In today’s topic, I want to talk about something important.

How hard is it, really, to learn jazz?

Check out the podcast below where I answer this question:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:50 — 17.2MB)

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Join FretDojo’s online jazz guitar academy here

Transcript:

Hi guys. Greg O’Rourke here from the Fret Dojo Podcast. Visit my website, www.fretdojo.com to get your guitar playing to the next level. In today’s topic, I want to talk about something important. How hard is it, really, to learn jazz? Because there’s a lot of differing opinions on this, but a lot of them seem to gravitate to the point of view that jazz guitar is incredibly hard to learn, will take a large chunk of your life, definitely you can’t focus on any other aspect of your life to get good at this.

Kind of like the Whiplash kind of approach. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie. I actually don’t really recommend that for the fainthearted, that movie, which is basically about a jazz student that goes to more extreme and extreme levels of dedication in the face of quite an intense and violent teacher that kind of puts him through hell basically to learn jazz.

Now in particular, I want to talk about an article that one of my readers sent into me with this question. How hard is it and how long does it take to learn jazz guitar? It’s on guitarprinciples.com and the web post name is How Long to Learn Your Style of Guitar. It goes through a few different styles, but then it comes to jazz guitar.

Now I won’t read this whole thing obviously on the podcast now, but I just want to pick out a few tasty morsels here. So here’s a few things that this article says. “The jazz player needs a vast and extensive range of tools, because the music they play is based on sophisticated scales, and those scales are used to generate extremely complex chord structures. There are hundreds of code forms to learn and a great number of scale forms all over the neck in every key.”

So already, you can kind of hear that there’s a lot of complexity going on with jazz guitar and most people would be put off by that first paragraph here. They talk about here, in terms of the amount of study required for a jazz guitarist. Five years of study, averaging two or more hours a day, hopefully more, are required to get up and running as a player in the jazz genre. Then it takes about 10 years of three or more hours a day to fully acquire the use of those tools and a lifetime of continuing study and refinement if you want to be among the greats. A high degree of refined technique must be developed as well.

So you have to decide, do you want to be a brain surgeon or a jazz guitarist? Probably becoming a brain surgeon will be a bit less of a commitment. Well, if that isn’t the most off-putting thing I’ve ever read about wanting to study jazz guitar. I’m going to let you into a little secret. I haven’t spent that much time studying jazz guitar and I can still gig and improvise, and I have a whole website about it.

So I think this is really, really misleading, this point of view. But it’s a pervasive point of view that you hear about when it comes to studying jazz in general, that it’s really for people that want to do nothing else in their lives and they need to spend their whole day on it, it’s the most completely overwhelming form of music to study, but this simply is not the case.

I think we need to talk about what your goals are as a jazz guitarist. Sure, do you want to be like the next West Montgomery? Then probably, yes, you do need to spend a large part of your life refining your style. But you don’t need to get to that level to still enjoy playing jazz to competently solo and play in the band and do gigs and all that sort of thing, you don’t need that much time.

I think it’s a kind of a psychological thing. If you think something takes a certain amount of time, you’ll find it will. So, the way we think about something kind of creates our reality. I think when you read something like this, you got to take it with a grain of salt and put it in context. So don’t get me wrong, jazz is a vast topic and that’s kind of what I like about it. There’s so many different players with each of their individual kind of slant and approaches on improvisation and composing.

I think that’s what makes it so wonderful to study, is this kind of vastness. There’s pretty much something for everyone, because it’s very different to other styles. Every great player really does have their unique kind of feel and approach and improvisation concepts that they tend to focus on. But I think that’s where the first thing about learning jazz is a bit misleading, is to qualify as someone that can play jazz, you need to know how to solo in the style of Pat Martino, in the style of Joe Pass, in the style of Emily Remler, in the style of Barney Kessel and 150 other great jazz guitarists before you’ve kind of got this qualification that you’re allowed to then gig or make music.

That’s really not the case. You don’t need to have such a wide expansive influences to simply make great music. Think differently, I think. That’s what Steve Jobs said, think different. What about just trying to make great music with what you have right now? Sound like you. This is the thing. A few years ago, I was teaching a lot of kind of one-on-one individual lessons online and I was meeting a lot of amateur players from all around the world and helping them with their jazz. I always got them to start on this little exercise.

I actually did a video on this on my YouTube channel a few weeks ago, and it was about basically how to solo with five notes only, okay? So it was just five notes from a blues scale, that was it. But I got them to just start improvising with those five notes with that single scale over a simple chord progression. Now what’s interesting about doing that exercise with hundreds of players is that I’ve never heard someone play that exercise the same way twice. Everyone, even at the very start of their jazz journey, has something unique that they can say with the material.

So you have to trust yourself that, as a human being, you are an artist, you have that artistic drive inside you and that you can make a powerful musical statement very quickly. You don’t have to wait till you’re qualified and you kind of learn every single theory trick in the book and every single substitution, and you have transcribed all the things that you should transcribe. That’s a load of rubbish, basically. You can start making good music right now.

If you’re keen to have a structured, step-by-step approach to learning jazz guitar, it might be worth checking out my online learning system, the FretDojo Jazz Guitar Academy.

Here’s what you get when you join up:

• Detailed step-by-step video lessons on new classic jazz tunes and essential jazz guitar skills added to the club website each month. Includes listening recommendations, demonstrations of the melody, analysis of the harmony, and detailed explanations on how to solo over the tune.

• Key improvisation concepts and techniques for soloing, and classic licks and example solos that relate to each tune, so you can continue to expand your jazz vocabulary and have more options when it comes to soloing.

• Detailed comping ideas to suit the style of each jazz standard covered

• Lessons on how to make chord melody and solo jazz guitar versions of tunes featured – play a complete jazz standard completely on your own like Joe Pass!

• Members only forum – A worldwide community of jazz guitarists from all around the globe.

• Regular workshops, masterclasses, and Q & A Sessions – get direct answers from me on anything holding you back in the practice room. Replays of all sessions are available to access for all members even if you can’t make it live.

• Massive searchable database of jazz licks and soloing concepts – the ultimate idea “grab bag” for your solos.

• Optional monthly challenges where members participate to get feedback on their playing, reach new milestones and be eligible for cool prizes.

Go here for more info: https://www.fretdojo.com/signup-offer

I also think that just having a limited set of inspiration can actually be a springboard of creativity anyway. Wes Montgomery spent a lot of time transcribing Charlie Christian. He was just obsessed with Charlie Christian. He would learn every single solo by Charlie Christian. I don’t know if he extensively did other transcriptions from other players, but once he’d kind of got that main influence, then he used that as a springboard to enhance his own playing as Wes Montgomery, okay?

So, you don’t need to study every single player out there to still have a solid understanding of jazz and a solid feel for the core approaches. So I think that’s where you have to be a bit selective. It’s kind of ironic that if you feel like you have to be a walking dictionary of jazz, you’ll find that it’s actually harder to be creative ironically, because you’re sort of locked in superficially studying too much stuff, rather than going deep and narrow on a couple of players that you really like.

I think you need to start thinking as an artist. Even from the outset as a beginner player, rather than thinking of yourself as a student that has to fill your brain up with so much knowledge, you definitely need a bit of that, but then how do I then turn that into a musical statement that’s uniquely my own? That kind of changes the whole nature of the study of jazz guitar. You can start to feel like you’re more making a creative statement, rather than just parroting something that’s been done by other people.

So when it says here five years of study, averaging around two or more hours a day are required to get up and running as a player. I know that that’s patently wrong, because I have, for example, I have a course called The Fundamentals of Jazz Guitar Improvisation in my Fret Dojo Academy membership programme. The course is structured for about a block of 10 weeks, for about 45 minutes of practise, five days a week.

By the end of that programme, and I’ve run this for a few years now, I’ve seen people do videos where they’ll be good enough to go and get a gig with the music that they’ve learned, okay? So I know that that’s not true. Once again, your mindset is everything. If you think something will take 10 years to get good, or if you think you need at least three hours a day to be able to even just play a simple song, then it will take that long. But question everything, that’s what I’ve learned. Because early on in my kind of journey with jazz, I definitely thought like that, because that’s what everyone was saying. But then when you realise that maybe that there’s another way to do it, then a whole lot of other possibilities can open up for you.

So there’s other things in here, like there are a large number of standards, songs and pieces that every jazz player knows that they can play and improvise on, all of these must be learned. Now, that’s not true. I don’t know every jazz standard, but the set lists that I do have, I know really well. If I’m collaborating on a project with someone and they want to do a few standard tunes, and some of them I would know, some of them I don’t. It doesn’t really matter.

If you know the core concepts of how to improvise over the main progressions that are featured over and over again in jazz, it means that you can solo over hundreds of tunes and do reasonably well. Once again, you don’t need to be a walking dictionary of jazz standards. I was actually talking to Howard Alden once about that and he thought it’s not like you have to learn every jazz standard. Definitely learn the main ones that you might find come up and up again depending on where you gig or where you go to a jam session or whatever, learn those ones. But then, just learn ones one at a time, or better still, compose your own standards, make your own music.

So I know I have a different point of view to some of the other guys out there, but I think definitely it’s important to learn jazz standards. In my membership, every month we’re focusing on a new jazz standard to kind of learn some of the important chord progressions and soloing approaches, and a bit of transcriptions and things like that. But it’s not like you have to learn 500 of these things to be able to do a gig. Again, it’s just simply not true.

Now here’s another point about, I’m quoting from the article here. “Although there was going to be a repetition of patterns as we go about learning all this musical material, there’s still a tremendous amount of material to study. Many great players have filled large volumes with the material they practise and have published it for other players to study. So, you can fill a room with such material and have a lifetime of study ahead of you, which is very fortunate if you love this sort of thing.”

Now again, I don’t think creative soloing necessarily comes from a large amount of material, I think creative soloing comes from actually placing limits on your material. So selecting the key approaches, the most important ones, and then going really deep on that. Not just filling your head with all this stuff that you … because when you improvise, you need to be able to spontaneously in a very natural way, kind of talk with this music, you don’t want to kind of just superficially learn a whole bunch of different stuff.

Of course, jazz is a bit of a lifetime journey, but you shouldn’t mix that together with having to feel like you need to spend a lifetime before being able to perform. So, let’s just step back a bit. You can effectively solo, learning how to solo over major 2-5-1s, minor 2-5-1s, a few secondary dominant sort of approaches, tritone substitutions, and a couple of arpeggio by substitutions or something like that.

If you can have that material, that will keep you going for a very long time, okay? That really doesn’t take that long to learn. It’s all about being selective and kind of having material that’s what I call high frequency, so stuff that’s very relevant to a lot of different songs, okay? So if you can have that kind of collection of material that’s very applicable to a wide variety of situations, then you’ll find that very quickly you can start to make sense of this kind of game of improvisation.

Now my membership programme, actually, kind of has that. I’ve documented the main approaches that are worth looking for and we work those over a variety of exercises and the most important standards. Then you can go for your life from there and apply them to a whole bunch of different tunes.

So I’m going to kind of say something a bit controversial here, I don’t think actually jazz is hard at all. Nothing in jazz is necessarily hard when it comes to learning the concepts of improvisation, it’s more a case of uncovering the most efficient and effective approaches. So it’s more a case of finding them that’s the tricky part. It’s not necessarily doing them or learning them, but it’s kind of sorting the weak from the chaff and learning the most essential aspects and approaches, and kind of techniques for learning soloing. So none of it is actually hard, it’s just something that you learn.

So having high frequency material, having a good mindset, having the understanding that if you’re consistent in your practise and leveraging that kind of inertia that happens when you start to practise, not necessarily a long time every day, but a little bit every day and being very focused on your material, you can get wonderful results.

So once I actually taught a Saxophonist over Skype. Even though I don’t play saxophone, but this person was struggling a bit to learn to improvise, and was in a situation where they had to play a lot of gigs in that style and it was stressing them out. Now I had to listen to what they had to say, and from the outset this person was saying, “I just can’t improvise, I’m a terrible improvisor,” and all that sort of thing. That was actually creating the reality of this person, okay? So, I had to really unpick that in the lesson.

After a while, she started to realise, “Hang on, maybe I can do this.” I showed her a few techniques from that Fundamentals of Jazz Improvisation course that’s on my site. But seriously, it only took about 20 minutes and she was playing a really cool natural sounding solo using some great pentatonic approaches and some blues, and she couldn’t believe her own playing. So it was mainly the mental block of thinking she couldn’t do it, and I had to just convince her that she could.

So people just need to start, okay? Make great music right now, don’t wait to feel like you have to have some qualification from someone else to get better at this stuff. I wouldn’t pay much attention to the sentiments in this article. I’m sorry I’ve kind of dished this person a bit in his podcast, but it really highlighted that kind of attitude that creates so much mental blocks in people’s abilities to just get started, and to start to make great music and start to enjoy this wonderful music that’s jazz with other people.

All right, guys. Well, let me know what you thought about this topic today and I’d love to get a bit of feedback. Either people that agree with me or even people that don’t agree with me, I’m interested to hear your thoughts and read them on my site. Please post a comment if you get to my site there. Yeah, I look forward to catching up with you in the next episode.

We’ve got some pretty cool stuff coming up in the Fret Dojo. I’ve got a great live session with Carl Orr that’s going to be on in a few weeks time in the membership, and he’s going to be talking about comping in a duo setting and some cool techniques for that. So that’s something that we haven’t focused a lot on yet in the Fret Dojo, so make sure you look out for that. Make sure you sign them up to my email list, I have lots of stuff coming out all the time, videos, new podcasts, and new courses as well.

So, okay guys, well, my name’s Greg O’Rourke. Great to chat with you today and I look forward to catching up with you in the next episode of Fret Dojo. Bye for now.

One of the biggest questions my readers write in about is:

“Should I be using modes when improvising on jazz guitar?”

The answer is:

It depends.

But, most likely there is a more effective approach for jazz guitar improvisation, using arpeggios and chord tones as a basis.

Check out the podcast below which will show the reasons why:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:17 — 14.0MB)

Get Notified Of Future Episodes Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More

Join FretDojo’s online jazz guitar academy here

Transcript:

Greg O’Rourke: In today’s episode, I’d like to talk about a topic that I get bombarded with in my email inbox all the time on a weekly basis. It’s all about modes.

What is the value of modes in jazz and in soloing? Now the modal concept is something that is actually very ancient. You might’ve heard of the terms like Dorian mode and Phrygian mode. What this is basically is a scale that starts on a different note to what it usually does.

So let’s say we have C major. Okay, but let’s say instead of starting on the note we usually do, let’s start at simply on the next note up. So we’ll start it on the D and then finish on the D. So that actually has all the same notes in it as C major. It’s just that I’ve used a different starting tone which emphasises that new tone as kind of the centre of that scale. 

Now here’s the thing. Modes are useful to understand because they are often referenced in jazz theory books and when you’re playing over something like So What or Impressions or Maiden Voyage and things like that, these are tunes that are actually based around that harmonic idea; the idea of composing the tune with a mode in mind. So in those circumstances a mode is quite useful to solo because you can kind of gravitate around that mode in your soloing. Often those kinds of chord progressions are quite static so you can just play around with a mode.

If you take swing tunes like All the Things You Are or Along Came Betty or Satin Doll, anything like that which involves a lot of key changes moving quickly, a lot of chords moving quickly. The modal approach, in my opinion anyway, it starts to fall down. The reason for that is because just let’s say the classic kind of example you hear when you’re listening to a lesson on modal soloing is that let’s say we take the two quarter note in a two, five, one progression.

If you’re keen to have a structured, step-by-step approach to learning jazz guitar, it might be worth checking out my online learning system, the FretDojo Jazz Guitar Academy.

Here’s what you get when you join up:

• Detailed step-by-step video lessons on new classic jazz tunes and essential jazz guitar skills added to the club website each month. Includes listening recommendations, demonstrations of the melody, analysis of the harmony, and detailed explanations on how to solo over the tune.

• Key improvisation concepts and techniques for soloing, and classic licks and example solos that relate to each tune, so you can continue to expand your jazz vocabulary and have more options when it comes to soloing.

• Detailed comping ideas to suit the style of each jazz standard covered

• Lessons on how to make chord melody and solo jazz guitar versions of tunes featured – play a complete jazz standard completely on your own like Joe Pass!

• Members only forum – A worldwide community of jazz guitarists from all around the globe.

• Regular workshops, masterclasses, and Q & A Sessions – get direct answers from me on anything holding you back in the practice room. Replays of all sessions are available to access for all members even if you can’t make it live.

• Massive searchable database of jazz licks and soloing concepts – the ultimate idea “grab bag” for your solos.

• Optional monthly challenges where members participate to get feedback on their playing, reach new milestones and be eligible for cool prizes.

Go here for more info: https://www.fretdojo.com/signup-offer

So here’s my key. There’s chord one there and chord two and chord five and chord one. So here’s chord two, right. You’ll often hear that referenced to as use a Dorian scale over chord two. Okay. Then for chord five, use a Mixolydian scale over that. Then finally finish with just a major scale or Ionian mode, which is the same as major for the one chord. Now, the problem with that is in a chart which is a swing tune with a two five one, it kind of goes like this.

Okay, so the chords moves so fast in a two, five, one in jazz. Then how are you supposed to be able to target all those notes in each mode over every single chord? It’s actually impossible and I don’t really know of anyone that would think like that. The only way you could really think like that was if you kind of imagine in your mind that all those chords are the two chord and then you just play the D Dorian mode for that whole progression. I’ll try this on my loop and I’ll just get that fired up here. So here’s my chord progression. Two five one on my looper.

So it sort of sounds possible, but can you see how that doesn’t really sound like jazz when I’m doing that? Sure. It’s not like it’s incorrect, but it just doesn’t sound that good. Why does it not sound that good? Well what’s happening here is I’m sort of generalising everything, treating it kind of like it’s just all the notes out of C major and I’m kind of just using Dorian so I don’t start on the note of C all the time when I’m playing, but the problem with this is it causes two issues. The first one is that I tend to just play everything in a very ‘scalic’ way because I’m thinking in a mode, you know what I mean? We’ll talk about an alternative option to that in a minute. The other problem is that it’s not specifically targeting the relevant chord tones for each chord.

I’m just kind of noodling around on that scale with my ear and it doesn’t sound, on the two chord it sort of sounds pretty good. On the other chords it really just doesn’t sound that strong. I’m not clearly targeting strong chord tones. So with those two issues combined makes it in my opinion, an inferior method for soloing over typical older style jazz progressions, like two five ones, one six two five, three six two five, and so on.

So what’s an alternative to soloing that doesn’t involve modes? To be honest when I’m playing jazz, especially on the kind of music that I prefer, which is the music anywhere from the 40s to the 60s, I don’t tend to use modes that much. I more think in terms of chord tone soloing.

So chord tone soloing is where you can identify the relevant notes of each chord and hit them at the right point when the chord progression is played. So that means using arpeggios is pretty much what I’m doing here. So targeting my tones, using arpeggio shapes that I know. I’ve learned them, I can hear them in my ears, and then I can kind of target those tones as I apply through a progression like this. So I’ll give you a sound of what that sounds like. Let’s apply my chord progression again. I’ll stick in the same sort of register. Here’s my two five one progression. Here we go.

Okay, so you get the idea of where I’m going with this. So you could hear how I was much more closely adhering to the sounds of the chords when I was using chord tones and it makes sense. I’m deliberately targeting those notes through applying the relevant arpeggio shape each time. Although arpeggios in a way they take a little bit longer to learn because there’s more shapes to learn for the arpeggios, even just sticking to these kind of one octave arpeggio shapes like this, you can get a lot of ammunition with that and it gives you the ability to switch from each shape to another just like you’re changing chords with when you’re playing rhythm guitar.

So I find that this is a much, much more effective way to solo is targeting these chord tones when you play and arpeggios is the means to do this. Now there’s some cool things you can do with arpeggios. Let’s take this D minor arpeggio. You don’t really need to know a lot about jazz theory to create some really hip sounds here. What I could do is just kind of play up two notes into the chord tone. So listen to this.

So I was just ending up on each of the arpeggio tones, but starting it from two notes from below. I could also start from two notes above. See how jazzy that’s sounds. I could take a chord tone. Let’s say this A that I’m playing here. The fifth of the D minor seven and I could just play one fret above, one fret below, and finish on the chord tone. So if I do that in a line, see how that sounds really jazzy.

So I don’t need to be so theoretical about my soloing now because I can see that pattern on the fretboard. Then I can just lead my fingers to each of the chord tones in the arpeggio. It’s a lot of fun and it’s kind of relaxing to solo like this because I don’t need to really remember what mode is it I’m on at the moment or anything like that. I simply see that arpeggio shape and then can instantly kind of doodle around on that and firstly create strong strong chord tone basis for my soloing. Then use some nice chromatic tones to lead to each of those and sort of thread a really jazzy line. So chord tones very, very important. I think unfortunately often overlooked when it comes to how the jazz education has been codified., A lot of the books that you read, especially for jazz guitar actually seems to focus too much on this modal aspect in an inappropriate context because they’re using this this style of jazz playing that was more popular in the 70s and beyond.

It doesn’t really apply to music that’s older than that because the composers were using a different framework for their harmony. So this could be the missing link. If you’ve been wondering why you’re just not sounding that great using modes and scales and things like that when you’re playing, it’s probably because you simply haven’t been targeting chord tones. Now I suggest that you look on some resources on that topic. There’s some resources and courses on my website about this, about chord tone soloing. There’s some great books available, but I suggest that you just experiment with these little shapes.

See if you can figure, obviously this is an audio podcast so you can’t see my guitar, but see if you can find out how to play the notes of a Dm7 chord for which would be D, F, A, and C. Work out a shape of just a one octave shape on the fretboard and then mess around with that shape just over a static backing track. Here’s a little example. To make this really easy I’ll just clear my looper pedal here and I’ll just lay down like a little basic. Just D minor seven by itself.

Okay, here we go. So there’s my looper and I’m just going to play firstly the arpeggio. Maybe play it backwards. Now let’s do some interesting rhythms. Mix up the notes. See that’s quite strong. See how that’s got a nice kind of bounce to it now because I’m not playing like this. It doesn’t sound like jazz there but this does more. Now let’s put some chromatic tones in there and see how now I can start to put the scale notes around that, but I’m focusing mainly on the arpeggio tones. It sounds much more jazzy like that.

Try sliding into the tones. Try to punch some of them out more than the others. Lead with chromatics and you can have a lot of fun just over that one chord. Could you hear how you can keep things interesting over a static chord even just with a basic one octave arpeggio. So that’s really the power of arpeggios chord tone soloing. It’s kind of the basis of my methodology when I’m teaching students is going from the chord tones and arpeggios first. The other stuff can come later depending on what style that you want to eventually get into as a player. Definitely knowing where your arpeggios are very, very important to get straight into the harmony and hear the harmony in your lines. So I really hope you enjoyed today’s podcast.

It was a very important topic to cover as a jazz musician. Yeah, give this a try in your practise this week. I want you to get one arpeggio out, put it on a backing track or a looper pedal the corresponding harmony for that, and then mess around with it and see what kind of jazzy sounds you can make. You can have a lot of fun with this and it’s very, very good ear training, fretboard training. It’s a wonderful exercise.

Okay, well until further ado, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of fretdojo. Peace and I’ll talk to you soon.