On today’s podcast, Greg and Vin interview one of jazz guitar’s leading players and educators, Barry Greene.

Here are the key highlights from the interview:

• Barry emphasizes learning by transcribing and memorizing solos of musicians you admire rather than getting overly focused on music theory.
• He advises finding 2-3 musicians that deeply inspire you and learning their solos note-for-note to absorb their phrasing and feel.
• Barry believes many students get too consumed by music theory rather than just playing and making music. The jazz greats he looked up to didn’t obsess over theory.
• He recommends melodic exercises like playing nursery rhymes on 1-2 strings to develop fretboard knowledge and rely more on your ears.
• Barry stresses the importance of command over the fretboard and knowing chord forms and scales in all positions.
• Great jazz improvisers start solos melodically, build gradually while incorporating some technical ideas, and reach a climax, rather than just starting with fast lines.
• The internet has enabled more of a community spirit amongst jazz guitarists who support each other’s playing despite competing for the same small audience.

Audio Version:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:58 — 44.8MB)

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Resources And Links Mentioned:

YouTube:
Barry Greene YouTube Channel

Website: Digital downloads, merch:
https://www.barrygreene.com/

 Transcript:

Greg: Hello and welcome. My name is Greg O’Rourke. Welcome once again to another Fret Dojo podcast. Fantastic to have all our listeners join us today. And today I’m joined today by my assistant instructor Vin Amorando. Today we have a very special guest on this podcast, Barry Greene. Welcome to the show, Barry.

Barry: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Greg: Fantastic. Well, let’s get started. Just so you guys get a bit of a sense of Barry’s accomplishments as a jazz guitarist and jazz guitar teacher over the years, here’s a bit about Barry’s illustrious career. So Barry’s been described by jazz guitar legend Pat Martino as:

“… one of the best, not only as a player, but also as a writer and teacher. I agree with others who regard him as a world class musician.”

Well, there you go. That’s pretty high praise, I have to say, from one of the, one of the grandfathers of jazz guitar. Uh, but, uh, Barry got his start on the guitar at age 10 when he was into the Beatles, later Led Zeppelin, before discovering jazz in high school.

Barry attended Berklee College of Music and William Patterson University in New Jersey, where he received his bachelor degree and later attended the University of South Florida for his graduate studies. Barry’s played all over the United States and Europe.

He has eight CDs out under his name. He’s played with a who’s who of guitar greats: Jimmy Bruno, Tommy Emmanuel… Oh, another Aussie… fantastic. Mike Stern, Jack Peterson and many many more.

Barry’s been a professor of jazz studies at the University of North Florida School of Music since 1995. He’s also authored several interactive iBooks, including ‘Playing Jazz Guitar’, ‘Chord Melodies’ and ‘Intros and Endings’, all available on his website BarryGreene.com.

Vin and I feel very privileged and thrilled to have you on the podcast today. So. Thank you, Barry. Let’s get started with a few questions just about where it all started for you.

So, mentioned you came across jazz guitar during school. So do you want to elaborate a bit upon that and kind of where your journey went from there?

Barry: Well, I think like a lot of people growing up in the 1970s, especially guitarists, you know, I gravitated toward people that you mentioned, You know, it was more honestly .. more Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and those kinds of groups in the 1970s, It was such a guitar laden, great…Just so much fun music.

And I had a Fender Strat. I had a Les Paul. I had a Marshall stack and I had a garage in New Jersey where we used to practice. And so yeah, it was great. I grew to love that part of,.. I mean, that kind of music and the excitement of playing for other people.

But it got to a point where I was getting ready to almost graduate high school. I did graduate high school. What I’m saying is that I found myself spending a lot of time not going to school. Mother laid down the law that if you don’t get serious about something, we’re going to kick you out of the house. And you know, a mother from New Jersey, when she said that she really meant business.

But in any case… so I got a guitar teacher in my junior year of high school who introduced me to jazz and introduced me to some of the people you mentioned, like Pat Martino, for instance, and George Benson, Joe Pass. And I was completely, just absolutely blown away. I had no idea that anybody could play the guitar at that kind of a level and I just became obsessed with trying to gain that level of mastery myself.

Greg: Let’s talk about how you got to where you are now. Like, you know, one of the most highly acclaimed jazz guitar teachers, You’ve got a huge profile, You’re teaching at a prestigious university and so forth.

So what do you think are the elements that have made you exceptional, like who, what are your influences or what are the main things that you focused on?

Barry: Well, just as far as the players themselves, I already kind of rattled them off, from hearing guys like both the Pats, to say Pat Martino, Pat McManus as well, George Benson, Joe Pass. All those …West Montgomery, of course, Grant Green,

The long, long list…inspired me, but I think like anything, when you have a desire to do something and you just give it everything, that you have to try to be the best you can be at it. As a … I remember being 18 or 19 years old and transcribing these solos off of recordings by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and absorbing all this information.

And I remember thinking, ‘okay, well, I’m 18. By the time I’m 25 I’m going to be this level, by the time I’m 30 … and always gauging myself to the guitar players and musicians I was admiring. And here I am 62 and I’m still doing the same thing. But that was it. It was just an incredible drive and desire to do it … and a pure love for it. It wasn’t just some obsession. It was a pure love. And I feel that way still today.

Greg: Yeah.

Barry: So hopefully that answers your question.

Greg: Definitely. So you kind of… You had that sort of vision as to where you wanted to go. It sounds like you had a lot of clarity as to where the kind of … where you’re aspiring to go.

Barry: Yeah, I think… I didn’t ever expect to be a professor of jazz studies at the University of North Florida. That was definitely not on my game plan at all. At all. It really was just to try to be the best guitar player that ever lived. That was pretty much it. I really, really worked hard.

And then just like anything, when you’re playing a lot, you’re teaching a lot, you’re meeting people, you’re genuine and you’re honest and you’re just ,.. you give off a good energy and stuff just starts coming your way.

I’m not making light of it. It takes a tremendous amount of work and effort, but if you can back it up by the fact that you are an accomplished musician and can add something to a musical situation, the phone just rings for you and things just start happening. Because like I said, the last thing I expected was to be a professor of jazz studies. That’s for sure.

Greg: Amazing. So, Vin, you had a question you wanted to ask Barry about … George Benson .. do you want to elaborate on that?

Vin: Because he had just mentioned it in passing, but I was reading in an interview, I don’t remember the publication, It could have been Jazz Guitar, one of those, where you had actually cited George Benson as maybe the most influential. Did I read that right? Like, if you had to pick one guy that was your big inspiration…

Barry: I think George Benson just personifies everything great about jazz guitar. You know, I’m not going to say that he’s number one or number two in that long list, because how could you really say that about, you know, when you’re citing West Montgomery, George Benson, Pat Martino … They all have an incredible impact on jazz guitarists. There’s not a guitar player alive today that can say that they haven’t been influenced by those people.

But I think George just has everything, you know? He’s got insane chops, insane time feel, phrasing, sound, vibe. I mean, it’s just incredible. And as a young person, I’d always thought if I can get the line playing, that execution of that line that Pat Martino had, with all of the grace and soulfulness that George Benson has, you would just have the perfect guitar player, you know?

But so when I say that, I do mean that, I mean, he is an astonishingly great guitar player and every time I hear him come on some playlist and I’m listening to Apple music and he did something I hadn’t heard in a while, I think to myself, my God, there’s nobody who’s touching this guy. Yeah, it’s just truly remarkable.

Greg: Amazing. So Barry, let’s talk now about the … you as a teacher, important things that you find yourself time and time again talking to your students about. You’ve come across jazz guitar students of all shapes and sizes. But let’s start maybe from the beginner…

If someone was starting from scratch, what would you say would be the logical progression of exercises or fretboard knowledge or things like that? Like, what are the building blocks that you tend to focus on in your teaching?

Well, because of what I do I’m usually meeting students that have already been playing for quite a while. People are coming into college level and the people that I teach online via Skype, or even zoom like this, even in an older age bracket.

But if I were to go back in time and be able to counsel myself … how I would do things differently, There’d be a few things I would do a little bit differently.

The most important thing is what we’ve already been talking about. Is that you have to be able to connect with some musician that you just feel like, man, I would just love to be able to play like this person. I’m not about copying or emulating them to the letter. Just to say that when I hear this person, it’s just moved me beyond words. I just want to be able to do that and identifying two or three people like that you could just focus on.

I think where the issue lies, especially today with so much information, whether it’s a college or YouTube or even what we’re doing right now, is that people get way too caught up in the whole theoretical part of being a musician.

And it’s … I can’t say this for certain. I’ve had this conversation many, many times. That I can’t imagine the people that we’re speaking about sitting around talking about the Dorian mode. I just can’t, I don’t see it. Even in my own experience, like you mentioned a bunch of guitar players,. I’ve hung out with all the people you’ve mentioned and had conversations. We’ve never ever talked about that stuff. We would say ‘Hey, have you checked out this guy?’ ‘Have you checked out that guy?’ ‘Oh yeah, that was killing.’ But it’s never about the specifics of theory because it has very little to do with the actual playing of this music.

The analogy I’ll give, and maybe it may be something you’ve heard already, but the way I think about it, music in general and learning how to be a good jazz musician, is that by the time we’re five or six years old going to grade school … I don’t know what it’s like in Australia … For instance in the United States, five years old, you’re going to kindergarten. You have complete command of the language. You know how to speak, you know how to ask for what you need. You could communicate without the need for verbs and adverbs and all the things that we learn about later on to go to school. And that’s the way I think about it. I think it’s a matter of just learning phrases from these great musicians that you admire.

That’s what I was saying earlier. And yeah, later on you could say ‘Oh, man, Pat Martino used a G minor arpeggio’ or ‘Joe Pass is using this voicing for a minor seven flat five chord.’ That’s all fine. But … even using Joe Pass as an example, I know for certain that he knew very little technically about what he was doing as far as the theoretical part of it.

There’s even a VHS tape, an old … I think it was called Hot licks or something like that. But I remember him … watching him talking about playing a G blues. I don’t have my guitar all hooked up so I’ll just say that he got to one chord and said, ‘This is an F 13 chord.’ And then another chord. And he was like ‘I don’t even know what the chord is called.’ And then went to the next one.

And it was a clear indication that that was so low on the totem pole for him as far as things that are important. So to answer your question, I think where a lot of students., it’s not that we go wrong, but kind of get misguided on is getting so consumed by the theoretical thing.

And I can’t tell you how many emails I get, maybe not daily, but very often … ‘what scale are you using?’ after playing an entire tune that contains so much harmony to think that it could be whittled down to just one scale! But it’s not about ‘man, who did you check out?’ or ‘where are you getting those lines from?’ …that kind of thing.

It’s just always about theory, theory, theory, theory. So that concerns me a bunch. So to answer your question, I would say number one, identify with people that you admire. Learn solos off the records, note for note. You don’t have to write them out, but just memorize them. Play along with the recordings. Because that builds up such a sense of time feel and groove and all the other things that go with just being a musician that you can’t get from a book.

And then, yeah, if you want to study the theoretical part of things, go ahead and do it. But I definitely will put that further down the rung of things that are important. If you ask me questions about … I can get more technical, not technical, but more specific about things. But to me that, in a global sense, that’s the biggest issue. It’s too much theory, not enough just playing and making music.

Greg: Yeah. It seems so it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I’ve gone through a bunch of different styles over my career. Like, I started … I focused a lot on classical guitar initially. And something that seems quite particular to jazz guitar … I don’t know if it’s like that with other instruments, but it just seems like with jazz guitar there’s as you say … it’s just so much textbook focused, sort of (textbook) learning or emphasis.

It reminds me a bit of that old kind of … there’s an old parable where it’s like … Ok I can talk about an orange. Like an orange is this like sort of nice bright color and it tastes sweet and it’s juicy or whatever. But it’s only actually when you bite the orange that it all makes sense. You know what I mean? Otherwise you’re just kind of talking about this thing the whole time, rather than actually getting in there and doing it.

That’s true. That’s true. I mean, it seems so simple. You know, we’re talking about it. But somehow that message is lost now. And I think it’s just … not that there’s too much information, because a lot of stuff I see on YouTube is great. And that, and my God, the level of musicianship of musicians all over the world right now, it’s just at an all time high, it’s incredible.

But all I can say to you is … for instance, in a couple of weeks I’m going to Colorado and Jimmy Bruno will be there and Sherry (Bailey), Rodney Jones, Pasquale Grasso, all these great guitar players, we’re all going to be hanging out. I can guarantee you that theory will never be the topic of conversation, ever. And that’s all I’m trying to say about this. It’s just that it’s more of a mentorship with the recordings, at least for everybody that I’ve known. It’s going through that process and just basically mentoring through recordings. And just developing their own style from that.

Greg: Fantastic. So because you have an online learning platform, is that kind of your emphasis of what you do when you’re teaching, like focusing on transcriptions and kind of going through those? What’s your process?

Barry: I do, I do make that case a lot. I do, but on the same token, of course, being a professor at a university for almost 30 years now, if I were to take that approach that we just been talking about, I wouldn’t have a job (laughs) because honestly, what I would love to do is walk into an improv class….

I would, what I would love to say is ‘here are four transcriptions I want you guys to transcribe, memorize, and then come back in two months’. And we’ll work it all out because then you’ve absorbed the material by osmosis, picked up the time feel, the sound and vibe and all that kind of stuff.

And then I could say ‘hey, here they use a diminished scale. This comes from the second mode of this scale’, whatever it may be. But it’s secondary, more supportive versus the primary way of learning.

So yeah, when I’m teaching the lessons online there’s a lot of talk of theory but I’m constantly reinforcing the idea that people will say ‘hey, where are those lines … where’s all those lines coming from? Because I’ll say ‘hey, here’s G Dorian….’ I should have had my guitar all set up to play. But if I said ‘here’s G Dorian, play G Dorian’, it’s going to contain a lot of chromaticism, enclosures, all these kinds of things that jazz musicians routinely do.

So when people ask me ‘well, that’s not the Dorian scale.’ It is the sound of Dorian. It’s just incorporating the methods and things that jazz musicians just did with that singular scale there.

And we’ve … I even gave the names. I didn’t even like using those names, like enclosure and all those names. Because I generally don’t think that that’s the way that guys like Charlie Parker thought about it.

Barry: I could be totally wrong, of course I could. But I just don’t feel that that was the kind of way that they approached it. You know, I think it was more of a building these melodies and somebody like Charlie Parker, for instance, understanding and recognizing those colorful tones that are above the seventh of the chord and all that tension that could be. I just don’t think it came from such an analytical thing as that’s become right now. But as a teacher for almost 30 years, to me that’s the biggest issue and I’ll say 1 more thing about it.

And I can tell you that 9 times out of 10, when somebody will make an appointment to meet on Skype or whatever, they have like a stack of books. Some of them my own. I’m even telling them put the books away.

You know, that we just need to get down to the, like I said, the musical part part of this, you know? They probably could speak about the theory better than I could at that point. You know what I mean? It’s just, that’s the part that’s lost is how do you turn all that information that you’ve absorbed from the books? It’s art. That’s really it. It’s the biggest thing.

And you look at a guy like. for instance Wes Montgomery, I mean he was the absolute Godfather of all this. When you even look at him, he’s got a big smile on his face every time he’s playing and it’s full of joy. There’s no way in his head he’s thinking about harmonic minor or anything. He just … I guarantee you that. I would actually bet my soul on for sure. You can just feel it from him, it’s just so natural. Anyway, if I keep coming to the same point I apologize.

Greg: No, no, man.

Barry: But I’m passionate about that.

Greg: I think it really needs to be emphasized a few times because you know that, it was interesting, we recently had a chat with Sheryl Bailey, another fantastic jazz player and teacher. She was very much saying the same sort of thing.

Like when I’m speaking to you right now, I’m not particularly concerned with adverbs or nouns or things like that. It’s probably helpful in some corner of your learning to maybe sort of just understand the structures, especially if you’re gonna compose music and things like that, there might be some good tools there. But I think jazz is very much, as you’re saying, it’s a heartfelt thing. It’s kind of goes into the subconscious. And that’s where the great music happens, is when you’ve really internalized, in a very intuitive way, this music rather than being worried about what scale you have to play next. That’s kind of going around things the wrong way, as you’re saying.

Barry: Right. It’s just, yeah, that’s it … you said you put it perfectly, that’s exactly it. Exactly. But it’s hard to convince people of that, because the one thing that we haven’t talked about…

Is that, you know, some people will say that, in other words, the thought of me being an NBA basketball player ,,, totally out of the question, you know what I mean? I’m not athletic. You know what I’m saying? There’s a conversation about can anybody do this?

In other words, I’ve gotten this conversation, a bunch of online people that… Look, if all it took were you knowing all your modes and scales and have a bunch of chops, then you could be a great jazz musician. Why hasn’t there been another West Montgomery, you know? Because it’s not about that.

It’s about the things that are intangible, you know? So it’s a big message to send. But I understand that when people are getting started, we’re … it’s hard to find yourself in that kind of a head space when you’re looking at an instrument and just trying to figure out how to play it.

It’s going to be very mechanical. And I think the scales and stuff we’re talking about for that purpose are perfect. You’re getting an understanding of your instrument and how it’s functioning, all that kind of stuff. But when you cross that barrier, which is the biggest barrier, that for every student that I’ve ever met is that moment where ‘OK. I understand this machine works and I know how to play it. I know my chords and then my scales. Why can’t I play a great guitar solo?’ An Autumn Leaves or something like that. And that’s the biggest hurdle.

But I think the answer is, what we’ve just been talking about is, you almost have to put all that stuff away and turn the page to a whole new chapter and the way you approach music in general.

Vin: OK Barry I’ve got a question for you. Let’s assume that there was … outside of the jazz world, somebody who isn’t known as a jazz guitarist…

Are there any other guitarists in any genre that you love to listen to, gives you inspiration, maybe new ideas that you like, might not have gotten if you had stayed only in the jazz world when you’re listening for new artists?

Barry: Yeah, yeah. I could say two or three people that come to mind immediately. And it would be for the same reason, though, I’ll have to say for the jazz guys. because it’s …

When I think about, for instance, somebody like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you know? I think just all the passion and just such … it’s so honest. That’s what I’ve been trying to get to the entire time we’ve been speaking. It’s just so honest. It’s surpasses all the (theory) stuff. Obviously he could play the crap out of the blues scale. We know that he learned the blue scale. But man, what he did with that and just the pure energy and vibe and time feel.

And another guy I admire a lot is Steve Lukather, the studio guy from the band Toto. He’s been on like zillions of records. Just his music, musicality and just his ability to … it’s a very difficult thing to do, by the way. just to be in a studio and for somebody to say ‘hey, I need you to come up with a part right now for this particular piece of music’ and just come up with these such memorable pieces of music on the guitar, that in some cases are in the background. But if you took them out, the entire arrangement would fall apart.

So there’s a lot of people I think like that. I can’t cite necessarily somebody that’s blowing my mind other than the jazz guitar players we’ve talked about. But I’m just saying the musicianship from those guys in particular, those who come to mind immediately. And I’ll probably regret that and think that I missed some people after we stopped talking, but like I said what I want to emphasize is for the same exact reasons that I love George and Pat and Joe Pass, all those guys. It was just very honest and it surpassed … I’m trying to think of the other word … it just went above and beyond just all the thought and theory and all that kind of stuff.

I know it’s the same old thing I’ve been saying a lot. But yeah, I think when I hear Stevie Ray Vaughan, I’m like ‘damn, man this guy is just such a natural musician.’ Prince, I feel the same way about Prince. When we sit here, all these names are going to come into my head. But yeah, in other words, it’s a true musical master, you know? Anyway, like I said, I can I’ll probably think of other names, but hopefully that is a good enough answer for you.

Barry: Yeah, you guys know what I’m talking about when I say Steve Lukather?

Vin: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was a big Toto fan. When I was at Berkee on campus, I actually started on campus in the 90s and then I finished online much later, but when I was there in the 90s I remember Toto came by and played at the Paradise Club. It was like the big rock club in the place. And it’s funny because it was a pretty big rock club, might hold maybe like a thousand, maybe 1,500. It was a big club. All of Berkee was there for Toto, even though they’re not jazz and yet Berklee was known as a jazz school.

But I think they all felt the same way you did. They were just such high caliber players, you know? It’s like half the school was there to see the rock band Toto.

Barry: Yeah. Steve is just one of a kind for sure. You know, and I don’t know if we’re still recording, but of course Eddie Van Halen too. He’s another one for all the same reasons, I’d be saying the same thing about everybody that I would cite, but those names came to my mind for whatever reason right away.

Like I said, I’ll probably regret it later and think I should have come up with thess other names, but yeah.

Vin: Oh, perfect.

Barry: Just giants, right? Eddie Van Halen.

Barry: Oh my God, man. Anyway.

Vin: He’s the reason why I play now 30 years later. It was all because of Eddie.

Barry: It was Eddie?

Vin: Oh yeah. Yeah. My room was like a shrine to Van Halen.

Barry: I was at Berklee … that’s funny because I went to Berkelee in 1979 and then of course it was like a jazz school. But I think there were almost a thousand guitarists. I’m not exaggerating. That was a number that was thrown at me. There were a thousand guitar players at Berklee in 1979. But there was this definite war between the jazz guitar players and a rock players because you would go into a practice room and there would be like a cartoon of a jazz guitar player. There would be a cartoon of a rock guitar player,

But the greatest day ever was … there was a bar right across the street from the main entrance of Berkee and they had painted it just white. I don’t know why they did this. The wall was bright white and within a, I don’t know how long it was, but in red letters it said ‘Rock took a shit and Jazz came out.’ (laughs) It was out there for like a month. Just insane times. But Steve Vai was there when I was there … there’s another one. Steve Vai was at Berkee at that time.

But anyway, I think that sums it all up. I don’t know if it’s still recording. I know you’re not going to use that last bit but just to say that.

Everybody that we love, whether it’s classical, jazz, rock, blues, funk, whatever. It’s just … the people that rise to the top have this quality we’re talking about. It’s just this incredible way of just being able to bring the emotional component of being a musician to the forefront always, And never get caught up in the technical part of things. That’s it.

Greg: So we’ve sort of touched a lot on … really going to that heart level of the music and the value of internalizing transcriptions. Aside from those things, are there any other general concepts you tend to find yourself teaching your students? Like, in parallel to that main idea?

Barry: Yeah, of course. Over the years, I’ve been playing the guitar for almost … well, more than 50 years at this point. So yeah, there are some things that I really believe in that I’ve stumbled on.

All I’m saying is that if you were to take a tune like Stella by Starlight … or Autumn Leaves. To say that okay, well I’m going to Play a Cm7 chord, which is the first chord on the lowest part of the guitar that I can. I go through the entire tune. Like Cm7, F7, BbMaj7, EbMaj7, Am7b5, D7#9, Gm, E7 … And get what I’m doing here is by forcing myself to play in position and developing this extraordinary amount of fretboard knowledge, because I’m not having to say ‘well I only know this chord here or that chord there’. It’s the same thing with the sound of the scales. C minor, I play C Dorian. For F7, I’ll play actually the same kind of thing. Bb major 7.

You get the idea, and hopefully some of that is audible, but going up and down the guitar neck like that where you tackle it position by position. And I think of it in terms of five positions that you would walk up the neck. So if I could play all the chord forms and not just chord forms, good ones. And all of the associated chord scales up the entire neck, That means that I could be anywhere on the neck and anything that I’m hearing is going to be available to me because of that command of the instrument.

So that’s one thing that I’ve discovered. Although it sounds restrictive by putting yourself in this little box, like I just demonstrated, it’s one of the best things you could do to determine how much chord scale … I mean how much fret board knowledge you have. Because the moment you say, ‘I don’t know how to do that here’, there’s your first red flag. Okay, here’s something I need to work on.

Greg: I think Barry, that’s really insightful. I really liked how you said that then the red flag, you know? Like, it is a big one isn’t it? Because if you … and maybe that’s where people get a bit stuck because they haven’t figured out their positions, to really know when they put a note on the guitar what it’s going to sound like. And so until you really get to that point it’s hard to play intuitively. So maybe they say ‘Oh the answer is to fall back.’

And I’ve got to know the scales but what you really have to know is the fretboard and the structure of the instrument, the mechanics of it. And maybe that’s where scales, arpeggios, position playing can really … that’s the real purpose of that. Maybe not so much to understand how to be creative but more just understand how to use the machine, you know?

Barry: That’s right. You said that’s exactly right. You know, when you mentioned that too … we talked about George Benson a bunch today … But he solos so naturally, you know? Just such a strong indicator that everything is coming from the right place for him.

You know, I’ve heard musicians that I’ve had in the past kind of singing during guitar lessons. And I would say you’re not even singing the notes that you’re playing. All you’re doing is just … it’s very distracting to me. And then I could say ‘why don’t you play me Mary had a little lamb’, play me Mary Had a Little Lamb and they can’t. Say ‘can you sing it?’ So there’s the evidence right there.

By the way, I also consider it a great exercise for doing what we’re talking about. It’s to get more intuitive about your playing, is to free yourself from all the scales and the chords and things like that. And so just to take a little nursery rhymes and things like that and just try to play them on your guitar without thinking about scales and chords.

And even the guitar teacher, Mick Goodrick from Berkee, who I’d never had any kind of interaction with, but he had some great ideas along those lines where you to try to play a song like that, or some patriotic song. Whatever it may be on one or two strings and limit yourself to that because then that breaks you free of the position playing that you’re accustomed to with scales. And it really forces you to rely on your ears. And that’s … I think those kinds of exercises are really, really great for you. To break that.

Like we’re talking about that bridge from I understand theory, how do I become a musician? You know, those are the kinds of things that I think really helped that.

Greg: Yeah. It reminds me of a … there’s actually a YouTube video, I think, I don’t know if it’s still on YouTube, but of Barney Kessel, quite a long workshop and it’s all black and white. It’s quite old, but he was very much that one. That’s one of the first things he said, like, this is all about melodies, you know? Like, just think of a common melody, you know, Try to work it out on the instrument, Like that was like his very first lesson I remember on that tutorial he gave. So yeah, quite interesting.

Barry: And it’s super insightful on his part because, you know we mentioned the tune, Stella By Starlight kind of in passing. That song has so much harmony in it. So many chord progressions, so many chords that you have to refer to different keys and analyze it’s deep.

But when you look at the melody, there’s only a couple of moments where it’s not a diatonic tone that’s belongs to key of B flat. It’s a beautiful melody. You know, that’s one of the things that really makes me laugh and in one sense, only because I’ve been doing this for so long, I can look back and laugh about it now, but you get so consumed. Like, I know it’s a repetitive thing, but that melody is beautiful.

And if you could improvise that melody when you first chorus of a solo people would just be just so moved by that versus playing a whole bunch of bebop stuff as soon as the melody is over. You have this beautiful thing and all of a sudden you’re just playing a bunch of eighth notes because you’ve practiced these lines and passages or whatever it may be.

To me, all the answers are just basically what you said, like these beautiful melodies. All these standard tunes are just filled with these wonderful ideas. And in most cases, if you look at it, whether it’s Have You Met Miss Jones, whatever it may be, most of the melodies remain diatonic in the key center.

It’s just the harmonic component is a little bit, you know … Well I was going to say it’s based on secondary dominants and things like that. I don’t know if I’m talking above or below your audience to say that, but the melodies themselves remain really consistently diatonic.

Right now I’m working on the tune Triste. You know, it’s the Joe Beam tune. And it’s another example of just tons and tons of harmony, but the melody is almost entirely, totally diatonic, But it’s a beautiful melody. And any of us would have loved to be able to create that on the spot, improvising wise.

Greg: But that’s what the audience really wants to a degree as well, you know? Like, depending on the audience, but sort of the general public, that’s what draws people to music is just a great sounding melody, great rhythm, all those fundamentals. You know what I mean?

And obviously you can get very advanced but if you don’t have that starting point of a melodic sense to your playing then people can’t understand it, because it lacks that melodic component, you know?

Barry: That’s exactly right. And the people that we’ve mentioned, even going to some of the horn players including Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, they were exquisitely beautiful melodic players, you know? That stuff with Johnny Hartman, with John Coltrane. It’s holy, I mean, who wouldn’t want to play like that?

But then he has got this entire other thing that he’s able to draw from if he needs to based on the environment that he’s in. But if you’re sitting there playing in this intimate setting with somebody singing in the style of Johnny Hartman what sense would it be to just to play the stuff that he does typically if he’s playing with, for instance, his own group or Miles doing some modal … you know what I’m talking about?

It’s just having that understanding and depth of understanding of the language of jazz that you know what’s appropriate for the moment. And, as you pointed out, yeah depending on the audience.

Unfortunately in this day and age, 2023, those standards that we’re playing, the people who really, really enjoyed them and love them, they’re all dying. You know, that’s all there is to it. So when you play these tunes, unfortunately not many people now recognize them at all…to an audience that’s not a jazz audience.

I’m kind of getting off on a little tangent here but what you’re saying is correct. There’s no doubt about it. But for me as an improviser if I’m finishing up the melody to Autumn Leaves I’m not going to just start all of a sudden … just start like a whole bunch of lines. I’m going to build into that, but there is a growth. There is a … that whole … I think they call it the golden ratio. Do you know what I’m speaking of?

Greg: Yeah. Yeah.

Barry: That whole idea of … it’s going to have to entail you play melodically, and building and building. And the rhythm section is following you and you come to this climatic moment and all that entails some of the things we’re talking about. Where you are going to rely on things that you’ve practiced in lines and very … not aggressive, but eighth note-y articulated kind of lines, but to come out of a beautiful melody like that.

I think that to me the most moving solos are the ones that come out of that and then continue that and build it to something nice. And to me, like Coltrane, George Benson, Wes Montgomery, they were all just so, they did that so naturally. And to me, when I don’t hear that, it seems … man you just played a bunch of stuff that you’ve memorized. I’m not feeling anything at the moment right now. And then you’re not moving me. I’m impressed by your virtuosity, but after a song or two I’m ready to go. Do you know what I mean?

Greg: Definitely. Yeah, because music’s all about communication really, isn’t it? It’s like being able to say something with meaning and for the other person to hear it and understand it, you know what I mean?

And yeah, sometimes music can be very complex, like the Coltrane stuff but whoever listens to that, it does have an impact. You know, that kind of … you know, depth to the art form that we get with players like that. So yeah, completely get what you’re saying.

This has been absolutely fantastic, Barry. I think we’re really honored to hear your insights and wisdom on this playing. I think what I really love about our chat today is how you’re able to boil it down to really the core principles of what people should be focusing on. Because it’s like one of my mentors, I’ve mentioned this actually to Sheryl as well Vin when we chatted to her the other week, but the concept of signal versus noise, right?

So there’s a lot of noise out there and especially with the volume of material online now. All you have to do is type in one word onto YouTube and you’ll find like thousands of different videos on how to do this and that, but you really got to go down to the core. You got to find the signal in the noise. So I think Barry you’ve really outlined that really in a very insightful way today.

Barry: Oh, thanks. I’m glad. I mean, you could tell I’m passionate about all this, but you’re also … I’m recognizing I’m an old man now that people come up to me like a Yoda figure of jazz guitar. And I still feel like a kid inside, you know? I really, really do. It’s not … oh well.

Greg: Yeah. Well may the force be with you, Barry. But before we wrap up I wanna … I think we’ve talked a lot about your teaching today and your insights on teaching but I wanna hear some of your playing, man. Alright, so let’s hear some of Barry’s playing now. Let’s have a listen to Periphery from Barry’s album Resurgence.

(Audio plays)

Greg: Okay, so that was ‘Periphery’ by Barry Green’s 2018 album, Resurgence, Fantastic to hear you playing, Barry! Let’s maybe wrap up the podcast with a few final thoughts here.

So in terms of … we’ve talked a lot about sort of the issues and overwhelm that people are getting with the information on the internet, but is there kind of ‘on the flip side’? Do you think there’s been some good things that’s come out of that sort of musical information revolution.

Barry: Yeah, absolutely. Just like you kind of mentioned, just the whole community aspect of it. You know, for instance, Dan Wilson, who’s considerably younger than me. But we definitely come from the same place.

I remember hearing him for the first time and just contacting him and he said ‘oh, Barry, you know, I’ve been a fan of yours …’ and that’s happened so many times, people that I’ve reached out to that I thought they would have no idea on earth who I was would say, ‘man, I’ve been watching your videos’.

All that kind of stuff and it just brings us … even though I don’t have … sometimes I’ve not met these people yet create the sense of this camaraderie that we’re all doing the same thing. We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing with a music that is really … has such such a small audience. And it’s such a difficult way to make a living as a performer. But even this past, I think it was this past week it was released, where a YouTuber by the name of Chase Maddox, who happened to be a former student of mine from UNF did a thing where he had a bunch of us do a track on Autumn Leaves. And it was Dan Wilson, me, Dave Stryker. It was a bunch of people. And we all did our take on Autumn Leaves.

There wasn’t a sense of ‘I’m going to outdo you’. But I got so many emails from the players themselves saying ‘man, Barry, you crushed it!’ And I go ‘Dan, no you were …’ that kind of a thing.

So I think that’s a beautiful thing where … iIn the days when I was a kid in the eighties going to New York to go to jam sessions, and playing was much more of a cutthroat kind of … everybody trying to outdo each other. So, somehow that has changed where it’s a much more warm, loving thing.

I got an email today from Rodney Jones, a guitar player out of New York. We’re both doing this event in Colorado in a couple of weeks. Just commenting on a video and just being so kind, and those kind of moments are just wonderful.

Like I said, we’re all doing the same thing. We’re all vying for the same audience and trying to accomplish the same thing. And just the fact that it’s, like I said, it’s a warm … just a beautiful, beautiful thing. So for that reason the internet has been incredible.

Greg: Yeah. So amazing, isn’t it? Because in my part of the world, in Australia, and for a long time I was actually living rural in the country in Australia … So, imagine me trying to pick up jazz guitar students in that scenario. But when you put it out online and literally thousands of people see your things, it’s a real sort of Renaissance period for teaching, I think. And maybe that’ll help the tradition continue, you know?

Barry: I think it will for sure. Sure.

Greg: Fantastic. Okay. And once again, Barry, I’d really like to thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom today on the show. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation we’ve had. So why don’t we talk a little bit before we wrap up about what you do online, speaking of online. So where can people find you and how can people actually access your teaching?

Barry: Well it’s really easy. It’s just barrygreene.com. That’ll take you to my website and that will give you a super easy link to get to the teaching site. And that’s … I’ve had that site running for about, well a long time, since 2007. And there’s a tremendous amount of content on there, all of which I’m super proud of. And the most recent lessons, when I say that I’m talking about probably the last two years, feature backing tracks with Ulysses Owens who’s now … I think he’s got three Grammy awards. Just an amazing drummer.

You know, as the years have gone I’ve tried to improve the quality of the lessons and I listened to tremendous amount of feedback that I get from students about what they really would like to see more of as far as content. And just ways that I can improve getting the information to them. It’s been an amazing thing.

I never expected to see it grow the way it has but now it’s become such an important part of my life and I’m very, very proud of it. And I think it’s really … My initial thing was to design it for the intermediate to advanced guitar player. And I do address some of the fundamental things on the site, but it’s certainly for somebody who is coming to the site who already has some background with playing the guitar and a level of understanding about jazz.

And that’s really it.

Greg: Fantastic. You know, it’s good to put it out there and ,,, you’ve got rave reviews online and some fantastic content out there. So make sure that everyone checks out what Barry has to offer.

His website is barrygreene.com, with a link to his online training area as well. And I believe you do Skype lessons as well, Barry?

Barry: Yeah, I do.

Greg: Fantastic. Well worth looking up Barry’s website. So make sure you head over there.

Well thank you once again, Barry. Is there any sort of final thoughts that you want to let our audience know about before we wrap up today?

Barry: All right. Just the most cliche thing of all. If you have it in your heart to do this, just persevere. Never give up. Don’t listen to what people are saying to you. Just have that goal and pursue it like it’s the most important thing ever and you will succeed.

Greg: Fantastic. Alright. So everyone go and meditate on that one this week and let’s make some great music. So Barry Green, once again, thank you so much for joining us today on the Fet Dojo podcast.

Barry: It’s my pleasure. Great meeting both of you guys. Thanks.

On today’s podcast, Greg and Vin interview one of jazz guitar’s leading players and educators, Barry Greene.

Here are the key highlights from the interview:

• Barry emphasizes learning by transcribing and memorizing solos of musicians you admire rather than getting overly focused on music theory.
• He advises finding 2-3 musicians that deeply inspire you and learning their solos note-for-note to absorb their phrasing and feel.
• Barry believes many students get too consumed by music theory rather than just playing and making music. The jazz greats he looked up to didn’t obsess over theory.
• He recommends melodic exercises like playing nursery rhymes on 1-2 strings to develop fretboard knowledge and rely more on your ears.
• Barry stresses the importance of command over the fretboard and knowing chord forms and scales in all positions.
• Great jazz improvisers start solos melodically, build gradually while incorporating some technical ideas, and reach a climax, rather than just starting with fast lines.
• The internet has enabled more of a community spirit amongst jazz guitarists who support each other’s playing despite competing for the same small audience.

Audio Version:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:58 — 44.8MB)

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Resources And Links Mentioned:

YouTube:
Barry Greene YouTube Channel

Website: Digital downloads, merch:
https://www.barrygreene.com/

 Transcript:

Greg: Hello and welcome. My name is Greg O’Rourke. Welcome once again to another Fret Dojo podcast. Fantastic to have all our listeners join us today. And today I’m joined today by my assistant instructor Vin Amorando. Today we have a very special guest on this podcast, Barry Greene. Welcome to the show, Barry.

Barry: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Greg: Fantastic. Well, let’s get started. Just so you guys get a bit of a sense of Barry’s accomplishments as a jazz guitarist and jazz guitar teacher over the years, here’s a bit about Barry’s illustrious career. So Barry’s been described by jazz guitar legend Pat Martino as:

“… one of the best, not only as a player, but also as a writer and teacher. I agree with others who regard him as a world class musician.”

Well, there you go. That’s pretty high praise, I have to say, from one of the, one of the grandfathers of jazz guitar. Uh, but, uh, Barry got his start on the guitar at age 10 when he was into the Beatles, later Led Zeppelin, before discovering jazz in high school.

Barry attended Berklee College of Music and William Patterson University in New Jersey, where he received his bachelor degree and later attended the University of South Florida for his graduate studies. Barry’s played all over the United States and Europe.

He has eight CDs out under his name. He’s played with a who’s who of guitar greats: Jimmy Bruno, Tommy Emmanuel… Oh, another Aussie… fantastic. Mike Stern, Jack Peterson and many many more.

Barry’s been a professor of jazz studies at the University of North Florida School of Music since 1995. He’s also authored several interactive iBooks, including ‘Playing Jazz Guitar’, ‘Chord Melodies’ and ‘Intros and Endings’, all available on his website BarryGreene.com.

Vin and I feel very privileged and thrilled to have you on the podcast today. So. Thank you, Barry. Let’s get started with a few questions just about where it all started for you.

So, mentioned you came across jazz guitar during school. So do you want to elaborate a bit upon that and kind of where your journey went from there?

Barry: Well, I think like a lot of people growing up in the 1970s, especially guitarists, you know, I gravitated toward people that you mentioned, You know, it was more honestly .. more Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and those kinds of groups in the 1970s, It was such a guitar laden, great…Just so much fun music.

And I had a Fender Strat. I had a Les Paul. I had a Marshall stack and I had a garage in New Jersey where we used to practice. And so yeah, it was great. I grew to love that part of,.. I mean, that kind of music and the excitement of playing for other people.

But it got to a point where I was getting ready to almost graduate high school. I did graduate high school. What I’m saying is that I found myself spending a lot of time not going to school. Mother laid down the law that if you don’t get serious about something, we’re going to kick you out of the house. And you know, a mother from New Jersey, when she said that she really meant business.

But in any case… so I got a guitar teacher in my junior year of high school who introduced me to jazz and introduced me to some of the people you mentioned, like Pat Martino, for instance, and George Benson, Joe Pass. And I was completely, just absolutely blown away. I had no idea that anybody could play the guitar at that kind of a level and I just became obsessed with trying to gain that level of mastery myself.

Greg: Let’s talk about how you got to where you are now. Like, you know, one of the most highly acclaimed jazz guitar teachers, You’ve got a huge profile, You’re teaching at a prestigious university and so forth.

So what do you think are the elements that have made you exceptional, like who, what are your influences or what are the main things that you focused on?

Barry: Well, just as far as the players themselves, I already kind of rattled them off, from hearing guys like both the Pats, to say Pat Martino, Pat McManus as well, George Benson, Joe Pass. All those …West Montgomery, of course, Grant Green,

The long, long list…inspired me, but I think like anything, when you have a desire to do something and you just give it everything, that you have to try to be the best you can be at it. As a … I remember being 18 or 19 years old and transcribing these solos off of recordings by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and absorbing all this information.

And I remember thinking, ‘okay, well, I’m 18. By the time I’m 25 I’m going to be this level, by the time I’m 30 … and always gauging myself to the guitar players and musicians I was admiring. And here I am 62 and I’m still doing the same thing. But that was it. It was just an incredible drive and desire to do it … and a pure love for it. It wasn’t just some obsession. It was a pure love. And I feel that way still today.

Greg: Yeah.

Barry: So hopefully that answers your question.

Greg: Definitely. So you kind of… You had that sort of vision as to where you wanted to go. It sounds like you had a lot of clarity as to where the kind of … where you’re aspiring to go.

Barry: Yeah, I think… I didn’t ever expect to be a professor of jazz studies at the University of North Florida. That was definitely not on my game plan at all. At all. It really was just to try to be the best guitar player that ever lived. That was pretty much it. I really, really worked hard.

And then just like anything, when you’re playing a lot, you’re teaching a lot, you’re meeting people, you’re genuine and you’re honest and you’re just ,.. you give off a good energy and stuff just starts coming your way.

I’m not making light of it. It takes a tremendous amount of work and effort, but if you can back it up by the fact that you are an accomplished musician and can add something to a musical situation, the phone just rings for you and things just start happening. Because like I said, the last thing I expected was to be a professor of jazz studies. That’s for sure.

Greg: Amazing. So, Vin, you had a question you wanted to ask Barry about … George Benson .. do you want to elaborate on that?

Vin: Because he had just mentioned it in passing, but I was reading in an interview, I don’t remember the publication, It could have been Jazz Guitar, one of those, where you had actually cited George Benson as maybe the most influential. Did I read that right? Like, if you had to pick one guy that was your big inspiration…

Barry: I think George Benson just personifies everything great about jazz guitar. You know, I’m not going to say that he’s number one or number two in that long list, because how could you really say that about, you know, when you’re citing West Montgomery, George Benson, Pat Martino … They all have an incredible impact on jazz guitarists. There’s not a guitar player alive today that can say that they haven’t been influenced by those people.

But I think George just has everything, you know? He’s got insane chops, insane time feel, phrasing, sound, vibe. I mean, it’s just incredible. And as a young person, I’d always thought if I can get the line playing, that execution of that line that Pat Martino had, with all of the grace and soulfulness that George Benson has, you would just have the perfect guitar player, you know?

But so when I say that, I do mean that, I mean, he is an astonishingly great guitar player and every time I hear him come on some playlist and I’m listening to Apple music and he did something I hadn’t heard in a while, I think to myself, my God, there’s nobody who’s touching this guy. Yeah, it’s just truly remarkable.

Greg: Amazing. So Barry, let’s talk now about the … you as a teacher, important things that you find yourself time and time again talking to your students about. You’ve come across jazz guitar students of all shapes and sizes. But let’s start maybe from the beginner…

If someone was starting from scratch, what would you say would be the logical progression of exercises or fretboard knowledge or things like that? Like, what are the building blocks that you tend to focus on in your teaching?

Well, because of what I do I’m usually meeting students that have already been playing for quite a while. People are coming into college level and the people that I teach online via Skype, or even zoom like this, even in an older age bracket.

But if I were to go back in time and be able to counsel myself … how I would do things differently, There’d be a few things I would do a little bit differently.

The most important thing is what we’ve already been talking about. Is that you have to be able to connect with some musician that you just feel like, man, I would just love to be able to play like this person. I’m not about copying or emulating them to the letter. Just to say that when I hear this person, it’s just moved me beyond words. I just want to be able to do that and identifying two or three people like that you could just focus on.

I think where the issue lies, especially today with so much information, whether it’s a college or YouTube or even what we’re doing right now, is that people get way too caught up in the whole theoretical part of being a musician.

And it’s … I can’t say this for certain. I’ve had this conversation many, many times. That I can’t imagine the people that we’re speaking about sitting around talking about the Dorian mode. I just can’t, I don’t see it. Even in my own experience, like you mentioned a bunch of guitar players,. I’ve hung out with all the people you’ve mentioned and had conversations. We’ve never ever talked about that stuff. We would say ‘Hey, have you checked out this guy?’ ‘Have you checked out that guy?’ ‘Oh yeah, that was killing.’ But it’s never about the specifics of theory because it has very little to do with the actual playing of this music.

The analogy I’ll give, and maybe it may be something you’ve heard already, but the way I think about it, music in general and learning how to be a good jazz musician, is that by the time we’re five or six years old going to grade school … I don’t know what it’s like in Australia … For instance in the United States, five years old, you’re going to kindergarten. You have complete command of the language. You know how to speak, you know how to ask for what you need. You could communicate without the need for verbs and adverbs and all the things that we learn about later on to go to school. And that’s the way I think about it. I think it’s a matter of just learning phrases from these great musicians that you admire.

That’s what I was saying earlier. And yeah, later on you could say ‘Oh, man, Pat Martino used a G minor arpeggio’ or ‘Joe Pass is using this voicing for a minor seven flat five chord.’ That’s all fine. But … even using Joe Pass as an example, I know for certain that he knew very little technically about what he was doing as far as the theoretical part of it.

There’s even a VHS tape, an old … I think it was called Hot licks or something like that. But I remember him … watching him talking about playing a G blues. I don’t have my guitar all hooked up so I’ll just say that he got to one chord and said, ‘This is an F 13 chord.’ And then another chord. And he was like ‘I don’t even know what the chord is called.’ And then went to the next one.

And it was a clear indication that that was so low on the totem pole for him as far as things that are important. So to answer your question, I think where a lot of students., it’s not that we go wrong, but kind of get misguided on is getting so consumed by the theoretical thing.

And I can’t tell you how many emails I get, maybe not daily, but very often … ‘what scale are you using?’ after playing an entire tune that contains so much harmony to think that it could be whittled down to just one scale! But it’s not about ‘man, who did you check out?’ or ‘where are you getting those lines from?’ …that kind of thing.

It’s just always about theory, theory, theory, theory. So that concerns me a bunch. So to answer your question, I would say number one, identify with people that you admire. Learn solos off the records, note for note. You don’t have to write them out, but just memorize them. Play along with the recordings. Because that builds up such a sense of time feel and groove and all the other things that go with just being a musician that you can’t get from a book.

And then, yeah, if you want to study the theoretical part of things, go ahead and do it. But I definitely will put that further down the rung of things that are important. If you ask me questions about … I can get more technical, not technical, but more specific about things. But to me that, in a global sense, that’s the biggest issue. It’s too much theory, not enough just playing and making music.

Greg: Yeah. It seems so it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I’ve gone through a bunch of different styles over my career. Like, I started … I focused a lot on classical guitar initially. And something that seems quite particular to jazz guitar … I don’t know if it’s like that with other instruments, but it just seems like with jazz guitar there’s as you say … it’s just so much textbook focused, sort of (textbook) learning or emphasis.

It reminds me a bit of that old kind of … there’s an old parable where it’s like … Ok I can talk about an orange. Like an orange is this like sort of nice bright color and it tastes sweet and it’s juicy or whatever. But it’s only actually when you bite the orange that it all makes sense. You know what I mean? Otherwise you’re just kind of talking about this thing the whole time, rather than actually getting in there and doing it.

That’s true. That’s true. I mean, it seems so simple. You know, we’re talking about it. But somehow that message is lost now. And I think it’s just … not that there’s too much information, because a lot of stuff I see on YouTube is great. And that, and my God, the level of musicianship of musicians all over the world right now, it’s just at an all time high, it’s incredible.

But all I can say to you is … for instance, in a couple of weeks I’m going to Colorado and Jimmy Bruno will be there and Sherry (Bailey), Rodney Jones, Pasquale Grasso, all these great guitar players, we’re all going to be hanging out. I can guarantee you that theory will never be the topic of conversation, ever. And that’s all I’m trying to say about this. It’s just that it’s more of a mentorship with the recordings, at least for everybody that I’ve known. It’s going through that process and just basically mentoring through recordings. And just developing their own style from that.

Greg: Fantastic. So because you have an online learning platform, is that kind of your emphasis of what you do when you’re teaching, like focusing on transcriptions and kind of going through those? What’s your process?

Barry: I do, I do make that case a lot. I do, but on the same token, of course, being a professor at a university for almost 30 years now, if I were to take that approach that we just been talking about, I wouldn’t have a job (laughs) because honestly, what I would love to do is walk into an improv class….

I would, what I would love to say is ‘here are four transcriptions I want you guys to transcribe, memorize, and then come back in two months’. And we’ll work it all out because then you’ve absorbed the material by osmosis, picked up the time feel, the sound and vibe and all that kind of stuff.

And then I could say ‘hey, here they use a diminished scale. This comes from the second mode of this scale’, whatever it may be. But it’s secondary, more supportive versus the primary way of learning.

So yeah, when I’m teaching the lessons online there’s a lot of talk of theory but I’m constantly reinforcing the idea that people will say ‘hey, where are those lines … where’s all those lines coming from? Because I’ll say ‘hey, here’s G Dorian….’ I should have had my guitar all set up to play. But if I said ‘here’s G Dorian, play G Dorian’, it’s going to contain a lot of chromaticism, enclosures, all these kinds of things that jazz musicians routinely do.

So when people ask me ‘well, that’s not the Dorian scale.’ It is the sound of Dorian. It’s just incorporating the methods and things that jazz musicians just did with that singular scale there.

And we’ve … I even gave the names. I didn’t even like using those names, like enclosure and all those names. Because I generally don’t think that that’s the way that guys like Charlie Parker thought about it.

Barry: I could be totally wrong, of course I could. But I just don’t feel that that was the kind of way that they approached it. You know, I think it was more of a building these melodies and somebody like Charlie Parker, for instance, understanding and recognizing those colorful tones that are above the seventh of the chord and all that tension that could be. I just don’t think it came from such an analytical thing as that’s become right now. But as a teacher for almost 30 years, to me that’s the biggest issue and I’ll say 1 more thing about it.

And I can tell you that 9 times out of 10, when somebody will make an appointment to meet on Skype or whatever, they have like a stack of books. Some of them my own. I’m even telling them put the books away.

You know, that we just need to get down to the, like I said, the musical part part of this, you know? They probably could speak about the theory better than I could at that point. You know what I mean? It’s just, that’s the part that’s lost is how do you turn all that information that you’ve absorbed from the books? It’s art. That’s really it. It’s the biggest thing.

And you look at a guy like. for instance Wes Montgomery, I mean he was the absolute Godfather of all this. When you even look at him, he’s got a big smile on his face every time he’s playing and it’s full of joy. There’s no way in his head he’s thinking about harmonic minor or anything. He just … I guarantee you that. I would actually bet my soul on for sure. You can just feel it from him, it’s just so natural. Anyway, if I keep coming to the same point I apologize.

Greg: No, no, man.

Barry: But I’m passionate about that.

Greg: I think it really needs to be emphasized a few times because you know that, it was interesting, we recently had a chat with Sheryl Bailey, another fantastic jazz player and teacher. She was very much saying the same sort of thing.

Like when I’m speaking to you right now, I’m not particularly concerned with adverbs or nouns or things like that. It’s probably helpful in some corner of your learning to maybe sort of just understand the structures, especially if you’re gonna compose music and things like that, there might be some good tools there. But I think jazz is very much, as you’re saying, it’s a heartfelt thing. It’s kind of goes into the subconscious. And that’s where the great music happens, is when you’ve really internalized, in a very intuitive way, this music rather than being worried about what scale you have to play next. That’s kind of going around things the wrong way, as you’re saying.

Barry: Right. It’s just, yeah, that’s it … you said you put it perfectly, that’s exactly it. Exactly. But it’s hard to convince people of that, because the one thing that we haven’t talked about…

Is that, you know, some people will say that, in other words, the thought of me being an NBA basketball player ,,, totally out of the question, you know what I mean? I’m not athletic. You know what I’m saying? There’s a conversation about can anybody do this?

In other words, I’ve gotten this conversation, a bunch of online people that… Look, if all it took were you knowing all your modes and scales and have a bunch of chops, then you could be a great jazz musician. Why hasn’t there been another West Montgomery, you know? Because it’s not about that.

It’s about the things that are intangible, you know? So it’s a big message to send. But I understand that when people are getting started, we’re … it’s hard to find yourself in that kind of a head space when you’re looking at an instrument and just trying to figure out how to play it.

It’s going to be very mechanical. And I think the scales and stuff we’re talking about for that purpose are perfect. You’re getting an understanding of your instrument and how it’s functioning, all that kind of stuff. But when you cross that barrier, which is the biggest barrier, that for every student that I’ve ever met is that moment where ‘OK. I understand this machine works and I know how to play it. I know my chords and then my scales. Why can’t I play a great guitar solo?’ An Autumn Leaves or something like that. And that’s the biggest hurdle.

But I think the answer is, what we’ve just been talking about is, you almost have to put all that stuff away and turn the page to a whole new chapter and the way you approach music in general.

Vin: OK Barry I’ve got a question for you. Let’s assume that there was … outside of the jazz world, somebody who isn’t known as a jazz guitarist…

Are there any other guitarists in any genre that you love to listen to, gives you inspiration, maybe new ideas that you like, might not have gotten if you had stayed only in the jazz world when you’re listening for new artists?

Barry: Yeah, yeah. I could say two or three people that come to mind immediately. And it would be for the same reason, though, I’ll have to say for the jazz guys. because it’s …

When I think about, for instance, somebody like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you know? I think just all the passion and just such … it’s so honest. That’s what I’ve been trying to get to the entire time we’ve been speaking. It’s just so honest. It’s surpasses all the (theory) stuff. Obviously he could play the crap out of the blues scale. We know that he learned the blue scale. But man, what he did with that and just the pure energy and vibe and time feel.

And another guy I admire a lot is Steve Lukather, the studio guy from the band Toto. He’s been on like zillions of records. Just his music, musicality and just his ability to … it’s a very difficult thing to do, by the way. just to be in a studio and for somebody to say ‘hey, I need you to come up with a part right now for this particular piece of music’ and just come up with these such memorable pieces of music on the guitar, that in some cases are in the background. But if you took them out, the entire arrangement would fall apart.

So there’s a lot of people I think like that. I can’t cite necessarily somebody that’s blowing my mind other than the jazz guitar players we’ve talked about. But I’m just saying the musicianship from those guys in particular, those who come to mind immediately. And I’ll probably regret that and think that I missed some people after we stopped talking, but like I said what I want to emphasize is for the same exact reasons that I love George and Pat and Joe Pass, all those guys. It was just very honest and it surpassed … I’m trying to think of the other word … it just went above and beyond just all the thought and theory and all that kind of stuff.

I know it’s the same old thing I’ve been saying a lot. But yeah, I think when I hear Stevie Ray Vaughan, I’m like ‘damn, man this guy is just such a natural musician.’ Prince, I feel the same way about Prince. When we sit here, all these names are going to come into my head. But yeah, in other words, it’s a true musical master, you know? Anyway, like I said, I can I’ll probably think of other names, but hopefully that is a good enough answer for you.

Barry: Yeah, you guys know what I’m talking about when I say Steve Lukather?

Vin: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was a big Toto fan. When I was at Berkee on campus, I actually started on campus in the 90s and then I finished online much later, but when I was there in the 90s I remember Toto came by and played at the Paradise Club. It was like the big rock club in the place. And it’s funny because it was a pretty big rock club, might hold maybe like a thousand, maybe 1,500. It was a big club. All of Berkee was there for Toto, even though they’re not jazz and yet Berklee was known as a jazz school.

But I think they all felt the same way you did. They were just such high caliber players, you know? It’s like half the school was there to see the rock band Toto.

Barry: Yeah. Steve is just one of a kind for sure. You know, and I don’t know if we’re still recording, but of course Eddie Van Halen too. He’s another one for all the same reasons, I’d be saying the same thing about everybody that I would cite, but those names came to my mind for whatever reason right away.

Like I said, I’ll probably regret it later and think I should have come up with thess other names, but yeah.

Vin: Oh, perfect.

Barry: Just giants, right? Eddie Van Halen.

Barry: Oh my God, man. Anyway.

Vin: He’s the reason why I play now 30 years later. It was all because of Eddie.

Barry: It was Eddie?

Vin: Oh yeah. Yeah. My room was like a shrine to Van Halen.

Barry: I was at Berklee … that’s funny because I went to Berkelee in 1979 and then of course it was like a jazz school. But I think there were almost a thousand guitarists. I’m not exaggerating. That was a number that was thrown at me. There were a thousand guitar players at Berklee in 1979. But there was this definite war between the jazz guitar players and a rock players because you would go into a practice room and there would be like a cartoon of a jazz guitar player. There would be a cartoon of a rock guitar player,

But the greatest day ever was … there was a bar right across the street from the main entrance of Berkee and they had painted it just white. I don’t know why they did this. The wall was bright white and within a, I don’t know how long it was, but in red letters it said ‘Rock took a shit and Jazz came out.’ (laughs) It was out there for like a month. Just insane times. But Steve Vai was there when I was there … there’s another one. Steve Vai was at Berkee at that time.

But anyway, I think that sums it all up. I don’t know if it’s still recording. I know you’re not going to use that last bit but just to say that.

Everybody that we love, whether it’s classical, jazz, rock, blues, funk, whatever. It’s just … the people that rise to the top have this quality we’re talking about. It’s just this incredible way of just being able to bring the emotional component of being a musician to the forefront always, And never get caught up in the technical part of things. That’s it.

Greg: So we’ve sort of touched a lot on … really going to that heart level of the music and the value of internalizing transcriptions. Aside from those things, are there any other general concepts you tend to find yourself teaching your students? Like, in parallel to that main idea?

Barry: Yeah, of course. Over the years, I’ve been playing the guitar for almost … well, more than 50 years at this point. So yeah, there are some things that I really believe in that I’ve stumbled on.

All I’m saying is that if you were to take a tune like Stella by Starlight … or Autumn Leaves. To say that okay, well I’m going to Play a Cm7 chord, which is the first chord on the lowest part of the guitar that I can. I go through the entire tune. Like Cm7, F7, BbMaj7, EbMaj7, Am7b5, D7#9, Gm, E7 … And get what I’m doing here is by forcing myself to play in position and developing this extraordinary amount of fretboard knowledge, because I’m not having to say ‘well I only know this chord here or that chord there’. It’s the same thing with the sound of the scales. C minor, I play C Dorian. For F7, I’ll play actually the same kind of thing. Bb major 7.

You get the idea, and hopefully some of that is audible, but going up and down the guitar neck like that where you tackle it position by position. And I think of it in terms of five positions that you would walk up the neck. So if I could play all the chord forms and not just chord forms, good ones. And all of the associated chord scales up the entire neck, That means that I could be anywhere on the neck and anything that I’m hearing is going to be available to me because of that command of the instrument.

So that’s one thing that I’ve discovered. Although it sounds restrictive by putting yourself in this little box, like I just demonstrated, it’s one of the best things you could do to determine how much chord scale … I mean how much fret board knowledge you have. Because the moment you say, ‘I don’t know how to do that here’, there’s your first red flag. Okay, here’s something I need to work on.

Greg: I think Barry, that’s really insightful. I really liked how you said that then the red flag, you know? Like, it is a big one isn’t it? Because if you … and maybe that’s where people get a bit stuck because they haven’t figured out their positions, to really know when they put a note on the guitar what it’s going to sound like. And so until you really get to that point it’s hard to play intuitively. So maybe they say ‘Oh the answer is to fall back.’

And I’ve got to know the scales but what you really have to know is the fretboard and the structure of the instrument, the mechanics of it. And maybe that’s where scales, arpeggios, position playing can really … that’s the real purpose of that. Maybe not so much to understand how to be creative but more just understand how to use the machine, you know?

Barry: That’s right. You said that’s exactly right. You know, when you mentioned that too … we talked about George Benson a bunch today … But he solos so naturally, you know? Just such a strong indicator that everything is coming from the right place for him.

You know, I’ve heard musicians that I’ve had in the past kind of singing during guitar lessons. And I would say you’re not even singing the notes that you’re playing. All you’re doing is just … it’s very distracting to me. And then I could say ‘why don’t you play me Mary had a little lamb’, play me Mary Had a Little Lamb and they can’t. Say ‘can you sing it?’ So there’s the evidence right there.

By the way, I also consider it a great exercise for doing what we’re talking about. It’s to get more intuitive about your playing, is to free yourself from all the scales and the chords and things like that. And so just to take a little nursery rhymes and things like that and just try to play them on your guitar without thinking about scales and chords.

And even the guitar teacher, Mick Goodrick from Berkee, who I’d never had any kind of interaction with, but he had some great ideas along those lines where you to try to play a song like that, or some patriotic song. Whatever it may be on one or two strings and limit yourself to that because then that breaks you free of the position playing that you’re accustomed to with scales. And it really forces you to rely on your ears. And that’s … I think those kinds of exercises are really, really great for you. To break that.

Like we’re talking about that bridge from I understand theory, how do I become a musician? You know, those are the kinds of things that I think really helped that.

Greg: Yeah. It reminds me of a … there’s actually a YouTube video, I think, I don’t know if it’s still on YouTube, but of Barney Kessel, quite a long workshop and it’s all black and white. It’s quite old, but he was very much that one. That’s one of the first things he said, like, this is all about melodies, you know? Like, just think of a common melody, you know, Try to work it out on the instrument, Like that was like his very first lesson I remember on that tutorial he gave. So yeah, quite interesting.

Barry: And it’s super insightful on his part because, you know we mentioned the tune, Stella By Starlight kind of in passing. That song has so much harmony in it. So many chord progressions, so many chords that you have to refer to different keys and analyze it’s deep.

But when you look at the melody, there’s only a couple of moments where it’s not a diatonic tone that’s belongs to key of B flat. It’s a beautiful melody. You know, that’s one of the things that really makes me laugh and in one sense, only because I’ve been doing this for so long, I can look back and laugh about it now, but you get so consumed. Like, I know it’s a repetitive thing, but that melody is beautiful.

And if you could improvise that melody when you first chorus of a solo people would just be just so moved by that versus playing a whole bunch of bebop stuff as soon as the melody is over. You have this beautiful thing and all of a sudden you’re just playing a bunch of eighth notes because you’ve practiced these lines and passages or whatever it may be.

To me, all the answers are just basically what you said, like these beautiful melodies. All these standard tunes are just filled with these wonderful ideas. And in most cases, if you look at it, whether it’s Have You Met Miss Jones, whatever it may be, most of the melodies remain diatonic in the key center.

It’s just the harmonic component is a little bit, you know … Well I was going to say it’s based on secondary dominants and things like that. I don’t know if I’m talking above or below your audience to say that, but the melodies themselves remain really consistently diatonic.

Right now I’m working on the tune Triste. You know, it’s the Joe Beam tune. And it’s another example of just tons and tons of harmony, but the melody is almost entirely, totally diatonic, But it’s a beautiful melody. And any of us would have loved to be able to create that on the spot, improvising wise.

Greg: But that’s what the audience really wants to a degree as well, you know? Like, depending on the audience, but sort of the general public, that’s what draws people to music is just a great sounding melody, great rhythm, all those fundamentals. You know what I mean?

And obviously you can get very advanced but if you don’t have that starting point of a melodic sense to your playing then people can’t understand it, because it lacks that melodic component, you know?

Barry: That’s exactly right. And the people that we’ve mentioned, even going to some of the horn players including Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, they were exquisitely beautiful melodic players, you know? That stuff with Johnny Hartman, with John Coltrane. It’s holy, I mean, who wouldn’t want to play like that?

But then he has got this entire other thing that he’s able to draw from if he needs to based on the environment that he’s in. But if you’re sitting there playing in this intimate setting with somebody singing in the style of Johnny Hartman what sense would it be to just to play the stuff that he does typically if he’s playing with, for instance, his own group or Miles doing some modal … you know what I’m talking about?

It’s just having that understanding and depth of understanding of the language of jazz that you know what’s appropriate for the moment. And, as you pointed out, yeah depending on the audience.

Unfortunately in this day and age, 2023, those standards that we’re playing, the people who really, really enjoyed them and love them, they’re all dying. You know, that’s all there is to it. So when you play these tunes, unfortunately not many people now recognize them at all…to an audience that’s not a jazz audience.

I’m kind of getting off on a little tangent here but what you’re saying is correct. There’s no doubt about it. But for me as an improviser if I’m finishing up the melody to Autumn Leaves I’m not going to just start all of a sudden … just start like a whole bunch of lines. I’m going to build into that, but there is a growth. There is a … that whole … I think they call it the golden ratio. Do you know what I’m speaking of?

Greg: Yeah. Yeah.

Barry: That whole idea of … it’s going to have to entail you play melodically, and building and building. And the rhythm section is following you and you come to this climatic moment and all that entails some of the things we’re talking about. Where you are going to rely on things that you’ve practiced in lines and very … not aggressive, but eighth note-y articulated kind of lines, but to come out of a beautiful melody like that.

I think that to me the most moving solos are the ones that come out of that and then continue that and build it to something nice. And to me, like Coltrane, George Benson, Wes Montgomery, they were all just so, they did that so naturally. And to me, when I don’t hear that, it seems … man you just played a bunch of stuff that you’ve memorized. I’m not feeling anything at the moment right now. And then you’re not moving me. I’m impressed by your virtuosity, but after a song or two I’m ready to go. Do you know what I mean?

Greg: Definitely. Yeah, because music’s all about communication really, isn’t it? It’s like being able to say something with meaning and for the other person to hear it and understand it, you know what I mean?

And yeah, sometimes music can be very complex, like the Coltrane stuff but whoever listens to that, it does have an impact. You know, that kind of … you know, depth to the art form that we get with players like that. So yeah, completely get what you’re saying.

This has been absolutely fantastic, Barry. I think we’re really honored to hear your insights and wisdom on this playing. I think what I really love about our chat today is how you’re able to boil it down to really the core principles of what people should be focusing on. Because it’s like one of my mentors, I’ve mentioned this actually to Sheryl as well Vin when we chatted to her the other week, but the concept of signal versus noise, right?

So there’s a lot of noise out there and especially with the volume of material online now. All you have to do is type in one word onto YouTube and you’ll find like thousands of different videos on how to do this and that, but you really got to go down to the core. You got to find the signal in the noise. So I think Barry you’ve really outlined that really in a very insightful way today.

Barry: Oh, thanks. I’m glad. I mean, you could tell I’m passionate about all this, but you’re also … I’m recognizing I’m an old man now that people come up to me like a Yoda figure of jazz guitar. And I still feel like a kid inside, you know? I really, really do. It’s not … oh well.

Greg: Yeah. Well may the force be with you, Barry. But before we wrap up I wanna … I think we’ve talked a lot about your teaching today and your insights on teaching but I wanna hear some of your playing, man. Alright, so let’s hear some of Barry’s playing now. Let’s have a listen to Periphery from Barry’s album Resurgence.

(Audio plays)

Greg: Okay, so that was ‘Periphery’ by Barry Green’s 2018 album, Resurgence, Fantastic to hear you playing, Barry! Let’s maybe wrap up the podcast with a few final thoughts here.

So in terms of … we’ve talked a lot about sort of the issues and overwhelm that people are getting with the information on the internet, but is there kind of ‘on the flip side’? Do you think there’s been some good things that’s come out of that sort of musical information revolution.

Barry: Yeah, absolutely. Just like you kind of mentioned, just the whole community aspect of it. You know, for instance, Dan Wilson, who’s considerably younger than me. But we definitely come from the same place.

I remember hearing him for the first time and just contacting him and he said ‘oh, Barry, you know, I’ve been a fan of yours …’ and that’s happened so many times, people that I’ve reached out to that I thought they would have no idea on earth who I was would say, ‘man, I’ve been watching your videos’.

All that kind of stuff and it just brings us … even though I don’t have … sometimes I’ve not met these people yet create the sense of this camaraderie that we’re all doing the same thing. We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing with a music that is really … has such such a small audience. And it’s such a difficult way to make a living as a performer. But even this past, I think it was this past week it was released, where a YouTuber by the name of Chase Maddox, who happened to be a former student of mine from UNF did a thing where he had a bunch of us do a track on Autumn Leaves. And it was Dan Wilson, me, Dave Stryker. It was a bunch of people. And we all did our take on Autumn Leaves.

There wasn’t a sense of ‘I’m going to outdo you’. But I got so many emails from the players themselves saying ‘man, Barry, you crushed it!’ And I go ‘Dan, no you were …’ that kind of a thing.

So I think that’s a beautiful thing where … iIn the days when I was a kid in the eighties going to New York to go to jam sessions, and playing was much more of a cutthroat kind of … everybody trying to outdo each other. So, somehow that has changed where it’s a much more warm, loving thing.

I got an email today from Rodney Jones, a guitar player out of New York. We’re both doing this event in Colorado in a couple of weeks. Just commenting on a video and just being so kind, and those kind of moments are just wonderful.

Like I said, we’re all doing the same thing. We’re all vying for the same audience and trying to accomplish the same thing. And just the fact that it’s, like I said, it’s a warm … just a beautiful, beautiful thing. So for that reason the internet has been incredible.

Greg: Yeah. So amazing, isn’t it? Because in my part of the world, in Australia, and for a long time I was actually living rural in the country in Australia … So, imagine me trying to pick up jazz guitar students in that scenario. But when you put it out online and literally thousands of people see your things, it’s a real sort of Renaissance period for teaching, I think. And maybe that’ll help the tradition continue, you know?

Barry: I think it will for sure. Sure.

Greg: Fantastic. Okay. And once again, Barry, I’d really like to thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom today on the show. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation we’ve had. So why don’t we talk a little bit before we wrap up about what you do online, speaking of online. So where can people find you and how can people actually access your teaching?

Barry: Well it’s really easy. It’s just barrygreene.com. That’ll take you to my website and that will give you a super easy link to get to the teaching site. And that’s … I’ve had that site running for about, well a long time, since 2007. And there’s a tremendous amount of content on there, all of which I’m super proud of. And the most recent lessons, when I say that I’m talking about probably the last two years, feature backing tracks with Ulysses Owens who’s now … I think he’s got three Grammy awards. Just an amazing drummer.

You know, as the years have gone I’ve tried to improve the quality of the lessons and I listened to tremendous amount of feedback that I get from students about what they really would like to see more of as far as content. And just ways that I can improve getting the information to them. It’s been an amazing thing.

I never expected to see it grow the way it has but now it’s become such an important part of my life and I’m very, very proud of it. And I think it’s really … My initial thing was to design it for the intermediate to advanced guitar player. And I do address some of the fundamental things on the site, but it’s certainly for somebody who is coming to the site who already has some background with playing the guitar and a level of understanding about jazz.

And that’s really it.

Greg: Fantastic. You know, it’s good to put it out there and ,,, you’ve got rave reviews online and some fantastic content out there. So make sure that everyone checks out what Barry has to offer.

His website is barrygreene.com, with a link to his online training area as well. And I believe you do Skype lessons as well, Barry?

Barry: Yeah, I do.

Greg: Fantastic. Well worth looking up Barry’s website. So make sure you head over there.

Well thank you once again, Barry. Is there any sort of final thoughts that you want to let our audience know about before we wrap up today?

Barry: All right. Just the most cliche thing of all. If you have it in your heart to do this, just persevere. Never give up. Don’t listen to what people are saying to you. Just have that goal and pursue it like it’s the most important thing ever and you will succeed.

Greg: Fantastic. Alright. So everyone go and meditate on that one this week and let’s make some great music. So Barry Green, once again, thank you so much for joining us today on the Fet Dojo podcast.

Barry: It’s my pleasure. Great meeting both of you guys. Thanks.

On today’s podcast, Greg and Vin interview one of jazz guitar’s leading players and educators, Sheryl Bailey.

Here are the key highlights from the interview:

• Sheryl started playing guitar at age 13, inspired by hearing jazz greats like Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker on the radio. She studied at Duquesne University and Berklee College of Music.
• Sheryl discussed her experience taking a lesson from Emily Remler, calling it a positive and formative experience.
• As a teacher, Sheryl stresses fundamentals like rhythm guitar, reading music, scales, chord voicings, and learning tunes. Developing good practice habits is critical.
• For improvisation, she compares learning jazz language to learning French – it takes deep immersion, listening, study. Your voice emerges through the tradition.
• Sheryl shared advice on preparing for jam sessions – learn the common tunes, observe the vibe, build relationships. Don’t compare yourself to others.
• She released a recent album on vinyl, available digitally.

Audio Version:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:52 — 48.4MB)

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Join FretDojo’s online jazz guitar academy here

 

Resources And Links Mentioned:

YouTube series of “Homage”:
Sheryl Bailey and the SBQ: “Homage” YouTube plalist

Truefire Artist Channel:
Sheryl’s Truefire Artist Channel

Webpage: Digital downloads, merch:
https://www.sherylbailey.com/

Shop:
https://myiesstore.com/sherylbailey/

 Transcript:

Greg: Hello and welcome. My name’s Greg O’Rourke. I’m the lead instructor fretdojo.com. I also have with me on the call today my fabulous assistant instructor, Vin Amorando, and today we have a very special guest for you on this podcast.  Sheryl Bailey, or, as in Australia, apparently she’s been named ‘Bales’ as a nickname by my Australian colleagues.

Sheryl has been described as “One of the top players in an emerging generation of jazz guitarists” by Vintage Guitar Magazine, “Among the best bop guitar players” by Just Jazz Guitar. And “One of the new greats of her chosen instrument” by Philip Booth of Downbeat Magazine. Sheryl got her start on the guitar at age 13, attended Berklee College of Music from which she holds a Bachelor’s of Music degree.

She won third place in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Guitar Competition in 1995 and was chosen by the US State Department as a Jazz Ambassador. For a South American tour in year 2000. Sheryl has nine CDs out under her name and has played with a who’s who of modern jazz guitar greats, such as Frank Vignola, Howard Alden, Kim Plainfield, and many, many more.

Well, I feel like there’s so many credits here. Maybe we’ll have to do an edit here Vin, I don’t know. But… I think we…

Vin: well, I actually crunched this down (laughs).

Greg: You crunched this down. Wow. This is intense. Sheryl is also one of the leading jazz guitar instructors in the space today.

She’s a professor and assistant chair of the guitar department at Berklee College of Music, where Vin studied as well, and a professor at the Collective in New York. , Sheryl’s the author of the book, movable Shapes Concepts for Re Harmonizing Two Five published by Mel Bay, as well as several top selling video courses on platforms such as TrueFire Jam Play, Mike’s Masterclasses, and others.

Phew. So needless to say, we feel privileged and thrilled to have her with us today. So welcome very much to the Fret Dojo podcast Sheryl Bailey.

Sheryl: Hey, thank you guys. I need to update that bio because actually my 12th release just came out this summer.

Greg: Oh, there you go.

Sheryl: And actually the Organ Trio is starting our 21st year together as a band. So that’s note to self to update my bio.

Greg: Fantastic. Ok Sheryl well, maybe what we’ll do is we’re going to start at the beginning. So do you wanna, sort of ,for the audience, tell a bit about yourself. You know, how you got started with guitar, but particularly with jazz guitar.

Sheryl: Well, I actually came from a family of professional musicians and actually it was all the women who were church organists and phenomenal musicians.

And the funny thing is, when we were all kids, I was the youngest and my brother and my sisters, we all had to take piano lessons and I was a horrible student. I was, I liked to play the… I liked some of the Bach pieces and some of the minor key stuff, but if… I was thinking if my piano teacher were alive today, she would just be in shock at where I am, like I was professional musician. But, and I think maybe for many reasons, maybe I was rebellious, maybe I just was very willful. I wanted to play electric guitar and I wanted to play rock music. So I got… I begged my mother for a guitar from … You know, it was called JCPenney Catalog.

And I got this Harmony Strat, it was a little set, a kit, and then very quickly I started my own band, my kind of basement bands. And then I was playing in bars when I was 15, like I guess what you call Classic Rock now and Southern Rock and Heavy Metal. I loved, I was a shredder. And sometime around that time there was a little independent radio station that had played bebop and I heard Sonny Rollins and I heard Charlie Parker and I was… I didn’t know what I was hearing. It blew me away and I was curious about it. And also I wasn’t doing well in school ’cause I was playing in clubs and stuff. So my mother said you gotta get it together. And I said, well, I’m just gonna be a musician. She said, well then you have to study. You can go to music school.

I was like, oh, okay. All right. So it was sort of perfect timing ’cause I started to hear this music and she connected me with, in Pittsburgh area is where I’m from, there’s a whole kind of… Actually an amazing jazz guitar tradition in Pittsburgh … Pennsylvania for anybody not in the US. But I met a teacher, John Maione, who taught at University of Pitt, and that’s how I saw Tal Farlow, who was like the real first jazz guitarist I ever saw. So I was probably about 15 years old. He came out of retirement and it was mind blowing. And that was sort of it. But I was still, you know, I was just still on the shredding. If you hear any of the stuff I do with Anat Cohen or any people like that, I still use that facility and sounds. I just love great guitar playing.It’s not genre based.

But I do love to swing. I love swing and I love that language. So, yeah. Then I spent a year in Pittsburgh at Duquesne University, which had a great, still has, a very great jazz guitar program. Joe Negri is the sort of the … well, Jimmy Ponder, of course George Benson and Joe Negri, who was on children’s TV in this United States and was a local TV personality in Pittsburgh.

So through all those people, there were a lot of great … I used to see Ella come through Pittsburgh when I was a kid and Joe Pass. And I heard Herb Ellis and I heard Count Basie. I mean, there was at the time all those folks who were coming through Pittsburgh and I was just eating it up. So then I went to Berklee after a year at Pittsburgh, I went to Berklee. And so that’s kind of the basic beginnings of …

Greg: So you were kind of like swimming in the ocean of amazing music it sounds like through those years.

Sheryl: Also my mother was incredible, (she) was a great pianist and so I was … When I was a kid we had pianos and everyone played and I’d go to my friend’s house and they didn’t have a piano and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was like, what do they do for fun? You know, we were like a musical theater family and we played together. And maybe at the time, when I was a teenager, I thought it was kind of corny. But now when I look back, it was really beautiful thing that we did together as a family to sing all the songs from South Pacific or the Sound of Music or something as a family. It was a beautiful thing.

Greg: That’s really interesting you say that. I had the great pleasure of studying composition for a while with Glen Jordan. He did a number of film scores. But he was connected with Spud Murphy, the great arranger of the Benny Goodman lineup. And Spud said something very interesting to Glen once, which was, you know … Maybe it was Glen that was saying … He thought the reason there was so many great musicians back in those days was because they really didn’t have much television or sort of other media to kind of just sit there and distract people all day. They had to find ways to entertain themselves, beyond just kind of getting spoonfed things off the television, you know?

Sheryl: Yeah. You know what blew my mind actually, when I went to college and I had to be in the madrigal choir, and that music was so difficult. And they were like, this was the people’s music.They would get together and sing that stuff. I was like, okay, we must be heading towards stupidity ’cause this is incredibly complex music. (laughs)

Greg: Yeah. Very interesting Sheryl. So … obviously now you’re one of the most highly acclaimed jazz guitarist of the present day … What do you think has made … Well this is what Vin’s put on these questions, right? But I believe it as well.

What do you think has made you really exceptional, you know, like at the top of the game in terms of jazz guitar? What do you think has been those key ingredients or connections or influences that has made you into what you are today?

Sheryl: Well, that … you know, I love practicing. I practice a lot. I’ve studied a lot. When I was, particularly as a Berklee student … I transcribed stacks of stuff. So there’s that thing, the discipline of study, but also playing with others and playing with people that are better than you.

You know, it’s sort of like if you wanna get good at a game, you have to play. ‘Hey, I wanna be a great basketball player.’ If all you do is just sit and dribble with yourself, that’s a part of it, but that’s not really the game and developing how to play the game. So I think that’s the other thing.

It’s balancing those things between study and learning about the technical aspects of whatever instrument you play. But then playing it with others. So actually what your friend was saying about it being a contact sport is so important in terms of growth and how you develop and how you learn.You have to play with others and for others also. You know what I mean?

Like those kind of moments when you’re playing, I’m thinking about actually … I had played guitar night last night with Frank Vignola and Pasquale Grasso at Birdland. So you know, Wednesday nights New York City go to Birdland. But that experience of that intimate way that we were all playing, with the audience involved is so powerful.

So it’s all those aspects. Playing together with others and playing together with others, for others, will make you grow and become a great player over time. So, I mean, easier said than done. Obviously we have to deal with our own fear and own inner voices that keep us from… first of all, even just the first part … of having the discipline to sit down and study and work on our thing.

And then all the voices, and doubt and stuff. They make it scary to play with others, like to play with people that are better than you. Right? So, you know … We could talk about that too, you know … All that’s fascinating. Just the whole process of developing musicianship.

Greg: I think that’s something that holds a lot of jazz, aspiring jazz guitarists back, or jazz players in general, is that sort of fear they’re not good enough, you know?

Or in terms of crossing the barrier. And sometimes it kind of is reinforced if you go to a jazz session and there’s people that are kind of flexing on you a bit sort of thing. You know, trying to kind of vibe you out, you know? Have you ever, yourself or your students, experienced those situations? What would you say would be the best way to navigate that kind of circumstance?

Sheryl: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, that is difficult. I mean, things are changing I think, a lot. I think people are consciously trying to create spaces to play together that are vibe free. But you know, it’s gonna happen.

You know, I don’t know. I always say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s kind of the philosophy of living.

Vin: Sink or swim, right?

Sheryl: Yeah. And there is something about that because you do need a lot of strength and, I don’t wanna say ego, I don’t mean that in an obnoxious way. But you have to be, you have to develop that ability.

Well, my colleague David Tronzo, professor David Tronzo always says “who’s my favorite guitarist? Me.” If you don’t have that forefront, then why is it, why are you gonna take care of yourself and take care of all those things and put yourself in those situations? But I guess not to be … I’m not talking like big ego, like arrogance kind of thing, but like a strength that you have to develop in yourself.

Greg: Exactly. It was interesting. I’ve read or seen an interview with Pat Metheny when he was saying something like, what’s the main thing he thinks about after he does an amazing concert and he says, “well, you know, I sit there and go ‘Man, I really need to do some more practice.'” So I think it’s sort of feeling of needing things to be better affects all musicians at all levels. To a degree I don’t think it goes away. But as you say, you really need that self-confidence to be able to get yourself out there, you know?

Sheryl: Yeah, I think it’s a balance. I mean, you need that honest … I’ve given up being objective on my playing and in some ways it’s made me … objective. Like, I don’t take it personally and I sometimes just listen to myself. If I’m analyzing a recording and just listen to it as if I’m listening to someone else. Not personally. And I think that’s important to be able to separate yourself so you can go hey, I have these weaknesses.

I mean, everybody has weaknesses. Even Pat Metheny. He knows what he perceives as his weaknesses or else he wouldn’t keep practicing, right? He’d just hang it on the wall and say, “hey, I’m it. I did it.”

Greg: So let’s kind of think … I’m going a bit off script here Vin, but while we’re on this topic… I’m thinking when you’re… Let’s say you have a student, Sheryl, and you’re trying to get them to get out there a bit more and play. What advice would you give to them to prepare, say for, not maybe a big concert or anything like that, but just going down to a local jam session or something, how would one prepare themselves for that?

Sheryl: That’s a great question. You know, first thing I always say is just go to the jam session a couple times and observe it. See what tunes they play. ’cause you always find certain groups of people call certain tunes and in certain cities call (tunes). So you know, there’s just like a repertoire. So find out what tunes that they commonly play.

Find out who … Just observe who’s the leader and kind of check out the vibe. Does it seem friendly or is it vib-ey? Because if you wanna go and it is vibe, just set yourself up for that. Like, don’t take it personally. There’s nothing personal about you, that’s just the way these people are carrying on.

But I think the main thing is find out what tunes to know, to come and be prepared. So that when you get your chance to sit in you’re not freaking out. ’cause ‘oh my God, they called this head and I don’t know it.’ So I think that’s one. And maybe just get to know the people a little bit and they get to see you.

So you start that relationship. So I think when you get to that chance to finally get on a bandstand, you’ll feel a little bit more at home there.

Greg: Yeah. It’s sort of classic networking techniques, isn’t it, really? Like, firstly you need to get visible and then once you’re visible for a while in a group, then you get credible and then you start to be able to kind of really make some great music and sit in and all that sort of thing.

But you can’t just sort of go in cold, ’cause you’re going into people’s space. You gotta kind of, you gotta warm up a bit, isn’t it?

Sheryl: Yeah. And just see how they… sometimes some jam sessions they make you sign a list and they’ll just go down the list.

Sometimes they just call people up just see the vibe and the feeling of it. But definitely find out. Oh yeah, they like to play All The Things You Are, they like to play Stablemates or they like to play Donna Lee. Or find out what ballads they like to play and then you’ll feel, okay I’m gonna learn those so I can have something to play when I show up.

Greg: Fantastic. Great advice. So Vin, do you have any other questions on that, on that topic?

Vin: Not on that particular topic. I’ve got a couple I’m kind of waiting to throw in.

Greg: Yeah, go for it. Go for it.

Vin: Well, I know Sheryl in 2010 you had the tribute… Emily Remer tribute cd.

Sheryl: Oh yes.

Vin: Can you tell us how that came about?

Sheryl: Ah, well that’s interesting. You know, actually, I was playing at the 55 Bar with my band and Marty Ashby, who’s the producer at MCG Jazz, which is a Pittsburgh label, believe it or not. But Marty’s a fantastic Grammy award-winning producer and guitarist.

And he was in New York and he popped in and he heard us play. And then he came up to me after the set. And I knew who he was. It was the first time we met and he said ‘oh yeah, I wanna do something with you.’ And I was like, sure, great. Let’s do it. And fast forward … Maybe he took another year.

I didn’t hear from him. And then he brought me out to Pittsburgh to play a festival. And then we sat down and met about what to do. And he was very close with Emily. He and his brother, Jay Ashby, who plays that incredible trombone solo on Emily’s tune ‘East to West’. And if anyone gets the cd, there’s a picture of me next to this big oil painting of Emily, and that was on Marty’s wall right behind him.

And we were sitting like, what should we do for this record? I looked up and said  why don’t we do something for Emily? And he just lit up. And that was like ‘oh, that’s what we’re gonna do!’ So that’s … But I guess that’s sort of also the story about you never know who’s listening at a gig.

Vin: Well on that, I was reading an article, I believe it was Jazz Times, and it was about this tribute CD and yourself. And it mentioned that you had actually met Emily and had taken a lesson from her.

Sheryl: Mm-hmm.

Vin: I’d like to hear about that!

Sheryl: Yeah. Well I actually even have the paper that she wrote on, which I share with my students all the time. She was in Pittsburgh. Well, that’s how Marty got to know her and … She was very instrumental in Marty getting the gig at MCG Jazz. So it’s just this funny, weird little connection.

It was my first year at Berklee and David Budway, who’s an amazing, amazing pianist. And he’s a Pittsburgh guy, calls me, it’s spring break, and he said “Hey, Emily’s in town. Here’s her number. Call her up for a lesson.” And I did. And you know, it was … It was cool. She was a great teacher. I mean, she was a great player.

She was a great composer. She was a great teacher. And I have all the sheets and I use everything she taught me every freaking day. I mean really, everything. And I use everything she taught me with all my students. And we just hung out. And she was super cool. Like, she wasn’t looking at her clock like, ‘oh kid, come on.’

Sheryl: She was like, ‘Hey, let’s play, let’s play.’ And we hung out and played all afternoon. She was so giving and just … it was a really positive experience.

Vin: Very cool.

Sheryl: She came to play at Berklee just right after that. So if you can find it on YouTube, which blew my mind because there was me and my friend Evelyn, (who) were the only two women studying guitar at Berklee.

Emily came and it was a concert, and she played her freaking butt off with ‘SCO’, Mick Goodrick, John Abercrombie. You can find it on YouTube. It’s a little grainy. But I was at that concert and she was on fire and then, you know, she was off drugs. She was … And then she passed a couple months after that.

Greg: Wow. Yeah it’s very tragic what happened there. You know, a career cut short, a life cut short, but … yes. You know sort of carrying that flame forward, Sheryl.

I’d be interested to delve a little bit into what it’s like being a female jazz guitarist in this space. You know, which is predominantly featuring men.

So how have you found to negotiate that? Has it been an issue or not really? Like, what’s been your experience as a woman in jazz guitar?

Sheryl: Well first of all, gender’s all big topic these days, right? I’ve kind of always believed … I don’t really attach myself to gender. I actually kind of dig these people that call themselves, ‘they’. I mean, I’m kind of like … I’m not … being a woman, what the hell does that mean? What does it mean? It means something more maybe to other people than to me. I have to pick up the guitar and play at my best. And I’ve always said there’s only one list. There’s not ‘the best woman guitar.’ There’s one list. Either you can play or you can’t. And that’s all I’ve ever cared about.

So I have rarely spoken about it because of that, because to me personally, my experience doesn’t mean anything. It means more to other people (who may) have issues with it. And yes, I’m sure … And I know there are many people that did not call me because they didn’t understand. But I can’t worry about that, can I? I have to play my guitar right now and make it sound great.

So that’s my experience with it. Flash forward, having told you that I was one of two women at Berklee, to be the assistant chair of the guitar department at Berklee with my chair, who is also a woman. That irony is not lost on me every day, and I do appreciate it more in terms of that representation.

Now we have probably … Maybe we’re up to 10% female… you know, young women in our program. So I do appreciate that representation makes people feel, in terms of other young women coming into play, makes them feel welcome in a welcome space.

To me personally, playing the guitar, it’s the same. I have the same struggles and problems that you guys have. Where’s A flat? Oh, this tempo. What’s the melody to this song? Just to me, human. I’m more of a humanist. I see the world as just humanity than these categories, but that’s just me.

Greg: Well said. Well said. Completely agree. So … Thank you for sharing that, Sheryl.

So let’s talk a little bit about your experience as a teacher now. You know, as you mentioned, you’re the assistant chair at Berklee. What do you think are the most important things for jazz guitar students in terms of what they do day to day in their practice session?

Let’s say you had, and let’s really take it back … I know you probably wouldn’t work with many students like this all the way at the start of their jazz journey …

Sheryl: No, I love that, I love that.

Greg: Oh, you love that. Oh, there you go.

Sheryl: I love it. I love the … Actually those are some of my favorite students, to be honest.

Greg: Oh, there you go. Well, this is a particularly good question for you then.

So let’s take one of those students starting from scratch. What would be their logical progression of exercises or, you know, the core fretboard knowledge, things like that. When it comes to learning jazz guitar specifically, what journey would you take them on?

Sheryl: Yeah, well there are many things about playing the guitar that are not genre specific. Musicianship, right? So whether you play heavy metal or bluegrass or jazz to understand your fretboard, right? Melody, harmony and rhythm right? Now specific to jazz, I think the most important thing is to listen to jazz and love it if you wanna study it. Now I think many people study it because they think it’s hard or something, or they think … you know, which is fine. I think everybody should study because I think understanding harmony in particular, we are a harmonic instrument, the guitar, after all. You know, whether they become jazz players or not, will of course enrich their musicianship.

So I just think of musicianship as universal. So yes, learning to read on the instrument. I know no one wants to do it, but you will …it actually is the fastest way to learn your instrument. To know all the notes on it. It’s also important in terms of being able to understand music, right? If you can read music, that means you could get a Charlie Parker Omni book and analyze it and understand, and you could play it.

So it opens the door to the world of music and it helps you notate it so that if you have ideas, you can share them with others. So I think that’s a number one thing. And so many people are freaked out by and scared of it. But you know what? Find a good teacher who just helps you work on your reading.

And to be honest, all you need to commit to is 10 minutes daily to get started. And you know, just try it. Because if somebody said the year’s gonna pass either way. So if you don’t work on it at all this year, next year you still won’t be able to read. But if maybe you start working on it, by next year you’ll actually be able to read something.

So I think that’s important. But you know, I came out of the William Levitt books. The Berklee books. In fact, I’m not pushing this book, but it is … we just put out a book called Guitar Theory, which is the history of the Berklee Guitar program. But also what we teach in our final exam. But that comes out of, the core of that, is really William Levitt.

So ‘A Modern Method for Guitar’. Dry as a bone. There’s nothing sexy or exciting about it, but if you really wanna learn your fretboard and all your major scale fingerings… Everybody’s gone through it can testify … Vin?

Vin: Yes. It’s … thorough. It’s thorough. Nothing if not thorough (laughs).

Sheryl: That’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t have to take up your life, but make it a little part of your life and it’ll help you. So we have scales to learn to learn the fret board, and that’s … We have harmony, so chord voicings, how to voice chords, how to voice lead. And also if you’re talking about jazz guitar, rhythm guitar. Number one. Learn to lay it down.

That’s probably the number one, with what we call shell voicings … the root, third, seventh. Listen to Joe Pass, listen to you know, any great … anybody great. Bucky Pizzarelli, all of them. To work on steps, to swinging that quarter note and rhythm guitar. That’s what I start with everybody. That’s the foundation, that’s the heartbeat.

That quarter note, learning where that quarter note is. But then it gives you a way you can play through tunes. You can, you know … One of the things I start with students is this thing of working on good solid rhythm guitar so that you can make your own rhythm tracks. So then you say ‘hey, I wanna learn this song called  Ornithology’ or blues, it doesn’t matter.

You can make your own rhythm guitar tracks and … But in doing that you learn the harmony and you become a great rhythm guitarist. If you become a great rhythm guitarist, you’ll be able to get into the contact sport that we were talking about. You’d be able to play with others right away.

But also when you’re playing rhythm guitar, if I’m playing rhythm guitar on a blues … B flat… E flat … Okay. When I’m soloing, guess what I’m thinking? B flat … E flat … B flat… They’re the same thought process. It’s all connected.

So I can tell even some of these students at Berklee that play, by all means they’re advanced players, but I can tell within a measure whether they’re gonna be a good rhythm guitarist by the way they play the melody. It’s connected, that foundation of the quarter notes. And then most of the time I know it’s gonna be a drag when I go to solo. ’cause the quarter note’s not gonna be there for me.

So that to me is one of the most fundamental things to get together, is that you’re developing your feel and your sense of time. And then harmonic rhythm. And then you can start to play tunes. You can start to learn tunes and play with others.

Greg: That’s the thing, isn’t it? Because when you’re at a jam session, probably 90% of your time is playing the rhythm anyway as a guitarist. You know, so the bar might be a bit lower.

Well obviously, no, it takes a lot of work to become a great rhythm guitarist, but in terms of being able to attend a jam session, maybe don’t focus so much on the whole soloing thing. Just keep that to the basics, but really make sure your rhythm guitar is rock solid. Yeah?

Sheryl: Yeah. And it’s gonna make you a better soloist. Because A, you’re gonna know … I mean, jazz in particular is a music of syncopated rhythms, which means rhythms that are on the upbeat. But if I don’t know where the downbeat is, how do I know where the upbeat is?

That’s what I’m talking about. Like really locking that down. And I could tell that in even some of these ‘advanced students’, they haven’t worked on their quarter note. And their syncopated rhythms are all over the place. They’re not in the pocket and grooving. So it’s always, to me, it’s always going back to that fundamental. Myself, I love to play … I could be happy playing rhythm guitar just as much as I could be happy soloing. They’re not separate to me. They’re fun. They’re both fun.

Greg: Very interesting. That’s great advice to … make sure you write notes guys who … If you’re listening to this podcast right now, ’cause that was a real gem of wisdom right there!

So let’s keep talking a little bit about some advice you’d give to budding students. Let’s now talk specifically about, improvisation, right. So … because that seems to be one of the big nuts to crack when it comes to jazz, is to feel confident, improvising, feel prepared, and to be able to kind of make something meaningful spontaneously. So what advice would you give? Let’s say you had a student today.

What advice would you give them in that regard when you’re focusing mainly on improvising?

Sheryl: Well, that’s hard to say in a generic way. I mean, obviously we’re talking about a language, a very complex language, right? So the deeper … And I always use this parallel, if you wanted to learn French, there’s a couple levels. Like, hey I’m going to France next week. I need to learn some basics. ‘Hello? How are you? Where’s the bathroom? What’s for breakfast?’ Whatever. And I’m probably gonna spit ’em out and people will look at me like, okay that’s survival skill of the language. But hey, maybe I wanna get deeper inside of there. And so what am I gonna do?

I’m gonna listen, I’m gonna, you know … well first I’d probably get a teacher. I’d start to learn more vocabulary, grammar. I’d watch French movies. I’d eat French food. I’d get a French poodle. I’d do anything to just immerse myself in the culture and the language. And then … So then you have that level.

Okay, now I’ll go to France and I can get around and I’d get directions and people understand me, but I can’t get into a deep conversation. So it’s always this deeper and deeper layer of learning a language. So when do I know the language, I’ve mastered it? I’m dreaming in it. I can tell jokes in it. Or I can get jokes in it. That language, right? Or I can write, I can … So that’s fluency, right? So there’s all those levels about how deep into a language do you wanna get. So my language now is bebop and contemporary jazz, that I dream in, that I can speak it fluently. But I’ve started in those little steps. And again, I think there’s something for everybody at every level and every stage.

You don’t have to go in all the way. Maybe you just stick your toe in there and you learn a couple, what we might call ’em, some licks, some little phrases. That’s cool. It’s all good, I say. Let everybody come in there and experience it.

Greg: Yeah. Awesome. So I think that’s a really interesting slant there, Sheryl, because what you’re sort of saying there is, obviously we are talking improvisation, but the term might be a bit misleading. It’s more like, the speaking language musically, you know? And that’s a different slant on it, isn’t it? Rather than, I’ve gotta think … Come up with stuff that’s never been done before. It’s more you’re expressing your ideas through the language and that takes training, study. And as you say, maybe if you’re starting out, a few stock phrases just so you can get by.

Sheryl: Yes. I think so. And developing your voice through it also. I mean, that’s a whole sort of process, but you know, everybody plays … If you go to hear John Scofield every night of the week, you’re going to hear his tendencies. Everybody has their tendencies, but you know in a way, what’s cool about jazz is we have that liberty to develop our own unique voice. But he’s not coming out of nowhere also. Know what I mean?

He transcribed tons of horn players and piano. His voice is part of the tradition now, and it comes from the tradition. So I think that’s the thing … there’s some point, I think every player really gets into one player and imitates them and really uptakes it in that way.

And then there’s some points, sort of like training wheels where they… Bill Frizzell … I think it was a legend that he learned everything Jim Hall. Even played the same guitar. And there was one point he just … He took his book and burned it basically. And Bill Frizzell does not sound like Jim Hall, but Jim Hall’s influences all over him.

He became his own voice, you know? So I think that’s also the beautiful thing about falling in the tradition. At some point you have that liberty to create your own sound.

Greg: Moving on. So, maybe just a couple more questions if you have some time. So, I guess we might be going over things you’ve already covered, but even at a pro level, what are the … or regardless of level, maybe we’ll just think about what you’ve seen over your career, especially teaching. What are the biggest mistakes and myths when it comes to learning jazz guitar or guitar in general. Where do you find people, even at a pro level, wasting their time a lot on things that don’t really matter, for example. Have you sort of come across anything like that?

Sheryl: Wow, that… Whew. I don’t know. You know what? Maybe comparing yourself to others. You know what I mean? Like that could just eat you up. You have so many great players out there when you go out, I think that could really throw you. That could throw yourself under the bus. I guess that’s the one I could think of.

Greg: Wow. Yeah. We’re our own worst enemy sometimes, isn’t it?

Sheryl: Absolutely. Well, I felt my journey moving to New York was that. Like, you’re so excited. There’s so much music here and so many musicians. And you go out every night and you hear Mike Stern, then you hear Steve Cardenas and you hear Peter Bernstein.

Then you’re like, oh my God. And then you pick up your instrument and you’re like ‘but I can’t play like any of them.’ And that again, it’s sort of the thing. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And then you have to search under those. Well, what do I do? Who am I? So I guess that’s maybe what I’m thinking about.

You go out there and you’re like, see all these great players. There’s so many players. So finding hopefully that instead of it eating you up, it’ll bring you to that place of fine, well, who am I? What do I do? For me, the way I found myself was through writing and playing with my own band. Because you know, you wanna play. I would try to play repertoire, Wes Montgomery, and then you’d be like oh god, I don’t sound like Wes. You never will. There was only one, you know? And Wes wasn’t trying to sound like anybody else. He was just doing his thing. So I guess finding that place where you … But for me it was through writing and just kind of building my voice around that.

Greg: Amazing, fantastic advice. All right. I guess following on from that, … as a teacher now, we’re instructing a lot of enthusiastic players all around the world. So for us teachers, how do you think we can help our students become the best musicians and jazz players that they can be? What advice would you give to teachers?

Sheryl: Yeah. You know, the more that I’m around the planet and teaching, learning how to practice is the most important skill. Because again, that’s universal. So I’m talking about fundamentals, posture, relaxation, breathing technique, like the physicality of playing the instrument and developing that.

And also how do you use your time when you practice. If you can get that worked out you’ll be able to make progress. But I think there’s so much stuff out there. So many students are overwhelmed by too much stuff. So I think it’s being able to sit with a student and help them craft their pathway of what goals are important to what they are doing right now. Because of course, you know it’s gonna change.

What you practice, Greg, and what Vin, what you practice and what I practice are all different. ’cause we have different weaknesses, we have different goals, we have different things going on. So our students do too. So I think it’s a matter of being able to connect with them. Zero in on that and helping them.

It’s kind of like teach a man how to fish. But if you could teach them these things… But definitely the fundamentals of the physicality of practice and then the practicality of planning practice time for the best results.

Greg: Yeah. I’ve got a mentor of mine that often talks about signal versus noise. You know, there’s so much noise out there, but where’s the signal? Where’s the essential bits? Because especially nowadays, there’s a plethora of all sorts of courses and videos and blog posts. You can go anywhere you like and find a different opinion, a different approach, and they’re probably all great. But what’s the real key parts?

So I think having a really clear guide, someone like yourself, Sheryl, that can really guide students through the noise and find the signal. Really important I think.

Sheryl: Well I would say that … yeah, there’s a thing like a collector mentality and people are collecting, but they can’t actually sit down and play through a whole tune.

So with all of ’em, I’m like, it’s not what you’re doing, it’s how you’re doing it. They kind of have … They don’t have their left hand or whatever. It’s not speaking, the notes aren’t speaking. They’re posture, they’re not breathing. I’m like, hey let’s work on playing this really well.

And building a foundation, like in terms of even that stuff. Going back to your rhythm guitar and just accomplishing that and build from that. And don’t worry about collecting all the things, you know, just work on… Or even if it’s like working on your technique, like playing a scale with nice legato and connected in your times. Good. That’s an accomplishment. You’ve accomplished something.

Greg: There’s an old proverb from India I think. Imagine you had a concrete block, right? And then you get a big bucket of water and you just pour the whole bucket of water on top of the block and the water just splashes off everywhere.

But let’s say you just have a little drip just kind of going one at a time onto the block. Over time eventually it’ll actually make a hole through the rock, but splashing a whole bunch of water on top won’t do much, you know?

Sheryl: That’s great. Oh, I love that. I’m stealing that. Yeah,

Greg: yeah, no worries. So Sheryl, before we wrap up is there anything you’d like to share with our audience in terms of recordings or any programs or anything like that that you’d like to talk about?

Sheryl: Sure. Well I’ll tell you one thing. This (holds up vinyl album) just came out. It’s actual vinyl and it’s my band, my quartet with Harvey S,Neil Smith and Mickey Hayama. So it’s available on vinyl and digital download via me. So, I’m kind of trying to take back the ownership of my art, right? So you can get it on my webpage. But you can get it for free on YouTube.

And so check it out because it’s a series of each cut. And then it kind of … The next video is a story about it, kind of a lesson or maybe story about how did we record this, how did we think of it. So that’s on my YouTube. So you can hear the whole thing and learn about the thing, on my YouTube page, which is just Sheryl Bailey. I do have many courses available through TrueFire and my own artist channel there.

It’s a subscriber based thing and you can study with me, private lessons. It’s kind of the only way that I’m teaching these days. So, Truefire. I’ve worked with them many years. I have only glowing things to say about them as a business and an educational platform. And also I have stuff with Mike’s Master classes and Jazz Guitar Society. There’s a ‘Giant Steps’ course that I think is pretty cool. And if you’re in Boston, stop by 921 Boylston Street, fourth floor. Say hi to us at the guitar department. Or anywhere that I might be playing. So those are the main things that are going. Also, I have a record … I started working with the great Jerry Bergonzi, tenor player in Boston.

So that was sort of a cool thing about starting to be in Boston. So I have a record with him. His record is coming out in October, which was really a joy to record with him. We kind of have a new project coming out. I don’t know when it’s gonna come out. It’s called Taurus Power, that features Jerry.

But anyway, Jerry’s record will be out in October.

Greg: Let’s listen to a recording off one of Sheryl’s albums now. This one’s called ‘Walkup’ and it’s from the album Homage, from Sheryl Bailey with her band, SBQ. So let’s roll the track and I’m really excited to listen.

(Audio track plays)

Greg: So that was ‘Walkup’ by Cheryl Bailey and the band SBQ.

What a fantastic chance that we’ve had today to talk with one of the great luminaries of jazz guitar and jazz guitar education. Sheryl Bailey, it’s been fantastic having you join us today on today’s show. So Sheryl, any final advice or … How would you like to close off today’s session?

Sheryl: Yes… if you’re a student of the music, which we all are, and I still am … Those that ask the most questions, get the most answers.

Greg: Fantastic. All right. I’m gonna definitely be sitting on a mountaintop today, meditating on that one for sure. So anyway, thank you very much Sheryl, and thank you for joining me today Vin. This is Greg from the Fret Dojo podcast and we’ll look forward to seeing you in another episode soon.