Over the years the guitar has given me a great deal of pleasure. Especially now that I play predominantly finger style I can sit quite happily on my own tinkling away for hours oblivious to the cares of the world, completely immersed in music. However, I must say that for sheer spontaneous enjoyment there is nothing quite like playing improvised jazz with a good small group.
When a jazz musician plays an improvised chorus he is attempting to perform the miracle of instance composition, and incredibly, if he know what he's doing the miracle works!
Such a solo is built on the chord progression of the song rather than the melody, so the guitar player has a certain advantage when he comes to jazz. In common with most guitarists I have always found it much easier to remember chord progressions than melodies, which is not surprising, because after some years of playing it is natural to recognize certain chordal relationships.
Any guitarist who wants to play jazz should train himself to do this. He will then be able to develop his solos logically on the basis of the arpeggios and scales thus suggested. Don't misunderstand what I am saying here. A good jazz chorus consists of a great deal more than arpeggios and scales. These should be used as the foundation on which to build a new and interesting melodic lines of your own, and added to his basic knowledge of chords and scales the jazz guitarist must have a flair for melodic and rhythmic invention.
Only the geniuses are born with this flair; but fortunately there are ways for developing it through listening and experimentation. Clearly it is no good expecting that you are going to be able to play good jazz improvisation purely by chance. This would be equivalent to sticking you down in the middle of China and expecting you to be able to improvise the language. Jazz is a language; a way of putting over ideas. If you want to play it, you must listen to it habitually, particularly with reference to the guitar; so that you know what has been done and what can be done with our instrument in this field.
Listen to Jim Hall - a completely different kind of player. Gentle, thoughtful, he never puts a finger wrong; playing kind of jazz chamber music with a taste and intelligence that make him the thinking man's guitarist. And if you want to find out where a great deal of this began. Listen to Django Reinhardt - the incomparably Gipsy guitarist who showed us the way back in 1930's, whose sheer joy of living comes through with every now, making it impossible to believe that he has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century. If there can be such a thing as an Immortal then Django Reinhardt is surely it.
And Play Jazz....
When a jazz musician plays an improvised chorus he is attempting to perform the miracle of instance composition, and incredibly, if he know what he's doing the miracle works!
Such a solo is built on the chord progression of the song rather than the melody, so the guitar player has a certain advantage when he comes to jazz. In common with most guitarists I have always found it much easier to remember chord progressions than melodies, which is not surprising, because after some years of playing it is natural to recognize certain chordal relationships.
Any guitarist who wants to play jazz should train himself to do this. He will then be able to develop his solos logically on the basis of the arpeggios and scales thus suggested. Don't misunderstand what I am saying here. A good jazz chorus consists of a great deal more than arpeggios and scales. These should be used as the foundation on which to build a new and interesting melodic lines of your own, and added to his basic knowledge of chords and scales the jazz guitarist must have a flair for melodic and rhythmic invention.
Only the geniuses are born with this flair; but fortunately there are ways for developing it through listening and experimentation. Clearly it is no good expecting that you are going to be able to play good jazz improvisation purely by chance. This would be equivalent to sticking you down in the middle of China and expecting you to be able to improvise the language. Jazz is a language; a way of putting over ideas. If you want to play it, you must listen to it habitually, particularly with reference to the guitar; so that you know what has been done and what can be done with our instrument in this field.
Listen to Jim Hall - a completely different kind of player. Gentle, thoughtful, he never puts a finger wrong; playing kind of jazz chamber music with a taste and intelligence that make him the thinking man's guitarist. And if you want to find out where a great deal of this began. Listen to Django Reinhardt - the incomparably Gipsy guitarist who showed us the way back in 1930's, whose sheer joy of living comes through with every now, making it impossible to believe that he has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century. If there can be such a thing as an Immortal then Django Reinhardt is surely it.
And Play Jazz....
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