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Old 11-26-2016, 06:51 AM
MC5C MC5C is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: Tatamagouche Nova Scotia
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I took lessons, after having played for around 20 years. There are a number of key technical things that I took away that can be useful

1. Most jazz is played on single note instruments, trumpet, saxophone, etc. Just because we can play lots of notes at once doesn't mean we have to. Focus on single line playing of melodies, thoughts, and leave the chords out of it at first.

2 Time is critical. Swing is the thing. The emphasis is on 2 and 4 (in 4/4 time) and in a small group setting that is set rock solid by the drummer's hi-hat cymbal. Duplicate that sense of time by playing with a metronome set to half speed and listen for it on beats 2 and 4 of the bar. It's actually quite hard to hear it that way at first, just listen, and hum the melody, then start to play when you have it rock solid in your head.

3. Learn three and four note inversions of chords. Learn interesting jazz chords like b9, m7b5, #9. A really nice chord that is easy to play is a 9/13 chord on the upper four strings - it's a mirror image of the good old F-chord shape, and it doesn't have a root - usually the tune implies the root. F 9/13 would be first finger on 4th string Eb, second finger on 3rd string A, third finger barre's 2nd string D and 1st string G. The chord has the 7th, the 3rd, the 9 and the 13. If you want you can barre your first finger to grab the root on 6th string first fret, but the point is to think of chords as other than root three five. You can pretty much substitute that 9/13 for any dominant chord sound.

That took me 5 years to learn, fwiw. That was 20 years ago and I still don't actually know it...
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Brian Evans
Around 15 archtops, electrics, resonators, a lap steel, a uke, a mandolin, some I made, some I bought, some kinda showed up and wouldn't leave. Tatamagouche Nova Scotia.
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