I have always loved jazz music. It started when I decided at around age 12 to join band in middle school.My first album (yes, vinyl) purchase was Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” in 1977 while my friends were buying rock and punk albums. I have always been drawn to the genre.
When I picked up the guitar around 14 it was to play rock music (Led Zeppelin is to blame) and that, along with blues music, set the stage for my guitar playing life. Sure, I played some country, southern rock and 50’s rock n’ roll, but jazz was always elusive to me. It was this mystical style that you either understood how to play or didn’t. I could listen to jazz all day long (still can) I just couldn’t play it.
I knew how to read music from playing trumpet and being in band every year until I graduated high school. I was actually first chair trumpet my senior year. But, in retrospect, looking back I was great at reading sheet music and NOT great at improvisation on the trumpet. When I started playing guitar I was self taught. No lessons, no tabs or internet, no sheet music, just me and a record player listening and figuring out chord structures. I never sat down and learned the notes on the guitar – well, I did but not to the extent of memorizing them. I knew positions, understood the concept of the I IV V structure (typical of blues and rock) but never the theory behind the chords or lead passages I was playing (augments, flatted 5ths, modes, actual scales, etc). After 30 years I understood what shape and where I could play notes to compliment a chord progression in rock, blues and country. Jazz still eluded me.
The past 5 years I’ve have been digging into my playing. I started to work on my slide guitar playing, forcing me to understand the relationship with the actual notes and to some degree positions on the neck to play that was slightly different than fingering the notes. I have always kept trying at jazz, and made a little ground starting to understand chord structure, but still not enough to be very effective at playing jazz in a group.
This past year, however, has found me REALLY digging into the jazz realm. I have been religiously watching and reading tutorials, articles and forum discussions related to things like memorizing the notes at any spot on the fretboard, learning how to properly practice scales and understand their relationship with chords and chord progressions, trying to learn and understand theory and all the things I skipped when learning to be a rock guitarist.
One of the big factors has been my involvement with a group of musicians, in particular a local sax player, who is really taking me out of my complacency and challenging me to be a better player. Playing mostly instrumental music, some jazz standards, some more jazzy/bluesy material, in a spontaneous improvisation environment, i’m starting to expand as a guitarist… no… as a musician. It’s refreshing, liberating, and actually a lot of fun. It’s nice to no longer just enjoying listening to jazz music, but to get to enjoy playing it.
I still have a ways to go – music is a never ending study and practice – but after over 40 years playing music I am starting to put a lot of missing pieces together and have grown probably more in the last 10 years than the previous 35. I have started to get a better grip on my tone, a better understanding of the actual equipment I use, a better understanding of music theory and how it works for me, not against me, and a rekindling of excitement playing live.
I’m excited. I know it is cliche when you hear how music is not a hobby for some but an actual part of their being and soul, but that is true. It might just be a hobby for some, but I feel in my inner being that it part of my essence. I could go without a lot of things but a day or more without any type of music is difficult for me. Jazz music, and my ability to now not just wish that I could play it, is another actualized part of my musical being.