Insights, tips, and techniques to elevate your jazz guitar playing.
How does a jazz guitarist turn the written head of a standard into a solo that still sounds like the tune? Tom Lippincott's MMC class breaks down the toolkit — phrasing, repetition, paraphrase — for connecting melody to improvised line.
Every working jazz guitarist hits the same wall: you've played the standard five thousand times and your clichés precede you. John Stowell's MMC class on modulation as an arranging technique is one of the cleanest ways back in.
"How Deep Is the Ocean?" is one of those tunes where the chord changes can sound rich under the melody but turn slippery the moment you try to solo. Guide tone lines are the technique most instructors reach for when teaching it.
The harmonic vocabulary Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy developed at the turn of the 20th century has been quietly informing jazz guitarists for almost as long as jazz has existed. Mike Godette's MMC class translates their piano voicings to the fretboard.
Jimmy Wyble's lasting contribution to jazz guitar isn't the Bob Wills swing or the Hollywood studio work — it's the two-line contrapuntal style captured in his etudes, and the lineage of MMC instructors who carry it forward.
I still remember some of my earliest experiences playing in a band. So much of it was learning on the …
Az SamadJazz Club, NYC before a packed...
Randy Johnston