This Is The Way
John Scofield once said in a seminar at the Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles;
Stop running scales running arpeggios up and down mindlessly.
Start right from the beginning playing music; playing songs, playing improvisation.
John Scofield
GT(H)M Live Lecture
To know more about the GT(H)M Live, click the button below
Learn and Play Songs
Then Improvise!!
As many jazz legends recommend to students to learn repertoire, while I still follow that instruction after Richie Hart guides me, I share how to understand and build a repertoire with my fans, followers, supporters, or students through live streaming every Sunday at 10 pm from August 2020 on Youtube.com/@guit-harmony.
I choose diverse styles of jazz tunes every month and teach the tunes via live streaming. This is the recording of the lecture for those who missed it or someone to learn those tunes deeply. Once subscribed, you can download PDFs with my handwriting used in the lecture.
The current repertoire in the lecture is Donna Lee, Misty, and Autumn Leaves: Christmas Carol, which is scheduled to open in January 2024.
In the Donna Lee, stepwise instruction of how to play melody correctly: fingering and phrase. Including the transcription of Pat Martino and Bobby Broom.
In the Misty, run through the twelve steps of How To Learn Tunes in depth—also, teaching Wes Montgomery’s version of the tune.
In the Autumn Leaves also covers the twelve steps of How To Learn Tunes, the transcription of Dan Wilson and Cecil Alexander, and the NOT PUBLISHED version of Wes Montgomery.
Peter Bernstein
Peter Bernstein, interviewed with ‘Jazz People,’ a Korean monthly jazz magazine, said,
Everything you learn to play jazz guitar must connect with ears.
Of course, you need to learn the mechnism of guitar fretboard, but it must connect to ears.
Boot Camp: Shell Voicing + Drop 2
Learn how the Guitar works
But it should connect to the ears
This is the best way to practice harmony on the guitar fretboard and also the best way to understand how jazz harmony works on the guitar. Also, along the way, it practices the most used chord progression in modern harmony: the circle of fifth.
The shell voicing is the base. Once you omit the root, it will be a guide-tone, the 3rd and the 7th of the chords. Then, it is ready to put the upper structure chords: the drop two voicings. The drop two voicing is added to either the 9th tension or the root, whichever is appropriate.
Then, it adds the secondary dominants between the circle of the fifth chord progression. They can use altered tensions to make more chromaticism by applying them to the secondary dominants.
These voicings are used by legendary jazz guitarists such as Wes Montgomery, Geroge Benson, and Kenny Burrel, to name a few.
To know more about the Boot Camp: Shell Voicing + Drop 2, click the button below
This Is The Way
The following video explains how you can learn guitar fretboard in the way of Scofield and Bernstein emphasis.
Boot Camp: Major Scale
Learn the fretboard
As other instruments
For example,
The same octave structure repeated
As Piano or saxophone
As Scofield said, “Learn the scales ASAP,” this is the fastest way to complete the scale so that you can concentrate on learning, playing, and improvising songs. Also, this is the only way on the guitar to learn scales using your ears, as Bernstein suggested, not the eyes, as any other method gives you only the diagram using scale blocks on paper, which never gives you a way of playing or improvising tunes.
To know more about the Boot Camp: Major Scale, click the button below