Comments on: Discover this "Secret" and Dramatically Improve Your Jazz Guitar Playing

By: Will

Will — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:20:28 +0000

This is a truly amazing post. I studied jazz in college for a year and a half and was extremely frustrated with the way jazz is taught. All the scales are there but no one was playing anything interesting or melodic. The teachers give you the scales and theory but neglect the fact that the majority of progress is by transcribing and understanding the masters.
I’ve been studying online with Jimmy Bruno and on my own and while it is absolutely amazing to know the fretboard and use arpeggios, and have him respond with videos, the missing link as you say is the ‘words’. Many of the students are playing the right notes but it’s often rambling up and down scales.
They aren’t really learning the language – sadly this can result in frustration and years of wasted time.
I highly recommend Greg Fishman’s Jazz Guitar etudes – a plethora of awesome phrases to work with originally written for sax. And transcribing of course.

By: AndrÃ© Rodrigues

AndrÃ© Rodrigues — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:35:45 +0000

I agree with what i’ve just read – i must say i don’t usually go for all that Â«i’ve discovered the secretÂ» stuff, and initially i thought your article was one of such kind – but it was very honest –
i was one of many Â«wanna besÂ» that gave up the guitar years ago – out of frustration – now i’m giving it another go, quite similar to this aproach, i might add – and i’m happy with it – at 35 i know it takes time to learn a language, even if you already have some technical ability –
keep it up, i’ll be visiting you. Greetings from Lisbon and thanx very much!

By: Kelly Unger

Kelly Unger — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:43:45 +0000

Awesome! Don’t ever delete this website, so I won’t have to Scr Lk.

By: fede

fede — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:52:22 +0000

Excellent article, the best iÂ´ve ever read about jazz improvisation. Simple, well written and very good examples…it generated on me a “truth” effect. Thank you!!

By: Leon

Leon — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:27:01 +0000

John, I’m glad you got some benefit from reading this article. As far as building your vocabulary goes, like I said there’s no substitute for listening and transcribing.

If it’s too fast, just use software that will slow down the song while retaining the pitch. A good program is “Transcribe!” Check it out at http://www.seventhstring.com

I plan on doing a longer transcription article in the future.

As far as my setup goes, hang tight I’ll post an article on that, too. But the short answer is I use an archtop jazz guitar through a reverb unit to a mixer. I run the mixer out to my interface(MAudio Projectmix) and finally to my laptop which runs Protools.

I know that sounds complicated but it’s not really. There are many simpler ways you can do it.

I hope this helps. Stay tuned to the site for future articles on these subjects.

Leon