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....

The Guitar Playing Picking, Ideas And Technique

I would recommend that you begin by using a plectrum to strike the strings. This is the easiest way in which a reasonable sound can be produced, and then only practical method for a metal string instrument. Later on, in article fourteen, we will talk about the use of the right hand fingers for striking the strings, in Spanish guitar playing.

The picking should be held between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, as shown in the above picture. It is important that the forefinger should be crooked, not straight, so that the pick balances on its first joint, held in place by pressure of the thumb. Don't grasp the pick like grim death. Your grip should be firm, but relaxed. The pick should move up and down across the strings, maintaining as nearly as possible an angle of 90' in relation to them. It is as well to practice at first with DOWN strokes only. After this technique has been mastered, you can start practicing UP strokes.

Picks come in fantastic variety of shapes and sizes, and a great deal of personal taste enters into which type you should select. I find the two shapes shown below to be the most practical for me, the one in the left for solo playing and the one on the right for the rhythm accompaniment. Both are steel, which gives clearer, more brilliant tone than composition or plastic. A pick should have a certain flexibility, but not to be too flimsy, otherwise the tone it produces will be corresponding thin.

After a time you will naturally develop a preference for one particular shape, but I would suggest that you start out using the rhythm type illustrated above.

Guitar Playing Position

In the classical guitar stance the player sits on a chair, with his left foot resting flat on a stool and his right on the ground. The waist of the guitar can then rest naturally on his horizontal thigh and is steadied in this position by the right forearm, which hangs naturally over the hips of the instrument.

The natural position of the left hand is found by bringing the hand up, with the palm facing away from you, until the thumb is in the middle of the back of the neck of the instrument and roughly parallel with it. The fingers are then arched round the neck so that they make contact with the strings at right angles. In this way, the pressures between the thumb and fingers balance each other .

This playing position has been developed over many years as both the most comfortable and the most efficient method of holding the guitar. I use it for both finger style and plectrum playing.

An alternative to the classic playing position, which does away with the need for a footstool, is to sit with the left leg crossed over the right, then rest the waist of the guitar on the left thigh, as before. This is the commonly suits you is a matter of physical proportion between yourself and your guitar. BUT is essential to remember that the instrument should not depend at all on your left hand for support. The left hand must be completely free to move up and down the fingerboard. To further ensure this freedom, take careful note of the angle of the neck, which should bring the head of the player to reach any position on the fingerboard without any physical contortion.

What You, Guitarist Should Know ?

Now that you have the guitar, the very first thing to learn is how to tune it. This may sound crashingly obvious, but I have met students who have been messing about with the instrument on their own for months and are still totally incapable of tuning it. I even had the bloke, who when I complained of his lack of tuning, said: 'But I paid twenty quid for this guitar, and they said it was in tune when I brought it!' and he wasn't kidding.

A plectrum guitar should hold its basic tuning pretty well, once its strings have had time to settle down. But even so, the tuning should be checked at least each time you pick it up to play. During a playing session an experienced guitarist checks his tuning constantly and adjusts as necessary. In solo playing, the fact that a string is out of tune shows itself immediately to the ear when playing a passage across the strings. In chord playing, an out of tune string will make the chord sound wrong, and two out of tune strings will give a total effect something like musical toothache.

One method of tuning is to use a piano. The illustration below shows you where to find the notes you need for this.

It is helpful when tuning to a piano to place your foot on the right-hand pedal. This will cause the piano note to sustain and make it easier to compare the corresponding note on your guitar. Begin by finding the E above Middle C then pick your 1st string. Remember, the 1st string is the thinnest one on the instrument, and the 6th is the thickest. I stress this point, because students often find the numbering of the strings confusing in the first stage.

Well, how is your 1st string? Chances are it's out of tune. If you're starting from scratch with a new set of strings, or a guitar that hasn't been tuned in years, then it will be way out. To make matters worse, it is likely that you will have difficulty in comparing the pitch of the piano note with that of the guitar. The reason for this lies in the different tones of the instrument, coupled with the fact that at this stage your ear is not accustomed to such exacting tasks.

Don't worry too much if you're a bit of a 'tin ear' at the outset. I have known students who held up the class for long enough during the initial tuning sessions, winding away grim faced at their creaking machine heads. Tuning was about as simple to them as boarding moving bus with a parcel under each arm and they usually ended up sharp or flat, leaving the final adjustment to me. And yet, later on, some of these same students have become exceptional players, with great left-hand agility and tuning, as their ears have developed, presents no difficulty at all.

Guitar Action And Tuning

Assuming that the guitar you are trying is tuned to concert pitch and this is essential, because only at this pitch will the strings possess the correct tension now is the time to check on Action and Tuning. Find the 21th fret by counting upwards along the neck on the 1st string. Unless the guitar you are trying is a Spanish guitar there should be a position dot, or dots at this fret to guide you. When you have found it, press the 1st string down onto the fingerboard just behind the fret and hit the string with your Right thumb or plectrum.

Then take your Left hand finger off and play the open string. The two notes should form a perfect Octave. If they don't, either the bridge of the instrument is our position, or the Action is too high.

Action is the word used in describing the amount of forced needed to press the strings down behind the frets. Thus we speak of a high or a low Action, according to the height of the strings above the fingerboard. It will be obvious to you that the higher they are initially, the more effort is needed to press them down firmly behind the frets.

Generally speaking the strings should not be more than a quarter of an inch away from the fingerboard at the 12th fret, and they are in some cases quite a bit nearer than that. Just how near they can be is a complicated formula referring to bridge height, neck pitch and fingerboard straightness understood only by alchemists like my guitarrero friends James and Michael. As a mere player I take these mysteries on trust and leave them to the experts.

At the beginning your fingertips are sure to be soft, and when they start to get sore (as they will!) yo're going to think that a quarter of an inch Action at the 12th fret is pretty high. The only certain consolation I can offer here is that the soreness will wear off in time, if you keep on playing, because your finger ends will grow their own protective coating. I stress the phrase keep on playing because at one stage I didn't touch a guitar for over a years, and when I came back to it I found that although I hadn't quite forgotten how to play, I had to go through the uncomfortable business of thoughening up my finger ends all over again.