i love the sound of jazz but have no idea where to start learning it

[mongey]

Im a self taught jazz dabb'ler. Get a real/fake book and learn some standards. you'll learn all the extended chords, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13 .

the practice soloing over them focusing on the extended chord tones

goes a long way to getting your head around a vocabulary

 

[bostjan]

Seconded. If you have a fair foundation of music theory, a fake book is a great investment. If you can read a chord chart and jam out a melody, you can pretty much start gigging as a side man.

 

[mikelikesmetal]

thanks for all the advice, everybody. i’m really glad i joined this community, everybody seems so willing to help each other out. it sucks living where i live because i don’t know anybody who plays music that i can talk about this kind of shit with. you guys are awesome!

 

[ElRay]

i’ve seen a lot of his videos. he’s a very knowledgeable guy, and a great player, but his stuff goes over my head most of the time lol

I've made a play list called "Watch Again Later". There's so much stuff it's like a jigsaw puzzle: "I don't know what to do with this little weird piece with a bit of blue on it" and then after you put a few things together, you see where it fits.

One of Jens' videos is First 50 Jazz Standards You Need to Know watch that, so you get an idea of what you like and then start listening, listening, listening and then listening some more. That part is very much like the Suzuki Method. There are other folks with similarly named lists, but they can be VERY different. Kinda like two Classic Rock lists -- One with zero Led Zeppelin and the other with zero AC/DC.

I tried a while back to build a "Jazzuki" repertoire list: a list of progressively more difficult pieces, that sound good, and form a good foundation. The feedback was basically: Just find what you like, learn to play it, and then make it your own. Rote memorizing and replicating a jazz piece is automatically not jazz. The tradition of improvisation cannot be understated.

I watched this video: An Amazing Exercise For Jazz Chords (And Your Playing In General) earlier today. It really made a lot of pieces click. It's a technically "simple" drill, but it really gets into the essence of what jazz is. You can take the melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and build the chords around that.

Another good "starter": Comping A Jazz Standard - This Is How To Get Started

 

[creepymcpeepers]

september leaves

trying to get a bass tone

soundcloud.app.goo.gl

Here is a preview of what you could learn from the walking bass course in Scott’s bass lessons it’s a version of autumn leaves in c major I put the bass line on this sound cloud track here

 

[creepymcpeepers]

september leaves

trying to get a bass tone

soundcloud.app.goo.gl

Here is a preview of what you could learn from the walking bass course in Scott’s bass lessons it’s a version of autumn leaves in c major I put the bass line on this sound cloud track here

Or September leaves or whatever

 

[creepymcpeepers]

Or September leaves or whatever

Also learn the minor 7 flat five

 

[Muzz]

Get iReal Pro for Mac/iPhone/iPad/Android; no windows version unfortunately. It's like playing with a band, you can pick whatever standards, change to whatever key, tempo etc

 

[thorgan]

Lessons with a qualified teacher are by far the best way to understand jazz, if you have a university or college with a performance program near you usually the faculty will be willing to do private lessons even if you aren't enrolled, barring that you can likely find a qualified teacher locally or online. As you can see from the variety of answers here there are tons of actual components, but while looking on the internet and watching videos can give you control of these components, understanding how they work together, and having someone introduce them to you sequentially in a learnable order is something that a teacher is almost necessary for.

Jazz is a huge language that has significantly more concepts at play than rock/pop/metal. Like all music theory, the things in that language are never random: chords are connected to progressions are connected to keys are connected to scales are connected to modes are connected to arpeggios are connected to lines are connected back to chords and etc. Knowing those connections is knowing the style. I see it often in students, often very good guitarists of other genres, wanting to learn jazz that they know some of these physical components; but the gaps, and often what leaves them feeling like they aren't speaking the language or able to apply it, are in the connections between elements, because in the genres they're comfortable in don't put these types of connections to use as much, and often knowing the components is enough to know the style.

I don't mean to try and discourage you though, it's very possible to learn, and very worthwhile as well in my opinion, just that having a guide through applying those components and being introduced to them in an order that let's you build from the bottom up will expedite your process greatly.

 

[mikelikesmetal]

Lessons with a qualified teacher are by far the best way to understand jazz, if you have a university or college with a performance program near you usually the faculty will be willing to do private lessons even if you aren't enrolled, barring that you can likely find a qualified teacher locally or online. As you can see from the variety of answers here there are tons of actual components, but while looking on the internet and watching videos can give you control of these components, understanding how they work together, and having someone introduce them to you sequentially in a learnable order is something that a teacher is almost necessary for.

Jazz is a huge language that has significantly more concepts at play than rock/pop/metal. Like all music theory, the things in that language are never random: chords are connected to progressions are connected to keys are connected to scales are connected to modes are connected to arpeggios are connected to lines are connected back to chords and etc. Knowing those connections is knowing the style. I see it often in students, often very good guitarists of other genres, wanting to learn jazz that they know some of these physical components; but the gaps, and often what leaves them feeling like they aren't speaking the language or able to apply it, are in the connections between elements, because in the genres they're comfortable in don't put these types of connections to use as much, and often knowing the components is enough to know the style.

I don't mean to try and discourage you though, it's very possible to learn, and very worthwhile as well in my opinion, just that having a guide through applying those components and being introduced to them in an order that let's you build from the bottom up will expedite your process greatly.

it isn’t really something i can throw money at, but i will definitely consider your advice. like i mentioned earlier to another persons reply, i have a limited knowledge of music theory, but key signatures tend to elude me, mostly bc i just don’t need to use them usually. i am always in the key of my lowest open string lol.

 

[thorgan]

it isn’t really something i can throw money at, but i will definitely consider your advice. like i mentioned earlier to another persons reply, i have a limited knowledge of music theory, but key signatures tend to elude me, mostly bc i just don’t need to use them usually. i am always in the key of my lowest open string lol.

Nothing wrong with letting it rip in the key of of power chords, key signatures are pretty important to know but luckily also pretty easy to understand and an easy place to get a foothold for jazz:

Any major scale is always formed with the same formula, from the root go: up a whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, and half step. This will take you to the next octave of the root. (A whole step being two frets and a half step being one fret, not trying to patronize but don't know your background).

Applying this formula on different notes is going to give us a different collection of sharps and flats off each note; for example off C, we get no sharps and no flats, because the "natural" halfsteps of E-F and B-C happen to fall where the halfsteps are in the major scale; between the 3/4 and 7/8 degrees ("degree" is just the number or the note in the scale)

If we apply it to something like E major, we get E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, E. So the key signature of E major is 4 sharps (F, C, G, and D). Sharps will ALWAYS come in the order FCGDAEB, meaning if you have 1 sharp in the key it is always F, if you have three it will always be FCG, you cannot skip ahead in the order, it has to build from F up to whatever. Flats work the same way, but the order is the opposite: BEADGCF.

Every major scale has a relative minor, a minor scale that shares it's same key signature (and vice versa for major to minor). To find that you just need to go to the 6th degree of the major (or to find the relative major of a minor the 3rd degree of a minor), in the case of C Major: A minor, in the case of E major: C# minor. So both C# minor and E major have the same key signature: 4 sharps (FCGD).

From here we can build a chord off each degree of the scale which will give us seven chords that are of the key that will be our main palette for songs; this is called the diatonic progression. Much like how the major scale is a formula that is always the same, the diatonic progression is always the same order: Major 7, minor 7, minor 7, Major 7, Dominant 7, Minor 7, Half Diminished 7 (also called minor 7 flat 5). So if we were to apply this to E major which we've kinda been using as an example; we'd get:

E Major 7
F# minor 7
G# minor 7
A Major 7
B Dominant 7
C# minor 7
D# Half Diminished 7

Now that we have that palette of chords, these will be what mainly gets used in jazz songs, though not exclusively what gets used as there are lots of methods of incorporating non key chords to give you tense sounds. But these are the ones of the key that we will usually be returning to and be providing the foundation of the harmony. Each of these chords gets a roman numeral based on where it is in the progression, so the E major 7 is our first chord so it gets I, F# minor 7 gets ii, G# minor 7 iii, and so on. So when you see a common progression like vi-ii-V-I, in E major that would translate to C# minor 7, F# minor 7, B Dominant 7, E major 7. Note that minor chords (including the half diminished) are going to be lower case, while majors (including the dominant) will be upper case.

Sorry for the wall of text anyway, but I hope that maybe gives you a foothold on key signatures and the basis of what chords are drawn from in a key. Again you will see other chords, but these are the "structural" ones, the other chords tend to be there to get around to these ones in interesting ways.

 

[Randy]

Jazz very different from rock/metal, much more like folk music IMO.

Rock music is very rigid about writing and performing the music note-for-note.

Jazz and folk both mostly concentrating on key and general things like the chord progression and lyrics, but the melody and specific chord voicings are left to taste/context. Dunno if I'm repeating what anyone else has said but the whole thing with Fake Books is that is literally "the song is these chords in this order, now make something interesting out of it". The idea of "comping" or improvisation is connected deeply with jazz music, whereas the expectation in rock music is that it sounds the same every time you or anyone else plays it.

As far as specifics of what you need to do to shift from playing in a rock-ish sound to playing in a jazz-ish sound, some people will say more range of scales/modes and some will say more use of chromaticism. Basically both, although in essence they'll mean the same thing.

In rock/metal, you're usually very rigid to playing in the key, in the scale/mode... everything is very diatonic. You're expected to use key changes or intervals to create mood. There's some tension and resolve but it's almost always within the context of the confines of scale/mode you're in.

You'll see lots of crazy chords or names of chords when you're looking at jazz but really that's 99% a boring ass chord with some chromatic elements thrown in and the chord name is there just so you can call it, er, something. If you talk to a jazz guy who's not totally up his own ass, he'll usually describe his chords/scales in plain in English and the embellishments are small alterations (a flat 2nd here, or flat 5th there). Some guys like Holdsworth (fusion, yes but close enough) you'll see solos with no key at all assigned to them. Alex Machacheck (yeah another fusion guy) plays a shit ton of pentatonic scale yet he doesn't sound like boomer blues. It's all about context.

 

[tedtan]

Jazz soloing differs from rock/metal soloing in that the rock/metal player will look at the chords and think of what key those chords fit into and play in that key whereas the jazz player look at those same chords and will think of what scale fits over each individual chord (playing the changes). And that approach gets more and more challenging as you add more and more extensions (9ths, 11hs, 13ths, substituting a 6th for 5th, etc.).

As for introducing these ideas in the proper order, that’s not an issue. Willam Leavitt, the head of Berklee’s jazz guitar department, wrote several books on jazz guitar that have become the standard used in most university/conservatory jazz departments. The problem will be needing an instructor to help you understand the books unless you already have a serious foundation in sight reading and music theory.

 

[ElRay]

Rock music is very rigid about writing and performing the music note-for-note.

Ditto with Classical. The most exrteme I've seen is that in certain circles, It's deemed "improper" to improvise where the original composition says "improvise here". There's the expectation that you will memorize and play note-for-note one of the "great" old improvisations. There was a big brouhaha at Peabody in Baltimore in the late 80's over this. The Classical Guitar Department decided to go along with the Institute's policy on this during auditions, and provided a list of acceptable improvisations, without discussing it with the actual faculty.

I think one of the best sayings I've heard is: "If you play note-for-note the greatest Jazz Solo in the World, it's automatically not Jazz anymore."

 

[mikeSF]

Listening is often overlooked, but before you ever put the guitar in your hands, spend time researching those who play good music, and just repeat over again to get "good" sounds into your head. This will go far when you start creating your own lines. It is quite possible to develop a fundamental jazz vocabulary without the instrument.
good luck!