I've been learning jazz piano for the last two ish years and i've been finding youtube channels/creators such as open studio, jeremy siskind and noah kellman to be really valuable, and I'm looking for some similar channels and creators geared towards jazz guitar.
I've had a lot really good educational style jazz guitar videos show up on my reels feed, but I've really been struggling trying to find good long-form content on youtube. Any suggestions?
My whole ambition since I started playing guitar as a kid was to make my own music. And I’ve always had fun doing that and put the work in for sometimes several hours a day for a decade or so. Whether it was playing in a band or jamming with friends or for an audience of one. I was no slouch when it came to practicing or learning theory as an adolescent. Recently, I’ve been wanting to make my sound more interesting by learning some jazz theory. And initially it unlocked so many doors for me and really expanded my playing.
But now I’m over analyzing everything. Probably due to my precociousness as a tow headed boy that needed to know how and why everything works. And I’m spending more time thinking about theory or watching dumb jazz theory videos rather than making music.
Can anyone here relate to this? Is this just a wall I need to break through? Would learning every single intricacy and perspective about music even make me a better musician?
TL;DR I want these ideas in my bag so I can utilize them, but I don’t want to optimize so much that I forget why I even like making music.
Recently I've been seeing more and more comments on this topic that state something like 'no great improviser thinks like that'. They are almost always made in a very dismissive and authoritative manner. They pose that chord/scale theory is largely useless and imposed by academia. You can also find videos of people like Barry Harris saying that he 'have never heard of Dorian' and Cecil Alexander saying you don't really 'need scales to improvise'. A lot of people seem to support these ideas and even more people seem to just repeat what they heard.
The point I'd like to make is that it's not all black and white and at least for some players there's definitely some value to be extracted from c/s approach. I get that a lot of people had some bad experience with flawed Berklee method. Obviously if you going to think D Dorian, G Mixolydian, C Ionian over diatonic ii V I in C you're going to have a bad time. But that's where your critical thinking comes in to absorb the useful stuff and to disregard the rest. To say/think that a modern player's language is purely lick-based or imply that they operate on some 'higher plane of understanding' and 'simply play what they hear' 100% of the time is either disingenuous or ignorant IMO. Yes they're not playing scales (sometimes they do, lol) but to just assume they are not relating the stuff they play to some kind of tonal or modal framework is kind of ridiculous. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet to say that overwhelming majority of notable players post Coltrane had a solid understanding of diatonic modes, melodic minor modes, diminished scale etc. For a real life example take a look at some exercises that Kurt Rosenwinkel shows at his masterclasses, how exactly are you going to contextualize this stuff without relating it to c/s? Yes exercises and improvisation are not the same, but if you strive for that level of playing and understanding of your instrument, that is certainly something to consider. And to discourage people who are just starting out from investigating c/s relationships completely is not cool IMO.
Anyway, rant is over I guess. I'm just a nobody on Reddit, bla bla.
Here’s my arrangement of this witty 1930 Broadway standard, performed as an intimate trio with nylon-string guitar, double bass, and drums.
I wanted to preserve its buoyant vintage swing and conversational quality — keeping the melody crisp while using compact voicings, bass movement, and rhythmic accents to suggest the energy of early Broadway jazz.
🎼 Arranged by Ricardo Farão — Moonlight Jazz Guitar
Here is a long-distance collaboration with my friend Rob MacKillop reading one of his poems titled On the Edge of Sound. Rob's black and white still-photography, a series on "electricity" makes for an ethereal sequence of images for my videography. Rob and I may not likely ever meet in the real world, but here in the timeless space of digital connectivity, our collaboration speaks to the asynchronous era we inhabit. #jazzguitar #guitar #jazz #SoloGuitar #poems
I went to see Jesse van Ruller live today, and there was a tune in the middle of the set that I really loved, but I can’t figure out what it was called.
It sounds familiar, so I suspect it might be a jazz standard. I’ve attached a video clip — does anyone recognize it?
Creativity trumps chops every time. This episode looks at guitarists who reproduce the classics without a voice of their own, competitions that hand the prize to the faithful copy, and the platform crowd that pulls back anyone who climbs. Then it turns to the harder silence, the one that hides from harm done, and the only way out of it.
This series looks at music as a form of inner alchemy, where the guitar becomes a tool for transformation instead of performance or self-expression.
I was using flatwounds pretty consistently for years, and then I used roundwounds for a couple of months. Wanted to see how it would feel to switch back and forth, so I put these Chromes (flatwounds) back on the tele. Turns out I like both, so can see myself going back and forth a bit. There’s certainly a tone difference, but even more noticeable is the feel difference.
Playing the famous standard Blue Bossa (Kenny Dorham).
Thanks for listening! Fun to try out new strings / revisit strings just to change things up
I didn't know they made them until recently. Do they tend to come unwound? Never had this problem with D'Addario Chromes, but I always liked the Erni Ball switching to open source software story (https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/rockin-on-without-microsoft/), and I'm a Linux guy, so I'd kind of like to keep using their strings if it's not a consistent problem.
I’ve been working on solfège as a way to understand melodies in relation to the harmony, rather than just memorizing note names. And one can play it perfectly voicelead everywhere on the guitar. Do not constrain yourself to the given Notation -- expand!
This is my study sheet for “All of Me” — chords, barlines and movable-Do solfège together on one page. Sometimes the melody matches the triadal notes sometimes not. As there are accidentals a lowered Mi becomes Me and a sharpened So becomes Si etc...
I’m especially interested in finding the melody notes in relation to the harmony as a way of memorizing the song, playing it in all inversions and even without instrument I can read now my scribbled Solfege and hear the music. I like to emphasize that as an outcome of learning music: you hear it when reading and you can make a picture of what your fingers are doing on the guitar simultaneously. You can learn/audiate without instrument... is fun.
What I also begin seing is that the melody alone could be enough to evoke all related harmonies ( Is this how Jazz is actually played? ) - but for now I am using the triad plus the melody note.
How is it possible that this music is so fascinating and suits perfectly the guitar but its barely played - Just because its too hard or too old? For me its so unbelievably beautyful : Both, lyrics and music. I just name the letter "A": "Autumn Leaves" , "All The Things You Are and " All OF ME ". This is great music to learn on guitar! We, I am german speaking, do not have three emotionally great love songs in germany with the letter "A". Where should we begin to sing our songs?
European and American popular music was profoundly enriched by Jewish musicians — including composers who were forced to flee Nazi Germany and Europe....And I wonder what we would have seen and heard in germany if not destroying everything.
And most of all Jazz is just another category as you are walking not through a piece of music alone you are invited or lured to stay or improvise at some points musically and as I said the lyrics are, at least for me, very matching the sound and harmony: For me this is artistically top notch and I wonder where we got ourselfes nowadays. I dont want to be pessimistic for the present as there is too much i even dont know about. I am just urging to see good things and the letter "A" is a very promising start.
for this arrangement my goal was to try and keep the waltz groove steady, there’s a couple little mistakes but I was pretty happy with this take! recorded acoustic because I like the sound of the LGB-30 by itself :)
I've played guitar for around a year and I've been wanting to learn chord melody for a while now, the only thing that has been stopping me is knowing where to start (I've memorized the fretboard to help but idk where to go from there). So yeah, thanks in advance.
