# Transit from a metalhead to a jazz guitar player



## AeonSolus (Apr 27, 2009)

I've secretly loved jazz since i was a little kid, but despite my love towards it, i went on and learned guitar aimed to metal.

Recently i've been offered to play in a very profitable jazz band in my city so we can tour around the touristic area, but there's a problem..i'm pretty much a noob when it comes to talk about jazz phrasing, riffing and composition, so i need your advice on adapting my playing style to jazz, some exercises i could use, scales and modes i'd have to work around..ect fwiw, i'm not a shredder but i can defend my self pretty well by intending it 

Thanks in advance


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## kung_fu (Apr 29, 2009)

Hmm, there is certainly no short answer. I'd recommend picking up the Hal Leonard Jazz Guitar method book by Jeff Schroedl. It covers most of the basic involved in becomming a jazz guitarist such as scales, chords/substitutions, standards, and comping styles for different styles of jazz.

A little more info about the type of gig you have would be helpful. I imagine it would be mostly rhythm guitar, so you'll want to know how to read charts and learn your chords.


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## robotsatemygma (Apr 30, 2009)

Well dude, that's a pretty awesome offer! I wouldn't doubt your skills since they obviously think you can do it. 

Best advice I can offer is to learn some standards, learn chords, charts, and improv till your fingers bleed. Don't think of it as learning all over again.


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## rahul_mukerji (Apr 30, 2009)

Hahaha ... and we conquer on !! The Jazz community steals yet another from the Metal ranks !

Me too, by the way: Prog Metal player turned Jazz / Fusion.

First off, learn 7th chords. Learn: Maj7, Min7, Dom7 chords.
Next learn 9th and 13 chords. 9's are popular substitutions for Maj and Min 7ths and 13 are popular subst for Dom 7th.

That should take you some time.

Next, learn the phrase: two-five one. Popularly ii-V-I (note the case). The lower case indicates minor. 

A ii-V-I is a chord pattern built on the major scale. So you would use the minor 2nd chord, a Dominant 5th chord and then finally the Major 1 chord. In the key of C Major this would be:

Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7.

This is a very pleasant sounding sequence. Get your ears accostomed to this sound since 99% of jazz songs are made of a sequence ii-V-I (sometimes the I is left out).

Take that a little further, and substitute 9's instead and you get this.

Dm9 - G13 - Cmaj9.

Another sweet sounding sequence.

Now (and this is months later for me) you learn the vi-ii-V-I. Again in C Major this would be

Am7 - Dm9 - G13 - Cmaj9

Now how can u use this ? On my site there is a song called My Chicagoan. Its progression is:

Dmaj9 - Bmin7 - Emin9 - A13 - A7 (dom)

I used this to practice playing the chord changes.

Once you get familiar with 7th, 9ths, ii-V-I, you are now ready to start playing n00b jazz (like me !!!). 

After this its all about listening to lots of players, reading chord books and watching how Joe Pass makes substitutions and such. There are a million Youtube vidoes on jazz. Pick a good book that will teach you what I've stated above and then you'll be on your way.

Take care man and I wish you all the very best.


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## jacksonplayer (May 1, 2009)

It really depends on the kind of jazz you will be playing. Swing and big band jazz are harmonically relatively simple. Bebop is where the most complicated harmonic stuff happens. 1960s-style modal and free jazz have simpler harmonic structures that favor wilder soloing, while 1970s fusion jazz is generally complicated structurally but not so much so harmonically.

The one thing that helps for any form of jazz is being able to read music. I don't know what your band would be like, but most working jazz musicians in the USA are expected to be able to read sheet music very quickly and accurately--often on the bandstand during the gig. You don't generally have a lot of rehearsal time to memorize the tunes. My lack of ability to read sheet music well is one reason I've never tried to do jazz gigs. I'd only be interested in doing free jazz stuff, which is where my heart is, anyway.


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## MTech (May 4, 2009)

Check out some work from Alex Skolnick, obviously one of the bigger guys doing both. I'm sure checking out some of his instructional stuff would help blend it all together.


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## Hasmamagee (Dec 19, 2010)

really man I've found that going from metal to Jazz isn't as hard a transition as one might think. First of all,depending on the metal style you play you're probably using some form of modal soloing in a linear ascending or descending format which is really where jazz begins for the most part (if your not doing this any run through a good jazz guitar book should cover all of this). Secondly if you are playing metal you've probably developed some semblance of a good alternating picking style, I would seriously consider emulating a mandolin wrist picking style if I were you as some of those ballsier finger extended picking styles can really slam a string and make it over vibrate. Really the biggest challenges you're going to run into are the need to have longer improvisations, the lack of a repetitive "riff" structure and the fact that the guitar will simply not sustain as long as you need it to without that heavy metal distortion, also just getting the whole series of solos and the signals for when to take a solo are tough to get. The thing I can recommend most is getting to know the guys you are playing with and playing with them in a simple jam situation as much as possible, after all you're not just a studio musician you're a part of this jazz group.


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