chairfall In some stlyes of Jazz "wrong notes" are considered to be clams while in others they are called being progressive/innovative! :chairfall Which brings me to the subject of my post.

There is no one style that falls under the heading of jazz. There are numerous styles/idioms that fall under the title of jazz. Study the individual styles to learn what makes each one unique. Once you understand a particular jazz idiom you should be able to play and improvise freely within that idiom. Then move on and tackle the next one. After BeBop came Cool Jazz. From Cool spawned Jobim styled Bossa Nova. Then Free Jazz, HardBop and Fusion. Then Smooth Jazz which is nothing more than instrumental R&B (in my opinion). I started with BeBop myself. But you could go farther back in history if you like. I have found BeBop to be the ideal place for me personally to start.

Being a very opinionated person, I have developed a philosophy. Rock is Blues Based. That is to say that it evolved from Blues. While Fusion is Jazzed based. That's a general rule. Thats not to say that you don't have Jazzy Rock or Bluesy Jazz though. Therefore, it is my belief that a Rock/Metal player should be able to play a "really" convincing traditional blues ala B.B. King, Lightning Hopkins, or Muddy Waters. It also stands to reason that a Fusion player should be able to do a "really" convincing Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Tal Farlow, Joe Pass or Wes Montgomery. Not saying you should mimick anyone. Just be able to play convincingly in those styles. So if I'm a so called Jazzman then I should be able to play within any of the idioms in the genre whether past or present expertly.

I have seen a host of players, from Rock and Jazz, that are considered at the top who have played progressive styles. Yet when faced with a standard repetoire they are uncomfortable at best or stumble around helplessly at worst. That reveals something about them IMHO. Metheny, is my hero! Because he is a perfect example of the type of player that I'm refering to in this diatribe. He can play "Elucidation" which is a "Giants Steps", "Coltranesque" composition with Chick Corea and Gary Burton just as well as he can play "Third Wind" or "So Let It Secretly Begin".

There are styles that I didn't mention like Latin Jazz. Tito Puente style Mambo and Afro Cuban jazz are a couple of examples. But I'll leave the rest of the discovery process up to you.

To sum it up. Start by studying the different idioms, but be methodical. Don't skip steps like so many have done. At least be able identify the idioms. Because there's lots of ppl that go, "Oh, I wanna play Fusion!" or "Oh, I wanna shred!". But they know nothing historically and worse can't play any standards. Then one day they find themselves on stage with another cat that's done his homework and they can't call the tunes! They have to play what's on the other guy's list! Then they get sliced and diced!