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That looks really good. Will give it a serious look. I realised I'm a bit in danger of having too much to look at. I looked at some jazz blues in iReal Pro and they are so basic I'm not sure whether to just play them or try to mess with some added colour. But I have a heap of material in there. I have the Randy Vincent book as well as an arpeggio app. I was checking out the Open Studio videos. Also have the MTH Pro app and facebook. I sat down last night with a bit of a what should I do first. I'm pretty sure it's start with the Randy V book and some basic shell chords but so many options to choose. I need to simply I think. Do you think I should forget about arpeggios and just focus on Randy's book and maybe check out the Fareeq videos with guitar in hand?
I would suggest working with Randy's book and Fareed's comping course in parallel, and maybe take a look at the other suggested study materials later. I agree about the problem of trying to learn too many things at once.
The nice thing about Fareed's course is the TrueFire video player, which has controls for slowing down the playback speed and looping any part of the video you might want to focus on, whether it's observing where his fingers are, or reviewing what notes are being played on the tab/sheet music attached to the video. This makes it easy to play along with the playing examples, in order to deepen your understanding of the concept being taught.
My only note of caution is that sometimes TrueFire makes mistakes in the tab/notation, so I would strongly advise relying primarily on your ear and observing his hands in order to get what he's really playing, and just use the tab/notation as assistance rather than as your main source of learning. Not really dinging TrueFire hard on this, because I find mistakes in transcription are commonplace, and most certainly not restricted to TrueFire. FWIW, I have not found any mistakes in the notation in Randy's book, but then again I have not done the deep dive into his transcriptions of melodies and fragments of recorded solos, which are in the lead/melody guitar portion of the book.
@GovernorSilver With Fareed's course do those player features still exist if I download it? I'm on wifi only and thought I might take the book and video into the mountains over Christmas. No wifi up there.
I'd really recommend doing some good lessons about jazz blues before deciding it is too elementary. You are having the same reaction I did when I got into playing jazz (many decades ago) and in retrospect, it really set me back. It is the launching point.
There is a George Benson protege, Peter Farrell, who is a very accomplished guitarist who has been releasing a lot of lessons on YouTube -- they are not a good place to start -- because he assumes you know a lot of theory -- but they might be worth watching a bit of to realize how deep jazz blues will be when you really get it. Pretty much all of bop and later periods use it as the foundation even if it isn't obvious.
Will check him out. As I said I looked at some jazz blues sheets and there we basic chords and arrangement. Little more to it that 12 bar blues. So I couldn't see where that would go. If I play the lead sheets it's just a bit like, meh, but I guess I'm missing something.
Yes, you are missing something. Learning the vocabulary of chords that you play over each of those steps. If you are learning to solo, there is a huge amount to learn because there are so many ways to approach it in terms of scale connections. And on the chord side, you have to learn all the various substitutions.
I think the best way to start is to grab the guitar and proceed at my own pace through the Randy V book and perhaps the Fareeq videos, assuming they can be downloaded. Not much point for me if I can't.
Good question. I used to buy TrueFire courses on disc, because streaming tech wasn't so good back then, and having the course on its own physical copy was the only guarantee that I could access the course materials without an Internet connection.
The Truefire app for IOS and other platforms. will supposedly allow you to download content for offline study, and thus save you the cost of the physical disc. I have not tested that personally, however.
@GovernorSilver An app you say? If it supports offline then that is perfect. Off to check it out.
I don't get this app. It seems to let me play the whole video series. I was just going through and listening to the first few and then realised I can select and play any of them.
The Truefire website and app will let you play a small selection of videos from any course, without you buying anything. Truefire has some videos on Youtube - these tend to be the same free sample videos.
If you want to see the full course content - meaning all the lessons, not just a sampling - you have either buy an All-Access Pass (1-year membership), a Lifetime Pass, or buy the course individually.
Now if you're really able to see all the lessons from Fareed's courses, well if you didn't pay for it, I'd rather not know how you got it
That's the weird thing, it lets me play the lot. Seems like the limitation is I can't access the different angles or download. Not that I want to. I'll buy it before heading off.
TrueFire put up a Youtube playlist of holiday song lessons. Looks like each video has a free PDF with tab/notation. I don't see chord symbols, at least not in the Jon Herrington one I'm looking at right now, but the more songs you learn, the faster you'll get the hang of harmony
The best of Joseph Alexander's many fine guitar books, Chord Tone Soloing for Jazz Guitar, is also available as an app. It's an arpeggio-based approach that plays particularly nicely with Conrad Cork's Lego bricks system for analysing and memorising standards – though that's probably more a subject for the theory app thread.
@Masanga Thanks. I'll add that to the down the road a bit list. I bought the shell chord course on Truefire and it is going to take a while to go through. I'm really struggling to understand some ideas. Like when Fareed changes the I, VI, II, V progression so all chords are dominant. Unfortunately it doesn't show a chord chart but it's in C and I don't really get the decision to add the D# to every chord. Particularly the C as the chord then has a major and minor third which is a totally new idea to me. I just can't figure out if adding that note is a creative choice or if there is some theory behind it. I can see this whole jazz idea is going to really take some mental gymnastics.
It isn’t a matter of creative choice Or theory. They are connected AND theory is descriptive not prescriptive.
Jazz (like any musical style) is an idiom or collection of idioms and theory tends to be an after-the-fact way to capture the implied rules. And you can apply the rules without capturing the idiom. Ever meet someone who speaks your native language seemingly perfectly with a perfect accent but learned it as a second language in school not in your country who sounds foreign despite the perfect syntax and accent?
Learning jazz by rules is problematic that way. If you are at a place where those substitutions seem nonsensical, you probably should BOTH start at a more elementary level and spend more time finding some not-too-hard tunes you like and learning them from a recording. This will train your ear to the sounds of jazz in a way that casual listening just doesn’t.
I am going to go back to saying jazz blues is really the place to start. Because that seemingly simple framework provides a very forgiving framework in which to substitute chords and will glaringly reveal inauthentic note choices. And the wealth of possibilities is staggering.
Deeply rooted in jazz and really highlighted in jazz blues is the notion of flatting thirds and fifths and sevenths against their unflatted counterparts...and the discovery that you can’t do it randomly...but that part only happens if you get the vocabulary in your ear. If you get the ear part down, you will find that you will “hear” the theory even if you can’t put a name on it.
A lot of people learn to play over jazz changes but don’t sound like jazz because they are constructing things from rules which by themselves don’t capture the idiom...particularly with jazz where breaking the rules is a key part to sounding good (but it can’t be done randomly).
Watch some of Rick Beato’s videos or Jens Larsen’s videos breaking down some songs and you’ll get a taste.
but it's in C and I don't really get the decision to add the D# to every chord.
You talking about the "playing Heart and Soul for Grandma" example. Yeah, it's just an example.
Good observation that the jazzed up version of "granny's song" has a D# in every chord. But he's just showing you a possible destination. You're not there yet. You have other ports of call he'll take you to first.
Don't worry, he'll build you up for it. That's what a course is.
In non-jazz blues and blues-based rock playing a flat third is typical over seventh chords. That’s what the blues scale is all about (with that flatted fifth as added tension). Jazz players play a lot with when to flat the third or not over seventh chords...there is a lot more to it than that. But getting a handle on that simple concept (through learning other people’s solos and trying to imitate the feel of those solos) is a great place to start.
Yes that's the one. I wish he had explained that part a bit better because it stalled me. I haven't gone past that video, trying to understand it.
@espiegel123 Do you have a suggestion where to start learning jazz blues. Or is it enough to just play songs from something like iReal or Fake Book and substitute chords with major or minor 7th triads?
What about a major 3rd over a minor 3rd?
It's just an example, not a lesson. That's why he didn't dive into the weeds, this early in the course.
Go ahead and keep moving forward. You still have 3 more Fareed's principles of chord substitution to go, plus a whole series of Fareed's Trade Secrets that you haven't started on yet. If you take the time to work through the lessons, play along as much as you can, you will eventually understand the jazzy example that's puzzling you right now. Relax, and enjoy the journey!
Cool to see some deepish jazz chat going on!
@Ailerom what are you listening to?
In my experience the best way to learn to play and understand jazz, besides literally learning some of the theory and putting it in to practice in your instrument(s) is simply to just listen to loads of it.
You may be doing this already but, if you want to get some jazz guitar inspiration, I’d recommend listening to old stuff - Charlie Christian’s playing is relatively accessible and not so hard to learn.
Then spend lots of time with Wes Montgomery’s Riverside albums, Grant Green’s mid 60s Blue Note stuff and pretty much anything from the 50s & 60s by Kenny Burrell.
Anything on ECM from the 70s/early 80s which Pat Metheny is on is also worth checking out, especially the double live album ‘Travels’ which was mentioned earlier. He plays guitar synth on some of the tunes.
Julian Lage is a contemporary player who covers lots of styles but is clearly mostly a jazz guy and he has loads of great videos on YouTube of his playing. Technically he’s stunning but you can learn a lot from watching him.
Don’t neglect to listen to the great sax and trumpet players, some of whose solos can sometimes be quite easy to play on guitar without having to worry about playing crazy chords!
And if you’re from a rock background treat yourself to some Mahavishnu Orchestra (the first 2 albums), Return To Forever (No Mystery - sounds v dated but some great playing from Al Di Meola), Eleventh House (the first album) and Tommy Bolin’s playing on Billy Cobham’s ‘Spectrum’. If you want some seriously guitar heavy, out-there jazz-rock the first Tony Williams Lifetime album (‘Emergency!) and Sonny Sharrock’s ‘Ask The Ages’ will test your ability to discern music from cacophony like few other albums in the genre.
You don't usually play the major 3rd over a minor chord but you can do the reverse. The minor 3rd is the same note as the #9 so that's how you reconcile them both together when you see the minor 3rd played against a dominant 7th chord with a major 3rd. Reserve the term minor 3rd for minor chords and use sharp 9 when that same note occurs along with the major 3rd. Like someone else said you can play the minor 3rd against a dominant 7th chord because it's a blue note and the sound of the blues comes out when you do.
Edit: the Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze chord is an E7#9 and the sound of that chord evokes the blues to me.
Thank you. That's the problem with my brain. If I don't understand I find it hard to move on. I'm glad you told me that as I was thinking if the first lesson was doing my head in what was the rest going to be like.
This is great as I am listening to, seriously, the grand total of nothing. I didn't really know where to start so thank you. I guess starting with basic stuff is the way to go. What is ECM?
I thought PH was just an E7. Off to see how that sounds.
I just spent about half an hour trying to comprehend the F diminished in G. I can't understand why a chord has one note that is flattened again when everything else in F# Locrian stays in position.
First, you can't start learning jazz from following charts -- you already need to have some jazz under your fingers and in your brain for that to help. And you can't get a feel for the idiom from learning the rules. I promise you. Theory can help you make sense of some things (and this is being written by a total nerd who was immersed in theory and thought he knew it all by the time he graduated high school) but it WON'T (caps intentional) developer your feel
....at all
There are amazing players who know zero theory but whose playing is rich and complex -- because our brains are wired to learn music (just like we are wired to learn language). Wes Montgomery, for example, became an accomplished and deep virtuous by slavishly learning every solo Charlie Christian ever played -- and somehow in the process of doing that internalized the rules of what sounds good.
There are no amazing jazz musicians that learned primarily by theory and those where theory came first went through intensive periods of learning other people's solos or playing in ensembles with better players. Because that is the only way your ear gets tuned to what is legit -- because, as you will learn, you can generally find a theoretical justification for being able to play any note over any chord -- if guided by one's ear it'll sound right -- if guided by the mind it'll often sound "not bad" at best.
Wes is actually a great person to start with because he is simple and complex at the same time. Get Anytune or some slowdowner and start figuring out some solos. The process of trying to hear and match what he does will train your ear and mind. And when you learn some theory you'll go "I see what I did there".
Where to start. Look up Jens Larsen on YouTube. He has a zillion short videos. Start with the elementary ones and as they make sense and you can play all the stuff, work up. At the same time, make sure that you are learning some tunes -- and jam along with the changes as you learn them. iReal is great for that. You can set it to just play a part of the changes.
My advice: learn a little bit of concept -- go find some music where it is relevant -- and deep dive on learning to play along -- and when you've internalized it learn a bit more. I hurt my developed by devouring theory and moving on to more complex theory before my ear had caught up. Now, I am going back and re-training my ear by not letting myself play anything that I can't hear first.
This Rick Beato video might be of interest:
I like a lot of his videos where he walks through a solo and analyzes it -- for now, maybe too advanced as they assume that you know a lot -- but it might expose to where you are headed. I think he has some elementary theory videos, too.
There is a good video by Peter Farrell (a George Benson protege) where he talks about the blues structure as having three parts -- and spending time working on each of those four bar sections on its own.
The video might be a bit too advanced but it might be a good glimpse into some of the thinking -- probably ok to watch and lear the lines from -- just know that he doesn't explain things in a way that makes sense if you already don't know a bit of theory.
Thanks very much. When the kids stop ripping into me do something fun for the day I'll have a good look at these and start listening to the song suggestions.
Remember I've been a brain dead rocker for over 30 years getting mindless jollies from playing and writing songs in the vein of Foo Fighters, Metallica, Guns'n'Roses, Audioslave, AC/DC, etc. I've just reached an age where I want to discover new things and jazz is what grabbed me. I only started learning modes about 5 years ago and I haven't really put it into practice although I feel I understand it to a point.
You're welcome.
When I first started my jazz studies, the chord symbols looked like complex math equations or whatever to me too. Seemed it like it would take forever to understand.
I later realized that it's better to just start learning some tunes first, then go back to the theory lessons to understand how things work. Now is a great time to learn those jazzy Christmas tunes for solo guitar that were posted earlier in the thread.
I thought the same as you. That I can't learn tunes until I understand the theory first. No, I had it backwards - at least that's how it worked out for me. It's like trying to learn how to swim by copying the moves while lying on a beach towel next to the pool... instead of just getting into the water.
Also, I was reluctant to learn tunes because it seemed like it would take work. So. Much. Work. No, it takes even more work to try to learn a bunch of theory and trying to understand every little bar of every song, than to just learn the song then get theory later.
Maybe it'll work out similarly for you.
What jazz or jazz-based music do you like to listen to? One of the secrets is to start with what you love and learning how to play it -- even if you don't understand why it works. Loving what you are hearing is key. You could become proficient just by learning tunes you like -- and learning both the chord changes and the solos and melodies -- and noticing things you like. Like there is this one part of the solo in Kid Charlemagne that I always dug. At some point, I learned the solo but not the chords. It wasn't until much later that someone said: "Man, you need to learn what goes under those note." And when I learned the solo again -- a measure at a time -- and always playing the chords and then the notes that went on top that my ear went "BOING!!!" and suddenly I had a sense of how to give a line that flavor because it wasn't just notes any more.