# Where to start when it comes to Jazz?



## Arterial (Oct 27, 2010)

Hey all. I'm predominantly a metalhead...
and i want to learn jazz and how to play jazz.

So far, I only know basic theory.

Where do I start?


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## Fionn (Oct 27, 2010)

listen to miles davis


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## kung_fu (Oct 27, 2010)

Jeff Schroedel's "Jazz Guitar" book (Mel Bay) is probably the best book i've ever purchased. Not only is it great for the beginner, but it has enogh ideas covered to keep you busy for a lifetime. It's usually pretty cheap too .


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## thraxil (Oct 27, 2010)

Alex Skolnick's Jazz Guitar instructional video from Rock House Method is pretty solid. It expects a bit of basic theory knowledge and goes from there.


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## AvantGuardian (Oct 27, 2010)

thraxil said:


> Alex Skolnick's Jazz Guitar instructional video from Rock House Method is pretty solid. It expects a bit of basic theory knowledge and goes from there.


 
I also recommend this DVD set. It assumes you have a rock background and does a really good job of slowly breaking you into jazz. A lot of other videos/books I have found are either really overwhelming or they are so basic that I don't feel like I really learn any jazz from them. I wrote a mini-review of these discs in the thread here:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/ja...110723-alex-skolnicks-rockhouse-jazz-dvd.html


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## Bloody_Inferno (Oct 27, 2010)

Fionn said:


> listen to miles davis


 
Bitches Brew is essential listening. 

All other above recommendations are good too. 

Also listen to Wes Montgomery.


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## Arterial (Oct 28, 2010)

Well besides listening to jazz.

I'm currently listening to...

Miles Davis, Joe Pass (<3), Wes Montgomery, Django Reindhart, John Coltrane, Al Di Meola and Chet Atkins


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## theclap (Oct 28, 2010)

Best way is to start chronologically like you do in anything.
start with the greats and learning their solos to improve your voice on the fret board while listening to music of the time. I'd start with Charlie Christian. Beyond that Charlie's very musical style can be heard through Wes Montgomery and Wes' style can be heard very prominently through George Benson. They all possess a very musical playing style as opposed to a technicall guitar sound, it's all ear and emotions, with each player having a unique sound germane to their time period. These players are the basis of solid jazz guitar but there are many others that are way better but those three are the well roundeds. When first starting out it's good to check out guys like Charlie Christian along with Grant Green and other more melodic early players like that. Move on there to Wes and players like Joe Pass, Django, even kenny burrell to keep the list extremely short, the exploring of players is up to you and your affinity. When you start to get extremely familiar with the different styles of jazz and are very comfortable improvising, performing, and writing with in the syntax of jazz, you can start to get into the good stuff. Eventually you want to start expanding your horizon off jazz guitarists and into a lot of horn players, mostly sax, and piano. Sax players like coltrane and charlie parker are great to emulate. I transcribe a lot of coltrane solos and standards and read out of the omnibook once a week usually. Piano players like thelonious monk, bill evans, mccoy tyner, and my fav oscar peterson, even herbie hancock are great to listen to for comping ideas and there idividual sounds that make them unique, monks minor 2nds, bills linear solo style and minimal comping, tyners quartal harmony. and lastly, move on to the jazz players of today. George benson is a great place to start because he idolizes wes and he mixes and jazz and blues and shred well. Birelli Lagrene is a tough motherfucker to play some of his solos, he's a virtuoso child prodigy kinda kid recorded a standards album when he was 16 and it shreds harder than anyone i've ever heard. Then of course there's the philly jazz heads everyone loves jimmy bruno and pat martino. Pat metheny is probably themost well rounded of todays players with a very large cataloge of compositions a brand new album and probably some of the best solos out there. then there are people like Ben Monder who totally take jazz from a whole new perspective. Lastly, there is a large group a new guys in this post bop scene like Kurt Rosenwinkel. for each guy i name i could name 50+ more a piece but that's up to you as a musician to learn and listen


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## josh pelican (Oct 29, 2010)

Yellowjackets. I listen to these dudes for the bass.


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## theclap (Oct 29, 2010)

josh pelican said:


> Yellowjackets. I listen to these dudes for the bass.


 
+1


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## DatM (Oct 29, 2010)

My advice it to start by learning as many standards as you can. That should be the #1 goal at first.

Learn the melody and the chords and listen to as many versions of each one as you can. And when you listen try to follow the chord changes while they improvise (including the drum solo).

Then learn to play one or two solos for each standard...and not just guitarists, horn and piano players as well. 

Here's a top 10 to get you started with (not including blues and rhythm changes): Top 10 Standards by OGOGO


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## Arterial (Oct 30, 2010)

Why are they called "standards"?

And uh...when you say learn the melody and the chords...
do you mean learn by ear?


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## Cabinet (Nov 16, 2010)

Get more acquainted with theory. Start by studying more chords, how they're built and what the symbols mean, like an EbMaj7 add 9, Dm7b5. When playing with a jazz band, the traditional guitarist is almost always comping with chords, phrasing with solos is still a vital skill to learn, but my experience is most of the time you'll be playing chords.

On the subject of chords, learn a few ways to play one chord. My instructor had me learn multiple ways of playing a Cm7 so I wouldn't play the same frets over and over and got some room to make it sound different.


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## Kairos (Nov 16, 2010)

Arterial said:


> Why are they called "standards"?
> 
> And uh...when you say learn the melody and the chords...
> do you mean learn by ear?



They're called standards because they're standard tunes in a Jazz musicians repertoire. At some point jazz musicians started using already written songs and playing them in their own style. Since Jazz is so unique and based on improvisation, many times different versions of the same song will be *hugely* different. You can get them in what is called a "Real" or "Fake" book.

Definitely do as much as you can by ear. The melody is usually easier then the chords. For chords just start with some acoustic rock, and just build on that. It's essential to try with you're ear, because 99% of what you do in jazz is listen to what the other musicians are doing and respond accordingly. If you get stuck, just grab look up the song, or get a fake book.

It's also very important to understand how a jazz song is laid out, I can go into that if you would like me to.


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## All_¥our_Bass (Nov 16, 2010)

A Jazz Improvisation Primer


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## Luan (Nov 17, 2010)

Listen a lot, read a lot (history helps a lot to understand a lot of things from this music), transcribe a lot, learn a lot of harmony, open your ears a lot, etc
Eventually you will understand more and more, it will never end, that is why jazz is so fascinating. Metheny himself said that he still is trying to understand this music. When you think you pretty much can understand most things, something new that you didn't thought that was possible appears, and a lot of music will be hard to understand to you just like to everyone else, don't let your ego tell you that you don't like x thing just because you can't understand it. There is a lot of different approaches to "jazz", some are easy to get, some are more complex, if something doesn't click to you, read where it comes from, open more your ears, try to get what does that approach/style has in particular as something good, etc
I hope this is a good suggestion to you or to anybody else, I try to do this, to listen a lot, to learn a lot.


Edit: with all the respect to skolnick, try to listen to the best jazz guitarists first. By the best I mean guitarists like:
Pat Metheny, Allan Holdsworth, Jonathan Kreisberg, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mike Moreno, Pat Martino, Wes Montgomery, Tim Miller, Ben Monder, and the list goes ooooon.


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## DanielKRego (Nov 17, 2010)

Kairos said:


> They're called standards because they're standard tunes in a Jazz musicians repertoire. At some point jazz musicians started using already written songs and playing them in their own style. Since Jazz is so unique and based on improvisation, many times different versions of the same song will be *hugely* different. You can get them in what is called a "Real" or "Fake" book.
> 
> Definitely do as much as you can by ear. The melody is usually easier then the chords. For chords just start with some acoustic rock, and just build on that. It's essential to try with you're ear, because 99% of what you do in jazz is listen to what the other musicians are doing and respond accordingly. If you get stuck, just grab look up the song, or get a fake book.
> 
> It's also very important to understand how a jazz song is laid out, I can go into that if you would like me to.



Do go into that, sire


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## Kairos (Nov 17, 2010)

DanielRego said:


> Do go into that, sire



Absolutely! for this example I'll be using the song Four by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, YouTube - Miles Davis & John Coltrane / Four 1958

So you have a little drum intro for the first 4 bars, then when the trumpet, sax, piano and bass come in, they play what is called the main theme (also called the head or chorus). In Four the main theme is 8 measures, split up into two parts (the first 4 measures then the next 4 measures, it's easy to count it). This continues until the 0:39 mark when Miles takes his solo. While he plays the solo, the other instrumentalists still play around the same chords as the head (but it's important to keep in mind that since jazz is improvised what they play behind Miles can still sound very different). Then, at the 2:24 mark, Coltrane takes his solo. Finally at 4:05, Miles comes back in and they play the main theme and end.

So the song is:
Drum intro - 4 measures
Head - part one, measures 5-8. Part two, measures 9-12. They play it twice.
Miles' solo
Coltrane's solo
Head
cliche jazz outro lick

Other analysis:
It's important, while studying jazz, to keep track of where the soloist is while taking their solo over the main theme. Practice by singing (or playing) the main melody while they're playing the solo. If you get lost, try to listen to the bassist, they usually outline the chords very nicely. Doing this will help demystify the layout of a solo, and how jazz works as a whole. However singing the main melody will be increasing difficult further into the solo as the band gets more abstract. Practice, practice, practice.

Also listen to how Miles cut right into Trane's solo when they start the theme at the end, I lol every time


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## StratoJazz (Dec 3, 2010)

Get Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and transcribe his solo on So What. Then listen to and transcribe who you like.

I've found the ideas you get when you actually transcribe, stick in your head much better than otherwise.

as far as books, get anything by Mick Goodrick, Aebersold is ok, Hal Galper's Forward Motion is amazing!!, and get some shred guitar(or just guitar) technique books


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## Hasmamagee (Dec 4, 2010)

Wes Montgomery is a great one to start with, also George Benson nails the jazz tone itself.

the other reccomendations I can make if your just starting to do Jazz is to start off easy by playing modal stuff in a 12 bar blues format then work your way up to that crazy spreading bop stuff

also learn a couple of extremely simple 3 note jazz chords and start comping over them as you play, it helps a ton with ear development

although he's not technically "jazz" I'd also start listening to Zappa, he plays a lot of outside notes that you should try to hit in a solo if you can.

and lastly when you're up to the challenge, try following along with a love supreme by John Coltrane.

hope that helped


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## Hasmamagee (Dec 4, 2010)

Arterial said:


> Hey all. I'm predominantly a metalhead...
> and i want to learn jazz and how to play jazz.
> 
> So far, I only know basic theory.
> ...



oh and by the way, don't get discouraged by the jerks that will tell you "metalheads can't play jazz", either simply disregard them (as you should in most cases), or tell them to listen to Panzerballett- you'll never see a more stunned face in your life


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## StratoJazz (Dec 8, 2010)

Checled out Panzerballett, bad ass.


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