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?
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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.
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.
