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Learning the Jazz Guitar Scales – Basic How-To’s

Posted by admin2 on August 22nd, 2010 Comments Off



When learning to play jazz guitar, you’ll have to master learning the scales. Most players are led to believe that all they need to do is learn how to finger the scale and that’s where their learning ends. When it comes time to play solos and improvs, they get frustrated because they find it hard to just play. The real problem is not that playing an improvisation is hard or beyond their skill. The real problem is that they haven’t learned to master the scales as they thought they had.

Basically, there are five skills that need to be mastered because they set the foundation for your improvisation and solo play. If you don’t master all five skills in your lessons, then you will have a difficult time doing the improvisation because you don’t truly know the scale and as a result won’t have a feel for the scale. The five skills are: ears, eyes, intellect, fingers and application. Let’s see how they can work for us.

How-to #1: Learn to hear the sound of the scale so that when you hear a tune, you know what notes they are. This is an amazing skill that most people don’t develop because they rely on music sheets, fakebooks and their teachers.

How-to #2: Learn to see the scale on the fretboard. Your eyes will help you develop technically correct hand and finger positioning technique when playing the scale.

How-to #3: Learn to play scales from any position on the fretboard. Know your gypsy jazz guitar inside and out. Once you learn the finger positions for a scale, practice playing the scale starting from the different notes.

How-to #4: Learn the music theory behind the scale. Know the notes, the tones and where the scale can be played in an improv.

How-to #5: Learn to use the scale in a musical way. Many players don’t know where a tune might fit into a short improvisation. Mastering this area definitely will take some work, finding out what works and what doesn’t.

People can play music, but there are many people who don’t know how to feel their way around a fretboard. They get lost without a music sheet and you and I both know that these players can’t perform a solo at all. Instead of focusing on which amp to buy, work on honing your craft and working more closely with mastering the scales. Once you’ve thoroughly learned this technique, you’ll be playing improvisations and solos like you’ve always dreamed of doing!

By: Logan B Young

Posted in Jazz Festivals

Hearing the Song in Jazz Guitar – Memorizing Tunes

Posted by admin on December 25th, 2009 No Comments

If you’re serious about learning to play jazz guitar, you will need to memorize a few standard tunes. Many people already know this, and the first place they head to is to a fakebook. They’ll try to learn some tunes that way and wonder why their playing ends up being rigid.

We don’t want to say that a fakebook isn’t a great tool, but there are other ways to learn that we would like you, as the jazz guitar player, to open yourself to. For example, you can always learn some of your favorite tunes by listening to them over and over and then learning to play them during your jazz guitar lessons or practice time.

- Hear the song. One way to learn a tune for your gypsy jazz guitar is to listen to a tune over and over. Keep listening to it until it becomes so embedded in your mind and heart that you’ve memorized the tune even when it isn’t playing on a CD. Doing this will help you replay the song and harmonize it in different chords and transitions.

- Once you’ve got the tune memorized, find the tune on your fretboard. If it helps, you might also consider hooking up jazz guitar amps to help you hear and give it a more “real play” feel to your practice. Sing the tune and try to figure out the notes going back and forth until you’ve learned the tune. Don’t be concerned about playing it in the right key, just be concerned with learning the play the tune. Remember to add in learning the chord changes and you might also want to add in your own substitutions for the tune.

As you’re learning to play jazz guitar this way, you’re also learning to hear the song and replay it on your jazz guitar. If you stick to the music sheets, you might find that you’ll have a harder time feeling the music and putting some “soul” into it.

While your play might be technically correct, it will still lack the essence of the song. You decided to become a jazz guitar player because you somehow connected with the music, not because you wanted to be a technically great player.

If you learn how to hear a song and then recreate it, you’ll be taking yourself through an important learning activity that sets the foundation for your improvisations and solos down the line. You see, you’ll need to learn how to hear the music naturally before you begin doing improvisations.

Imagine how you’d feel if you were able to learn a new tune this way. You’d feel pretty motivated to stick with your jazz guitar learning and you might even be inspired to delve deeper into the art of playing jazz guitar.



By: Logan Young

Posted in Jazz Festivals

Online Jazz Guitar Lessons

Posted by admin on September 9th, 2009 No Comments

There are many websites offering online jazz guitar lessons, but before choosing it is important that you are ready to play jazz guitar. Many budding jazz guitarists specialize too early and find themselves lacking in technique when they come to the more complex aspects of playing jazz.

If you have not had proper formal training in guitar before, it is important that you register for a course that first takes you through the basics, even if you believe yourself to be a good guitarist. You must be well versed in the basic chords, keys, scales and perhaps even be able to play harmonics – both natural an artificial. What you need to know will be determined by the scope of the jazz guitar course.

It is probably better for you if your online jazz guitar lessons were part of a fundamentally more extensive course in playing guitar, that takes you from the basics of your instrument right through the progression of strumming, chords, scales, fingerstyle and so on in way that trains you in a holistic manner to be able to play any genre you choose, and so that jazz is simply an extension of your course.

By learning guitar that way each technique will be mastered before you progress, and no assumptions are made. The problem with a one-off jazz guitar course is that it will not be suitable for all skill levels. Some will lack basic techniques needed to follow the course, while others will already have inbuilt bad habits. Yet others might find a particular course too elementary, so it is important that you are able to adjust the course to suit your personal needs.

As a very minimum a jazz guitarist should understand chords, keys and their relationship with each other. A knowledge of tempo and time signatures is essential, as is knowing how to play harmonics that are widely used in playing jazz. Once you are accomplished in these techniques you will be ready to learn jazz, with its many voicings and jazz rhythms. You will learn about the circle of fifths which geometrically represents the relationship between the twelve pitch classes of the chromatic scale in pitch class space: if this is gobbledygook to you then you need a good jazz guitar course that takes you from the basics through the intermediate stages to real jazz guitar theory and practice.

There’s no good learning how to play if you don’t understand the theory, since only then will you be able to be innovative. Even players that learned by ear eventually had to learn some theory, and scales and pitch are extremely important components of practically all music, let along jazz guitar. So what is the best way to learn jazz guitar, and where do you find the best courses?

Online is best, and you have a choice between one-off courses supplied on DVD or a membership site where you pay monthly for ongoing lessons. What are the benefits of each? Without a doubt, the DVD is the cheaper option because you only have one payment to make. In the same way, a single football ticket is cheaper than a season ticket, but which is best value? A DVD gives you one course of lessons and that is it, whereas a good membership provides you with a series of lessons, not only in your chosen genre, but any style of play you want to try.

A good membership site will offer you a choice of guitar teachers, and will update their course from time to time. They can also offer pages of chord diagrams, scales, songs to play to and backing tracks to play along with. You don’t usually get this with a DVD. Not only that, but if you feel like trying some of the classical techniques while learning jazz, you are not just restricted to online jazz guitar lessons, but can try out some of the other lessons as well.

You can try some of the classical guitar techniques, have a look at what heavy metal are teaching and might want to introduce some blues into your jazz. You can do all that with a good membership site, but not with a DVD. It’s a no-brainer really, and you can start at the very beginning, get rid of your bad habits, and progress through the stages until you are an accomplished jazz guitarist. Many people choose to do that – to start all over again with the right techniques.

So if you are looking for online jazz guitar lessons be honest with yourself regarding your current ability, and if you need a few beginner or intermediate guitar lessons first, then an online membership site will likely be your best option.

By: Andre Sanchez

Posted in Jazz Festivals
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