Welcome to my Jazz Guitar Dojo. All are welcome here. Together we will learn the language of jazz - Bebop.
Why 'Bebop'? This evolution of jazz took place in the mid forties after the swing era and was originally conceived of by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. It was characterized by virtuosic playing based largely on the underlying harmony and became the basis for everything that came after, modal jazz, fusion, etc. When we speak the 'language' of jazz, we are speaking 'bebop'. Even if you do not play bebop, or jazz, at all, this is the pinaccle of what we know about the theory of making improvised music in the Western tradition and is widely applicable across contemporary music of any style.
Why learn to improvise? To make the world a better place. To improve our musicianship and ourselves. To learn to concentrate and to be mindful. To prepare to be in the moment and learn to trust in a process of cooperative creation with others.
Now on to the materials…
Amazon Suggestions
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Joe Pass Guitar Method
The CAGED system, scales, and patterns straight from the bebop guitar master.
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Joe Pass Guitar Chords
All the chord shapes you will ever need presented in voice leading playable phrases. Don't buy a chord dictionary. Buy this book.
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Charlie Parker Omnibook
Charlie Parker's genius in his solos, transcribed.
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Charlie Parker for Guitar
Great explanations about harmonic vocabulary and techniques Charlie Parker employed in his style of playing, adapted for guitar.
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Essential Jazz Lines Charlie Parker
This series has an excellent breakdown of playing jazz in general in the introduction and is also available in a variety of great player's styles.
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Real Book Sixth Edition
This is the music you will be learning to play. The goal is open a page and go! ...make music!
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Pumping Nylon
Instructions for sore and aching hands. This is not a book for lazy people.
Auditions at the Dojo
You will also need a decent metronome and recording device to practice
with. Practice topics or techniques slow, medium, and fast tempos, for a week at a time. For the less patient that do not
want to wait 10 years, I will be developing and presenting a 20 week course on jazz guitar technique over the coming
weeks. I am also currently seeking physical space to give lessons and have group sessions. Please stay tuned and/or
contact me for more details.
- Metronome
- Strings
- Music Stand
- Other
Coaching Packages
I personally don't have an instrument to play or teach with at the moment. If you'd like to help me get one, go see the Cat-Mobile's donation page or check my wishlist on Amazon. I tried one of these Donner guitars and quite liked it if you are looking for an entry level kit for someone. I would love to get my hands on one of these PRS's. I have no idea who Mark Holcomb is (and have no intention of playing in drop C tuning) but with some minor rewiring this guitar is setup perfect for my needs and for someone who likes heavy strings and no tremolo. One of these Ibanez strats would be a nice starter also. Checkout all the pickup configurations you get with that extra little switch!
- One Week
- Four Weeks
- Ten weeks
Other Resources
If you are interested in finger-style playing, this free book by Ralph Towner is fabulous for developing right hand technique.
Feel free to peruse my collection of lossless live audio recordings.
I collected most of these in the early 00's while in university. The Grateful Dead shows are still almost all I listen to at home. You can find everything at the internet archive these days though.
Before bittorrents became synonymous with pirating, the lossless audio trading community proved the technology could be used to trade large audio files online (thereby killing off personal FTP servers and trading CD's "blanks and postage" style - the good old days ;) ). Etree as an online trading community is no longer really around, but their bittorrent tracker is still alive and kicking and a good place to find recordings of shows from the jamband scene.