Jazz Guitar

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....

About Electric Guitar

This is the instrument that is seen in a vast variety of forms in Rock, Heavy Metal, and even in Pop Groups etc.. and could in that sense be classed as the most popular guitar. The Electric Guitar is fitted with pickups like those on the Semi Acoustic, but as it consists of little more than a block of wood with a guitar neck attached it depends entirely on an amplifier for the production of sounds. For this reason a beginner buying an Electric Guitar must be prepared at the same time to go to the expenses of buying an amplifier, which could cost him as much or even more than the guitar itself. This begin so, I would no happily recommend a complete beginner to start off with an Electric Guitar.

Later on, well that's a different matter, because when it comes to group playing an Electric Guitar has several advantages. Firstly it is usually quite light in weight, which is a consideration if you are playing in a standing position all night with it hanging from your neck. Secondly, the action of an Electric Guitar can be made very light, which makes it easy to play, because there are mo structural acoustic properties to consider in the making of the body. The shape of an Electric guitar is limited only by the imagination of the maker, as will be seen from illustration C.

The third point about Electric guitars is that because there is no need of any consideration of acoustics in their construction a Electric Guitar with special electronic refinements, but there are a number of very reasonably priced copies of the original Les Paul model around that are quite adequate. Just bear in mind that without the help of an amplifier you Electric guitar will produce nothing more inspiring than a tiny 'Plink' - in contrast with an Acoustic, which you can play anywhere and produce a musical sound.

Types Of Guitars

The Steel String Acoustic Guitars

The Round Hole Acoustic Guitar, sometimes known as the 'jumbo' or 'Dreadnaught' is the most suitable type of instrument for a beginner from several points of view. It is very similar in appearance to the traditional Spanish guitar, but more heavily built to withstand the extra tension of steel strings. Another important point is that the fingerboard of a steel string guitar is usually narrower and slightly curved, making it easier to play in some respects than a Spanish guitar, particular when dealing with moving chordal passages.

This instrument has no pickup or means of amplification and depends solely on the strings and the resonant properties of its own body for the sound it produces. It is used by a large number of Folk, Blues and Ragtime players, both as a solo instrument and as an accompaniment to the voice. Because of it's limited volume it is not suitable for playing the solo lead in a group, but it is a very useful instrument on which to learn the basics of guitar playing.

SEMI ACOUSTIC GUITAR

This is the instrument mostly favoured by Jazz players. Generally speaking it has a slim body which produces less un-amplified sound than the Dreadnaught.This limitation is not important however, because it is fitted with pickups which convert the vibrations of its steel string into electro magnetic impulses which are then fed into an amplifier. Thus major part of the sound comes from the speaker of the amplifier rather than the instrument itself and can be adjusted to make it louder or softer by a simple movement of a volume control knob.

Normally played with a plectrum the Semi Acoustic guitar is used for both comping (accompaniment playing) and single note soloing in Jazz groups. Of late years there has also been a growing trend among Jazz soloist to play the Semi Acoustic with the fingers of the right hand, a style which increases the self contained qualities of the instrument and converts into what has been described as a Lap Piano. The leading exponent in this field is without doubt Joe Pass, whose recordings will be only fair to make it clear at this point that it is also difficult one to play because it requires a greater knowledge of the fingerboard and the principles of Harmony than possibly any other style. I shall explain more about this subject in later chapters.

Guitar

There are two basic types of guitar. The first has metal strings, the second (normally called Spanish guitar) nylon strings. Even at this early stage it is important that you should understand the essential differences between the two types, because if you don't you could waste a lot of time and money.


The best Spanish guitar ever made would be completely useless to someone whose ambition is to play in a beat group, and the most fabulously ornate Electric guitar with three pickups, tremolo arm and on board pre-amp would be equally unsuitable for someone who wants to play Classical Finger Style.
So where do you start? Well, unless you have your heart set from the very beginning on becoming a Classical Finger Style Player.
You can work through Sections Two and Four of this book on a metal string instrument, training the fingers of your Left hand and learning the notes on the fingerboard. If you later decide that you would like to go on the Finger Style nylon string guitar nothing you have learned will be wasted.
But before we go any further I must give you one very important warning! Whatever you do, Never put metal strings onto a guitar which was built to carry nylon strings. Spanish guitars are much lighter built than metal string guitars and the higher tension needed to tune metal string can cause irreparable damage.


This may be obvious to you, and you're probably wondering why I lay so much stress on the matter. But I will always remember with a shudder of horror the time when a lady turned up at one of my classes with a beautiful little American made finger style guitar, ornate with mother of pearls inlays and over hundred years old. (The guitar, not a lady!) Full of good intentions she had taken it along to a supposedly reputable music shop on the previous day and asked them to fit it with a new set of strings. This they did-metal ones, under the strain of which the neck of the guitar was already warping visibly!
To help you avoid this kind of pitfall, please study the illustrations and descriptions of the different kinds of the guitars on the following pages carefully.
Metal String guitar can be divided into three types the Acoustic, the Acoustic/Electric or Semi-Acoustic and the Solid Electric.