Many beginning jazz musicians have misconceptions about what professional jazz musicians actually do when they improvise. In fact, many believe that they are simply playing melodies off the top of their head or that they just have a gift for creating beautiful solos on the fly. This is most certainly not true as I’ve learned [...]

For those of you interested in smooth jazz guitar, at the end of this post is a YouTube video of Norman Brown playing live at the 2007 All Star Smooth Jazz Cruise. I’ve seen Norman play live many times and he’s an amazing performer. His style is similar to George Benson but with less of [...]

This is the second article in a series for beginning jazz guitarists. In the last lesson, I gave you what I considered to be the 8 Essential Jazz Guitar Chords. I consider them essential because they can be used right away to play through a number of jazz guitar tunes. Well, now that you’ve learned [...]

I recently came accross the following You Tube video of an all-star line up playing Chick Corea’s tune, “Spain”. Chick Corea – KeyboardsHubert Laws – FluteBill Watrous – TromboneGeorge Benson – GuitarStanley Clarke – BassLenny White – Drumsand introduced by Quincy Jones. Great Stuff! Check it out! Leon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RHzCQIvMyo Technorati : jazz guitar

When you’re starting out as a jazz guitarist, it can be overwhelming to think of all of the chords that you have to learn. Most rock and blues guitarists are familiar with open string chords, barre chords and other “plain” chord types. Well, jazz guitarists like to spice it up and we often use extended [...]

I recently came across an excellent interview recorded by KJZZ with George Benson. It’s about an hour long and he pretty much talks about everything – how he got started, what it was like playing with many of the greats (Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow, etc…), and his newest record, a collaboration with Al Jareau. He’s [...]

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I generally divide jazz guitarists into three basic camps when it comes to improvising styles: Motif style, Cliche-based, and Stream of Consciousness. Obviously all players don’t fall completely into any of these camps but it helps me to organize things. Motif-Based A player in the Motif camp generally will take maybe 3 or 4 ideas [...]

I noticed two different videos on Youtube recently of George Benson playing the song “Wekend in L.A.” – a great R&B tune that he recorded in the 80′s. What really struck me about the videos was not necessarily the simlarity of the arrangements. Many times a jazz artist will play the same arrangements of tunes [...]

I have long held that George Benson is best all around jazz guitarist on the planet. He’s in his 60′s now and still does amazing things with the guitar. There are a lot of great YouTube videos of him playing. I just came across this Youtube video of him playing the song “Take Five” at [...]

Hello everyone. This is the first post of what I hope to be many on the subject of jazz guitar. My name is Leon Henderson. I am a jazz guitarist based in Oakland, Californa. Jazz guitar has been one my passions for a number of years and I hope to share many insights into what [...]