The Art of Jazz Guitar

Jazz masterclass with Mimi Fox

2011-11-18T14:26:00.000+02:00

Jazz guitar is mysterious and intimidating for most players - so many chords, changes, feels and then the capper; you have to improvise over all of it. There's really no shortcut for developing jazz chops, but there is an underlying structure and if you understand that structure, the chops will quickly follow.

Jazz Anatomy

Jazz Anatomy decodes the structure of jazz guitar revealing a remarkably clear approach for comping, melodic development and improvisation.

Your professor of Jazz Anatomy is Mimi Fox - phenom player, brilliant educator and top recording artist. Just Jazz Guitar hails her playing as "jazz guitar at its best" and she chairs the guitar department at the Jazz School in Berkeley. In short, Fox has all the chops.

Jazz Anatomy is a hands-on playing course that gets you up and running without tedious theory and exercises. In this first volume of Jazz Anatomy, Mimi presents five grooves and progressions that are common to thousands of tunes; Major Blues, Minor Blues, Modal, II V I Major and II V I Minor. Get a grip on these five forms and you'll be difficult to stump at the next jam.

Each form is covered across 8 video lessons, starting with basic concepts, lines and comps, and then progressing to more advanced material. All of the material is easily translated to any key and all solos and examples are transcribed for reference.

CD 1:

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6

CD 2:

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

Guitar Arpeggio Studies on Jazz Standards

An in-depth approach to mastering arpeggios for guitarists, beginning with simple arpeggio studies, this book progresses through simple concepts and tunes then proceeds to tackle some of the great standards that jazz musicians play. The lesson concludes with advanced arpeggio concepts including super-imposition of unusual arpeggios over various chord types to create startling tonal clusters. This is a must-have for all serious guitarists who want to achieve great technique while developing their sense of harmony. Companion CD included.

e-book + CD

** This book has been named one of the top guitar books ever written!! Mimi is honored to be included on the list of the Top 50 Jazz Guitar Books. **

Note, that these two products work together very well...

Bebop Scales

2011-03-26T21:55:00.000+02:00

The bebop scales are frequently used in jazz improvisation and are derived from the modes of the major scale, the melodic minor scale, and the harmonic minor scale.

David Baker, one of the world's finest jazz educators, named these scales the "bebop scales" because they were used so often by jazz artists from the Bebop Era. These artists include Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few.
—Corey Christiansen

There are four types of frequently used bebop scales: the bebop dominant scale, the bebop Dorian scale, the bebop major scale, and the bebop melodic minor scale. Each of these scales has an extra chromatic passing tone. In general, bebop scales consist of traditional scales with an added passing tone placed such that when the scale is begun on a chord tone and on the downbeat, all other chord tones will also fall on downbeats, with the remaining tones in the scale occurring on the upbeat (given that the scale is played ascending or descending; i.e., no intervallic skips are played). As such, many heptatonic scales may be modified by the addition of an eighth passing tone to accomplish this same effect; however, the modifier "bebop" is reserved to indicate those scales most frequently used—and popularized—during the bebop era (and/or by modern practitioners of the bebop genre).

Joe Pass - Solo Jazz Guitar

2011-03-20T08:54:00.002+02:00

Joe Pass is one of jazz guitar's all-time masters.

In this video, his first of the Hot Licks series, he demonstrates legendary techniques that will be of value to rock guitarists as well as jazz purists.

Joe covers I-VI-II-V chord progression with substitutions, chord melody, leading tones, chromatic chords, voice movements, and many more special excercises, all with the unique Joe Pass twist.

A chance to study with a jazz guitar legend!

Video and booklet HERE.

Pat Martino - Creative Force

2011-03-18T15:25:00.000+02:00

One of the most respectful jazz guitarist today is Pat Martino. Halfway of his successful career, In 1980, Martino underwent surgery as the result of a nearly fatal brain aneurysm. The surgery left him with amnesia, leaving him, among other things, without any memory of the guitar and his musical career. With the help of friends, computers, and his old recordings, Martino made a recovery, and learned to play the guitar again. Pat Martino is the man who learned jazz guitar twice!!!

Here is a REH productions video lesson of Pat Martino. He speaks straight from his experience so you will find various practical approaches and fingerings to nail at your fret. I know, I give too many parts, but each part is about 30MB, so it should not take long to get them. These parts are not merged or zipped in any way. You can download each one individually. You do not need all parts to access the videos.

evaluation links: part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9

F dominant 7 voicings and comping

2011-03-06T11:59:00.000+02:00

More voicings from dominant 7 family this time. Those particular voicings are really tasty and appropriate for comping. Of course there's many-many other dom7 voicings. Consider the voicings I give you as a start and later, find more of them! In general aim to learn new voicings every week!!!

I give you two comping examples; Bb shuffle blues and watermelon man and detailed note-to-note subscriptions of what I am playing in the recorded examples and of course backing tracks to practice.

Bb shuffle blues recorder example

Bb shuffle blues PDF score/TAB detailed trascription of the recorded example

Bb shuffle blues sibelius file detailed trascription of the recorded example

Bb shuffle blues backing track

watermelon man recorder example

watermelon man PDF score/TAB detailed trascription of the recorded example

watermelon man sibelius file detailed trascription of the recorded example

watermelon man backing track

Enjoy your new voicings!!!

Joe Pass "Jazz Lines"

2011-03-05T21:55:00.003+02:00

This video lesson is by REH publications (now by Warner bros), is named "Jazz Lines" and it is a 1991 video tape release.

In Jazz Lines, Joe discusses the scales and arpeggios he uses when improvising. As notated in the accompanying booklet, Joe also demonstrates nonstop improvised lines for major 7th, minor 7th, and static and altered dominant 7th chord types, plus there's a special section on turnarounds.

Download - Joe Pass "Jazz Lines"

C minor voicings and comping

2011-02-28T02:54:00.002+02:00

Comping (verb comp) means to play chords in a rhythmically interesting fashion while accompanying a soloist. Comes from the words accompany and compliment.

Comping itself is a kind of creative improvisation. In order to comp properly you need tasty guitar voicing, good sense of rhythm, jazz rhythm repertory, creative imagination and plenty of hours studying and listening to the jazz masters comping in the records. When I comp, somehow I feel that I imitate piano, so I highly suggest you to study how great pianists as Tommy Flanagan, Bud Powel, Horace Silver and many more comp, too. In order to easily learn how to comp, you should focus at one chord family at a time (minor chords at this post).

So I provide you with various C minor voicings to memorize. Of course there 's many-many more C minor voicings. Consider the voicings that I provide you as a start. Later, you should seek and memorize more of them. Note that the voicings are moveable. You can visualize (and not necessary finger) the root to find any voicing at the desired key. Click on image or here (PDF) to obtain the voicings. Instructions on how to read the chord diagrams are included.

You can find a recorded example of me comping on C minor vamp here and an accurate note-to-note transcription of what I am playing at the example, here. Sibelius users can find this transcription here. While studying this transcription, you can copy some interesting rhythms, see how I superimpose chords (superimposed chords are highlighted) and how I properly use the altered dominant chords. Do not miss the opportunity to memorize the non-minor chords that you'll encounter in this example as well!!! Finally, a backing track for you to practice can be found here.

In the future, I will provide you with more voicings from other chord families, but for now focus on minor and...

...practice your voicings hard!

Quality listening material : The Big 3

2011-02-27T10:34:00.002+02:00

Another reference to my other blog, for quality listening material that I believe is beneficial for your music studies.

Great record of superb hearing : Milt Jackson, Joe Pass, Ray Brown - The Big 3 (1975)

This record can provide you beautiful ideas, sophisticated voicings, catchy riffs and hooks. Some tracks here, may motivate you to study some standards; and if you have already study tunes that can found here, then you may consider to revise and the same time to get into some fine phraseology!

Consider it as a source of
excellent transcribing material.

How Herb Ellis approaches the blues

2011-02-13T00:07:00.002+02:00

Most of beginners jazz guitarists, find the blues as the best way to start learning jazz; and this is fact! If you can play some old good traditional blues, then you will be able to play some jazz pretty soon, because blues is a shortcut! You can combine and enhance your hard-earned blues knowledge with a very good combo of a book and a video lesson; both by the famous jazz guitarist Herb Ellis.

The video lesson is by REH publications (now by Warner bros), named "Swing Jazz - Soloing & Comping" and it is a 1989 video tape release. In this video, Herb Ellis explains how he approaches the blues with a moveable shape system. Reading notation is not a necessity in this lesson. Unfortunate I was not able to find the booklet -if any exists.

Herb Ellis Swing Jazz - Soloing & Comping * Video Lesson

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

"Herb Ellis Swing Blues - Jazz Guitar Method" is the title of the book. In the book you will find exact the same material and additional exercises in Herb's shape system. At the end of the book, three fully transcribed blues are waiting for you. CD included.

Herb Ellis Swing Blues - Jazz Guitar Method * Book

Note that these products are being sold separately, but they are working together very well! Also note that both products are very rare for evaluation downloading.

So now is your chance....

or maybe, now is the time ;)

Quality listening material: The Poll Winners

2011-02-10T10:34:00.007+02:00

As you 'd have notice, I often try to give you various links to material I believe that is beneficial for your music studies. So times to times, it seems to be unavoidable to give you links, that are directing to my other blog for quality listening material.

Today, I would like to prompt you to a great record of superb hearing: The Poll Winners: Barney Kessel with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne (1957)

Consider it as a source of
excellent transcribing material.

Walking bass lines in F blues

2011-02-09T17:11:00.002+02:00

This is an example of walking a bass line through an F blues using a chord-note-note-note approach, with the note being the bass note. The exception to this is when there are two chords in one measure, you would use chord-note-chord-note. For a PNG version click on the picture, for a PDF version click here. Both versions are printer frendly.

Of course this is just an example. If you want variation, you must also study more voicings and bass lines. I will definitely post some good jazz voicings in the future but I do not know if I will ever post some bass lines in this blog. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. So for now, you must find more bass lines on your own. Get a bass book or a guitar chord melody book or listen from the records and...

...transcribe.

Sundown as played by Wes Montgomery

2011-01-30T14:20:00.002+02:00

Another accurate note-to-note transcription by Wolf Marshal (YES he IS one of the best transcribers around) of the tune "Sundown" by Wes Montgomery, from "California Dreaming" Album. This tune is a blues written by Wes Montgomery and it is in the uncommon (for jazz) key of A. In this tune you can find tasty single-note lines, sophisticated octave riffs, that only the grandmaster Wes could improvise with and some block-chords phrases. It is highly suggested to transpose your favorite blues licks in the keys of Bb and F, if not in ALL KEYS...

Here is a PDF file with the lead sheet, so you can see the whole melody and harmony in just one page. I created this lead sheet with Sibelius because "Sundown" is not a standard so I could not find it anywhere in the web. Sibelius users can find this tune here.

The backing track is here to practice with. Do not forget the stereo separation that is allowing you to isolate instruments. Finally here is the original recording to listen from Wes. Now you are ready. Grab the Transcribe! and...

...start practicing

Let's talk about practice!

2011-01-29T04:08:00.003+02:00

If you're looking to improve quickly, you need a plan that will help you become your own teacher.

HOW TO PRACTICE

Follow these STEPS, in order to get more out of your practice time:
Step 1: Find a tune you want to learn and base your practice around it

Step 2: Look out recordings of the tune in stores, online downloads, in blogs (like my other blog). Consult the list of tunes I posted here.

Step 3: Write up goals, general ones at first then more specific as you get into it.
Example of general goals –> play the melody through accurately; arpeggiate the chords of the tune in time; learn the lyrics (so you can feel the tune)
Example of specific goals –> learn and play licks from a recording; build your own lick library; explore the Bb harmonic minor scale over the minor ii-V7 in Bar 6; master Jamey Aebersold’s 10 Basic Exercises

Step 4: Develop a logical routine. A great analogy from guitar tutor and author Corey Christiansen is to think of what to work on as 'a hamburger,' a logical structure with a variety of activities. This example of a practice session lasts 60 minutes:

WARM-UP (15 minutes): Long notes, techical exercises, scales and patterns

OLD MATERIAL (10 minutes): Melody or solo you know

NEW MATERIAL (15-20 minutes): New tune or solo, learn melody or use of pattern over changes

OLD MATERIAL (10 minutes): Different melody or solo you know
WARM-DOWN (10 minutes): Techical exercises in 12 keys

The topic for the 'New Material' part of the routine is up to you, but it needs to be linked to a tune. You can draw up a rotation of things to include, but the point is to work longest on one aspect only at a time, not everything. What and how you practise will change over time, depending on the speed at which you learn, driven by your playing aspirations.

Don't be lazy! Practice!

WHEN AND HOW LONG TO PRACTICE

>the first session should be in the morning, daily and in small amounts
>it’s what you achieve not how long you spend that counts
>most people learn best in short bursts of concentration and to play music it takes a lot of concentration. See the Hamburger above for a 60 minute breakdown.

THINGS TO DO AWAY FROM YOUR GUITAR

Not all practice needs to be on the instrument. Four other aspects I believe are critical to success and should be included in a routine:

>Visualising – the idea of ‘working out’ music in your mind. Sounds vague but actually works. I use this during the first part of my practice and usually think of a piano keyboard to help me 'see' intervals, scales, voice leading etc as black and white keys. Then imagine the physical actions required to play the music on your instrument. When it comes to actual playing, most of the work is done. Jerry Bergonzi’s first volume in his Inside Improvisation series discusses this. Also, 'seeing' and 'hearing' in your mind can achieve far more than hours of physical technical exercises.

>Ear Training - I have written about ear training at previous post. As I said, there's several benefits if you train your ears, including better awareness of intervals/chords, pattern recognition and a greater understanding of music in general.

>Transcribing - this is best tool for generating future playing goals. Choose the music that you like, get Transcribe! to help and you'll soon have goals for future practice sessions.

>Attentive Listening - Ok, I am going to write it one more time : "LISTEN TO THE JAZZ MASTERS!!!"

THINGS TO MOTIVATE YOUR PRACTISING

'Knowledge is power' - get a book and a teacher. Follow this blog!

Practice with others - someone who has gone through the same process and who is willing to share advice and opinions, can support your efforts.

Role models / live concerts - there's nothing like the buzz you get from hearing live gigs and talking backstage to a pro musician. You can stay on a practicing ‘high’ for weeks.

Have opportunities to play – sounds obvious, but many people become lifelong ‘practicers’ and forget that the performance aspect is what it’s all about. Private parties, concerts / gigs, school concerts, join an orchestra or band, attend courses, do exams, jam with friends … these are all chances to play music and have fun and...

...give practicing a reason.

Ear Training

2011-01-23T12:06:00.001+02:00

click me ;)
Did you feel frustration, the last time you attempted to transcribe? If so, then you lack of ear training.  Ear training or aural skill is a skill by which musicians learn to identify, solely by hearing, pitches, intervals, melody, chords, rhythms, and other basic elements of music. The application of this skill is analogous to taking dictation in written/spoken language. Ear training is typically a component of formal musical training.

What you need for ear training:

>Desire/motivation to boost your aural skills

>15-20 minutes per day (every day if possible) for 1-2 months (depended of the individual), scheduled just before or after your regular music study/practice

> Specialized ear-training books or software. You can find dozens of ear-training products, some for free and some to buy, but you can start by using a freeware software, created by musician for musicians here. If and when you feel that free software is not good enough for you, then consider buying a commercial product.

Benefits of ear training:

>By choosing to actively improve your skills through ear training, you will make much faster progress and unlock talents you never thought you’d have.

>If you’re a musician, ear training is the number one thing you can do to improve your musicianship and bring life to your music.

>If you’re an audio professional, ear training will let you leap right to the solutions rather than finding them by trial and error – because you’ll understand exactly what you’re hearing when something sounds wrong.

>If you’re a music fan, ear training will let you hear things you’ve never heard before, even in music you already knew. You’ll have a much deeper understanding of the music you love and your tastes will be broadened as you begin to hear what’s so great about music you never thought much of before.

Summarizing, music is aural. We enjoying music by listening. Ear is most important and precious sense for a musician. In order to get the most of music, you must first learn how to listen and sharpen your ears. You must feel while transcribing, studying or practicing, the challenge. Try to set the difficulty of your tasks just above your limits...

...or else you wasting your time

"Listen to the JAZZ MASTERS!!! Listen to the JAZZ MASTERS!!! Listen to the JAZZ MASTERS!!!..."

2011-01-21T01:20:00.003+02:00

"...all the answers are in the discography", said Jamey Aebersold. He emphasized, by repeating the sentence 3 times. But there's an issue here: In the middle of an ocean of uncountable mass of music material, where should you start of? Who and what to listen? You can easily access some relative lists using google and of course, there's hundreds of blogs out there waiting for you to discover them, to reveal you a musical oasis. Speaking about music blogs, you can always visit my other blog for quality listening material.

So, now you have the "Transcribe!" and the tune list. So I will provide you below a small song-list of excellent transcribing material to start. It is not necessary (and suggested) to transcribe the whole tune. It is better to limit yourself to 1-2 choruses, or even better, transcribe only the phrases that you most like. Focusing only at guitar solos is the greatest mistake ever! Jazz traditionally was born by horns. Try to copy the articulation. Articulation is the most important element on a spoken idiom, and jazz is a spoken idiom

D Natural Blues - Wes Montgomery
Lullaby of Birdland - Barney Kessel (Check also here)
No Name Blues - Bud Powel
Out of Nowhere - Paul Desmont, Gerry Mulligan
Love for sale - Oscar Peterson
Autumn Leaves - Barney Kessel
Funk's Oats - Jimmy Smith

If guessing notes by ear is frustrating for you, that means that you lack of ear training. If you feel that your ear is not ready yet, to catch common jazz phrases then you should schedule a whole life to listen to the jazz masters and a 2 month ear training program; 15-20 minutes every day if possible. There's specialized software for ear training and I will say more about it, at a later post; so...

...stay tuned.

There's a list of tunes, that every jazz musician should know...

2011-01-20T23:27:00.001+02:00

Jazz and pop musicians learn repertoire from records or from printed music. Jazz musicians sometimes specialize in a particular area but there are some tunes that everyone should know, if only to avoid embarrassment at a jam session when someone calls Summertime. It is important to know the harmony as well as the melody. Most standards are available as sheet music, but jazz musicians often use fake books, real books or pocket handbooks which contain only the melody and chord symbols (and sometimes a rough rhythm guide) - At later posts we will talk about repertoire books extensively.

Here is a list of some of the most famous jazz tunes that I have found useful. This is by no means a comprehensive list; suggestive list would be a more appropriate description. It is based mostly on jazz of the 30s - 50s and useful repertoire can vary from region to region in the world. There is a very comprehensive repertoire list in The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine. More modern jazz has become so diverse stylistically that it becomes almost impossible to list modern standards.

Transcribe!

2011-01-18T22:32:00.001+02:00

Click for evaluation download

will help you slow down music so you can learn it, practice it, and, of course, transcribe it.

The Transcribe! application is an assistant for people who sometimes want to work out a piece of music from a recording, in order to write it out, or play it themselves, or both. It doesn't do the transcribing for you, but it is essentially a specialised player program which is optimised for the purpose of transcription. It has many transcription-specific features not found on conventional music players.

It is also used by many people for play-along practice. It can change pitch and speed instantly, and you can store and recall any number of named loops. There is some advice about this in Transcribe!'s help, under the heading "Various Topics".
And it is also used for speech transcription. With its support for foot pedals and its superior slowed-down sound quality, it is an excellent choice for this purpose. There is some advice about this in Transcribe!'s help, under the heading "Various Topics".
Conventional music players (whether hardware such as a CD player or an iPod, or software such as Windows Media Player or iTunes) are really designed for people who want to listen to whole tracks. They are very inconvenient for transcribing music as they are not designed for this purpose. If you copy the recording to your computer's hard disk as a sound file then you can use Transcribe! instead. Transcribe! offers many features aimed at making the transcription job smoother and easier, including the ability to slow down music without changing its pitch, to analyse chords and show you what notes are present, and the capability of adding markers and textual annotations so you can easily navigate around the track. Transcribe! also has a piano keyboard displayed on screen which you can click to play reference notes.

It is important to understand that Transcribe! does not attempt to do the whole job, processing an audio file and outputting musical notation or midi - this would be nice, but is a currently unsolved research problem. The spectrum analysis feature is very useful for working out those hard-to-hear chords, but you must still use your ear and brain to decide which of the peaks in the spectrum are notes being played, which are merely harmonics, and which are just the result of noise and broad-spectrum instruments such as drums. If you have never worked out even a simple piece of music by ear then Transcribe! will probably not help you (see How to Transcribe), but if you do sometimes work out recorded music by ear then Transcribe! can make the job a lot quicker and easier.
If you are working from a video file then on Windows & Mac (not yet on Linux) Transcribe! will display the video too. You may need to convert the video to a suitable format first, and install QuickTime if you are on Windows (it's a free download).
Transcribe! takes no interest in MIDI files - these already contain explicit information about what notes are to be played and when, and there are plenty of programs available which can display this information. Transcribe! deals with audio sample data files.
Transcribe! plays and records audio files but it is not an audio editor. It is capable of applying various effects to audio such as speed change, pitch change and EQ. You can save the modified audio to a new sound file if you want.

Transcribe! is available for Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS 7.5 - 10.6 and Linux/x86/GTK.
Transcribe! is Copyright © 1998-2011 Seventh String Software.
You may download Transcribe! and use it for 30 days evaluation period for free. If you want to continue using it after that you must buy it.

St Thomas as played by Jim Hall

2011-01-18T21:52:00.001+02:00

This is an accurate note-to-note transcription by Wolf Marshall, as played by Jim Hall in the record Jim HALL & Ron Carter Duo – Alone Together 1972. This link goes to my other Greek blog, wich is dedicated in jazz discography. The articles are written in Greek language but you can find a translation tool from google at the right column. Anyway spotting the link in comments will not be a problem...

You can find Wolf Marshall's backing track to practice the tune, here. This MP3 has stereo separation. If you adjust the balance to the left you can hear only the double bass . If you adjust the balance to the right you can hear only the guitar

A PDF file with the lead sheet could be useful if you want to check the melody and the harmony of the tune using just one page. Another backing track from Aebersold can be found here. This MP3 has also stereo separation. If you adjust the balance to the left you can hear only the double bass . If you adjust the balance to the right you can hear only the piano comping. Drums however are locate at the center you cannot isolate drums.

Practice hard!

Inspirations

2011-01-18T21:23:00.001+02:00