How to Get Started Studying Jazz Guitar
Jazz guitar is quite an awesome, endless, and ever rewarding style of music. It doesn’t matter what your style of preference is, because I think that all guitarists should familiarize themselves with a little Jazz work here and there.
There are two things that I found very rewarding about studying Jazz guitar. The knowledge of chords that comes with learning the genre, and the concepts that revolve around soloing.
I think that the wisdom of the Jazz guitar solo, and the understanding of how to solo in this style of music, is the biggest benefit.
Since Jazz music is just as complex as other styles of music, this article will simply lay out some key things to get started studying. You could think of this as a preparatory article.
1. Chords
A great way to get started in Jazz guitar is to spend some time focusing on chords. In fact, whenever you come across any chord that is common in Jazz music (and there are many), take the time to learn how to play that chord in different areas of the fretboard. If you can learn at least two different ways to play any one single chord on the guitar, then you’re really on to something.
There are plenty of fairly simple Jazz songs that are out their that you can get started with now. In fact this is an excellent way to pick up a lot of your Jazz chords. When you come upon any new Jazz song, make sure to pay special attention to the chords. There’s a good chance that you will spot a chord that you already know, but it just might be a variation of that chord. This unlocks a lot of knowledge.
2. Theory
Its hard not to study theory when you are pursuing Jazz music, and studying theory with play Jazz guitar in mind, is quite the undertaking. Still yet, a good place to start would be with the little things like intervals, tonality and modulation. It also really helps to study the makings of a chord in general.
3. Listening
I think the most important thing about studying any style of music is simply to be still and listen, and I know that this is certainly true of Jazz music. You should take the time to familiarize yourself with the previous movements in Jazz. Some of these include Bop, Bebop, Hard Bop, Cool Jazz, Modal Jazz, Swing Jazz, Acid Jazz, and so much more.
After a while, your ears will be able to distinguish and categorize certain key similarities in Jazz music, while at the same time setting aside the differences in the past movements in Jazz music.
4. Notation
If you are serious about this, then it is very important to learn to read music as it was intended to be read. Jazz musicians are very good at reading notation and they can read it fast! It takes time to reach this level of mastery, but its worth it if you want to keep up.
5. Improvising
Jazz is a very improvised style of music, but as I have said before, learning scales and modes does not unlock the door to extraordinary improvisational abilities.
This is also why I have explained to people for years that they need to take the time to just jam to the CDs that are in their library. I believe that there is really no tried and true method to learning how to improvise on the guitar, other than simply training the ear from your own experiences with jamming. The more you do it, the more proficient you will become.
6. Scales and modes
Its really difficult to sit here and tell you to use this mode with this chord structure, because it depends on the situation and the chord changes. However, a great way to get started with your soloing efforts, is to become a master of the major scale.
If you can take it upon yourself to learn the major scale all over the fretboard, then you will be ready to go. Even if you don’t know any modes yet, that’s ok! Its important to pay close attention to when a note needs to be flatted and when a note needs to be sharped.
All of the modes are built from the major scale, and many times a Jazz piece will require a musician to play through several modes. These modes are connected by way of simple half steps or whole steps.
In fact, no matter what style you are improvising out of, if you hit a funky note, you are never more than a half step away from the more proper sounding note. That was the best thing that I ever learned from a professor of music.
7. Phrasing
I think of soloing in a Jazz setting as being fair game. Its a very free feeling and there really are no rules, but you can still learn a lot from listening to some of the more famous Jazz guitarists play.
Just like you, they all have their own style and approach to playing guitar. The key difference is that they took the style of music and made it their own. You should do this as well, and harvest your own soloing style, but keep an open mind, because soloing in the Jazz world requires you to not think of things as being set in stone.
Tennyson Williams has been studying guitar for eight years, sixteen hours a day, and has studied many styles of music. He has played in bands, that encompassed a wide range of music. It wasn’t until after eight years of piano lessons, that he made the decision to become a self-taught musician, but the journey has been well worth it for the guitarist. His sole passion is to share with others, his endless knowledge of music, in order to make their musical dreams a reality. He has recently written a guitar instructional book called The Essential Guide To Guitar Virtuosity that can be found at GuitarSpeedSecret.com
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What Gives a Custom Acoustic Guitar That Exceptionally Great Sound? Part 1
By Jay Wyshak
THIS ARTICLE IS INTEND TO BRIEFLY TOUCH UPON SOME OF THE BASICS OF THIS SUBJECT – Great sound in Custom Guitars
First of all, the sound that comes out of any guitar is just what it is, as you hear it. Our Judgment of it is based on what we come to judge throughout history and what we have come to accept as todays standards set by others to what a Good or Bad Sounding guitar for should sound like.
In other words, in nature there is no such thing as a good or bad sound in a strict sense. It’s only what we have come to accept as standards to what a guitar should sound like. Developing this idea further, hopefully, in the future we can learn to set higher standards and maybe the custom guitars at that time would even sound better than todays guitars. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
The standards were achieved by ground breaking companies such as Martin Guitars and Gibson, who spent money and research to allow standards to exist within the ’sound’ of a custom acoustic guitar, or any custom guitar for that matter.
OK, let’s get to it.
When you pluck a string, this produces an energy wave that we know as sound. What this guitar must do is transfer the energy introduced by plucking the strings. This is what I call the ‘final common denominator’.
The guitar string energy in motion is transferring through the whole thing (glue and everything, with a dependence also as to the current temperature), how this perceived sound being generated by a complex system, finally producing that resulting factor we call ‘resonance’.
In other words, everything combined about this “Complete Unit” and all its complexity called a “Guitar”, contributes to the sound you are hearing at the moment the strings are put into action.
Therefor the sound depends on:
- The Design of the guitar, it’s shape.
- The construction, the manner in which the guitar is constructed.
- The types of woods used in the guitar making process
- The types of bracing inside on the soundboard.
- The materials used for nut and sandal, including the bridge pins.
- The finish used on the outside of the guitar.
There’s more on this later. Ideally a guitar should sound like, what? It’s only limited to our imagination. Therefore a custom guitar builder of any size has the same ability to further advance the sound quality of any custom built guitar.
What I’m going to share with you over the course of several articles, are some secrets about this and how do we go about constructing a great sounding guitar in practice.
This article will concern itself with the Construction in general and we’ll touch upon the woods and others stuff in a later article. After I built my first Martin Guitar, many years ago with the guidance of my Father a Master craftsman himself during my youth;
I discovered that:
As a general rule, a lighter built guitar would bring out tones more clearly, and with the right construction technique, a louder response.
The energy brought forward by plucking the strings had less mass to hide in, less places to get lost or trapped. The energy had less ‘knee jerk’ obstacles to overcome hence forth, due to fine shaped braces, more on that later. In other words as a direct result, the guitar became more alive and responsive.
The advantage of that is that the whole guitar becomes more flexible and at the same time more producing a likable and even louder sound. The thinner I made, the back, sides and top, (up to a point, more later) the more sound was able to transfer through the woods. The wonderful advantage of this is that the player can feel the sound transferring into his ear, guts, and body while playing my guitars. As a result, a better and direct connection and relationship with the musician. The guitars simply talk better to the players.
This has to be done within it’s own limitations for obvious reasons, the overall strength of the guitar must be maintained we’ll discuss it in a later chapter.
THE INSIDE GUTS
When you look at the basic Martin Cross bracing pattern for the sound board, you’ll feel the representation of a water reservoir or lake. The idea is that if you throw a rock into a calm lake, it produces wave patterns, getting smaller the farther they travel until they disappear back to the balanced state of the water surface or to its original neutrality.
Because the waves of water are essentially the same as the waves in the air, slower because of a thick medium; the idea is to construct the soundboard bracing pattern in such a way that the wave energy generated by the strings, is gently and ’smoothly’ transferred into the guitar’s soundboard. To help transfer this energy wave back to a state of natural balance of the sound board shape, just like it’s counter example in nature, the rock thrown into the water.
These are the kinds of revelations one receives as a master guitar craftsman, like myself. This way we can create the sound waves the way that I want. This is the doorway to understanding a bit more on creating even better sounds in the future, like the sounds that are produced in the Peace Guitar.
In the case of making a guitar sound good, or Great, on this one point:
It is the individual shapes of the braces that represent water waves. And, the idea is to help the energy waves return to their original balance of rest.
But the fun of all this is, that I get to surf the waves right in my guitar building shop. I am proud to say that the more attention I pay to this phenomena, the better the guitars turn out and come to sound.
My favorite quote: “better sound is a concept that may be in perpetual changing mode due to human perception.”
Stay tuned for more, folks, and see my shop at JonasGuitars.com/Custom-Guitars
RockinJay gathers information for a variety of helpful sites. In this case Learn more about Jonas @ Jonas Custom Guitars
RockinJay@creativeheadspace.com
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Learn to Play Slide Guitar Like a Pro
slide guitar is played two ways: the player can hold the guitar normally or horizontally. If it is held normally then the player puts a covering on one of the fingers on his or her left hand and makes sound by sliding the left hand up and down the strings. The object covering the players’ fingers is often referred to as a bottleneck because that was the first material used. If the player holds the guitar horizontally then the player uses a steel, which is similar to a bottleneck but, not surprisingly, composed of steel. To play the guitarist will slide the steel up and down the frets of the guitar. This is referred to as playing a “steel guitar”.
The slide or steel guitar is an essential part of popular music. While it is true the genres of soul, country and jazz have had their share of great slide guitarists throughout the years, legendary slide guitarists always seem to gravitate towards the blues. Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, for example, Name a blues luminary and chances are he is an accomplished slide guitarist. So if you want to play blues guitar or soul or country or any of a number of other genres you’d best learn how to play the slide guitar.
The slide guitar can be played on either an acoustic or an electric guitar as long as it doesn’t have nylon strings. For a slide guitar to play correctly it must be set up differently from a traditional guitar. The instrument must be strung with heavier strings (no super-slinky) and a high action. With respect to tuning there are two options; standard and open. A player who has enough guitars to dedicate one exclusively to playing slide should experiment with open tuning. Otherwise it is easiest to use standard tuning for slide playing.
Through the years different musicians have made their slides in many different ways. The most common materials are glass and metal though some early musicians used a bone or a knife. Different materials make different sounds; it’s a matter of preference. Slides can be purchased from your local music store or they can be made at home. Copper tubing and the tops of glass medicine bottles are the most popular homemade slides. Duane Allman, considered by many to be the greatest slide guitar player ever, used a Coricidin medicine bottle. The company and medicine are now defunct but replicas are still made for guitar players.
The slide can be placed on the second, third or pinky finger. The second finger is the largest and gives you the ability to hold down all the strings with the slide. If you play with the slide on the second finger you have hold the third and pinky fingers in the air, which makes it unnatural to most guitarists. Also, it leaves only one finger to mute the strings, which proves difficult. The third finger gives you a little less fret coverage and not quite as strong sound but it also gives you two fingers to mute the strings. This is how Duane Allman played.
The last option is to put the slide on your pinky finger. This allows you to play normally with your first three fingers and consequently is the choice for those desiring to combine slide and normal playing. The pinky slide is much smaller and generally don’t cover all the strings. Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters play using this method. Slide guitar playing has been around for over a hundred years and has been used by countless celebrated musicians. It is a great technique for any aspiring guitarist to learn.
Stop wasting money on 1-on-1 guitar lessons! Check out Steve Krenz’s Learn & Master Guitar – it beats the pants off anything out there. It’s the most comprehensive and thorough instructional guitar course available today
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Flamenco Guitar Lessons
flamenco guitar lessons worth taking for somebody not raised in Andalucia? Many years ago you had to be a black American to have any credibility as a blues singer or guitar player. And if you were not Spanish you never got anywhere as a Flamenco artist no matter how good you were. But these days, like many musical traditions, Flamenco is now embracing young people from non-Spanish origins. Twenty or thirty years ago Flamenco guitar playing, at least as perceived by people outside of Spain was dominated by a couple of third-rate guitar players who were good at promoting themselves. Now you can see many fantastic guitar players, professional and amateur, Spanish and non-Spanish giving wonderful Flamenco guitar performances on YouTube. Here is a rundown on the guitar techniques you will be introduced to if you decide to take Flamenco guitar lessons.
So onto some basic Flamenco guitar techniques. The most distinctive technique used in Flamenco is the tapping on the body of the guitar. This technique is called the golpe and is performed just below the sound hole. Flamenco guitars are made with a tapping plate to minimize damage to the guitar from constant hitting of the body. The golpe is often used in conjunction with downward strokes of the thumb and with continuous up and down strokes of the index finger used by guitarists playing the Flamenco musical form called Bulerias.
The rapid picking exhibited by Flamenco guitarists is called picado. This is also used in classical guitar but to nowhere near the same degree. It is a “rest” stroke which is played by striking a string with an upward stroke of the first or second finger which comes to rest on the string behind it. So if you play a rest stroke on the second string the finger comes into contact with the third string after it has struck the note. Flamenco scale passages are played as picado using rapid alternating strokes of the first and second fingers.
Another Flamenco guitar technique is the use of rapid arpeggios. Arpeggios are played by placing the first, second and third fingers in position on the first, second and third strings as if you are going to pluck a chord. Instead of plucking all three strings you lift your whole hand slightly so that the fingers play the strings in rapid succession. The thumb and fingers of a guitarist who has practiced this technique can play some very fast arpeggio passages. The effect is similar to sweep picking used in rock guitar.
The thumb is uses almost exclusively in downstrokes. This is another rest stroke where the thumb plays, for example, the sixth string and comes to rest on the fifth string before starting the next stroke. It may seem strange to anybody who has not tried it to make the thumb and fingers “rest” between strokes, but this technique can produce some very fast thumb and picado playing.
Another technique used in Flamenco guitar is the tremolo. This is a technique for producing a long line of melody notes accompanied by the thumb playing bass notes. This technique was borrowed from classical guitar and differs in that Flamenco tremolo is played with four notes between each bass note whereas classical guitarists only play three melody notes between bass notes. In most guitar notation systems the thumb is shown as “p” (for the Spanish “pulgar”), the index finger is shown as “i” , the middle finger is designated “m” and the ring finger is “a” (for annular which is latin for ring).
To play a continuous E on the open first string of the guitar, use the fingers and thumb in this order:
Play a bass note on the open sixth string with your thumb using rest stroke.
On the open first string:
Play a free stroke with i
Play a free stroke with a
Play a free stroke with m
Play a free stroke with i
You have just played one bass note followed by four melody notes. To continue playing, make an E chord with your left hand and alternate the bass notes between the sixth, fifth and fourth strings.
As you can see these techniques are hard to explain in words. They are easier to understand if you use my written descriptions in conjunction with watching Flamenco guitarists on video. It will take some hard work to actually use these techniques, and I strongly suggest you take lessons from a guitar player who knows how to play Flamenco.
Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.
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The Blues Guitar Scale and How to Master It
If you are new guitar player who wants to make a career or a hobby out of playing blues guitar, then this essay will give you the basic points to get you on your way as a player and interpreter of the blues. Or maybe you have no intention of specializing in blues guitar playing. In that case my essay will give you the bare bones of musical interpretation using the guitar. These basic points can be applied to any genre of guitar music.
So, let us start with a minor pentatonic scale. Whenever you see the word pentatonic you know the scale has just five notes. This is the A minor pentatonic scale starting at the root note – A at the fifth fret of the sixth string:
E———————————5–8—-
B————————–5–8———–
G——————-5–7——————
D————-5–7————————
A——5–7——————————-
E-5-8————————————-
If you are used to playing barre chords, just barre the fifth fret and use the third and fourth fingers to play the notes at the seventh and eighth frets. As the first note in this scale is the root note, all you need to do to play this scale in other keys is to slide your first finger up or down the guitar neck. So now we move the barre up to the eighth fret which gives us the root note C. You will notice that now we have added some extra notes. This is the blues scale in the key of C. The notes we have added to the minor pentatonic give you more opportunity to give your music that “bluesy” feel.
E———————————–8—11
B—————————–8—11——
G——————–8–10–11————
D—————8–10———————
A——-8–9–10————————–
E-8—11———————————-
The minor pentatonic scale can be played in other positions on the fretboard. You need to learn where the notes are because the same note played on a different string sounds different. So the more positions you can play in the more variety you can put into your playing.
A word of warning here. Do not spend all your time learning the scales by heart. Once you can play a scale in one position, play with it. Try bending the notes, see what other notes sound good with the notes in your scale. In other words, give the scale some of your individuality. If you do not feel confident about doing this, then just fall back on imitating what other guitar players do. Do not worry that you are copying other guitarists’ material. Most guitar players start off this way. Using other musicians’ licks as a springboard for your own playing will get your juices flowing and you will be adding your own licks in no time.
Another way to approach learning scales is to learn a melody by ear and try to work out the scale it comes from. This might seem like hard work at first but it is a very pleasant way to learn music. Another thing to remember that blues music has a resolution. Your solos are all travelling to the end of the twelve bars or whatever style of blues you are playing, so any note you play on the way is fine.
Once you have a basic understanding of the blues scale and you can play it in a couple of positions on the guitar fretboard, you will need to look at the question of phrasing. There are so many excellent blues music tracks on record going back over a hundred years all you need to do is listen and imitate. Of course, your imitation does not have to be one hundred percent accurate, but other guitar players blues solos give you ready made starting points for your own original blues playing. One point to remember for beginner blues guitar players is that now you have a 
blues scale to play, you do not need to play all of the notes all of the time. If you have a backing track or some music you would like to solo over, start with one or two notes in the scale. Bend them, hammer them on, practice your vibrato, slide into those notes, make them yours.
Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.
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