[merlin666]

This is a great thread, thanks. I am in a similar situation as the OP and though I have always enjoyed listening to various forms of jazz I found it daunting to learn. Most recent example, I wanted to learn the song San Antonio Rose which got me into Western Swing and I found a Eldon Shamblin transcript for that song which is just too much of a challenge. Some of the barriers that I encounter:

1) My head is musically conditioned for triads, but reading about jazz it seems that the comping and chordal methods adds one more note so just for the theory this expands the universe enormously coming from the triad tradition. I think it would help if I had a keyboard as it's easier for me to translate a score to a keyboard than a fretboard. But just the theory of chords is a huge step up. And my memory isn't that great unfortunately.

2) I also can't figure on how to play just 4 notes on different strings, as I find left hand muting very challenging. So I tend to pluck the strings fingerstyle without a pick, but that's not the right way to do it I guess.

3) Even I took on the task of learning chords, then there is the next challenge of a large number of possible chord progressions. And having fakebooks with 1000 or more titles is not exactly helping this either.

So can you tell I feel overwhelmed by the prospect of jazz. I may give it some more tries nevertheless. And I play an Ovation Adamas which although not Archtop might be suited for the task I hope.