Beginning Jazz Guitar (Book & DVD)

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Type: Book
Studio: Alfred Publishing Company
Release Date: 2006-05-15
Anyone with a knowledge of basic chords and guitar scale fingerings can dig right in and start learning to play jazz right away. Spanning from the major scale and basic triad theory all the way up to extended chords and the modes, this book features a full-length etude or song to go with every new concept introduced. Beginning Jazz Guitar breaks the age-old tradition of dry, intimidating and confusing jazz books, and provides an actual step-by-step and enjoyable method for learning to play in this style. Clearly organized into easily mastered segments, each chapter is divided into separate lessons on harmony or improvisation. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the CD demonstrates the examples in the book. 96 pages.

Good Book to Learn More Sophisticated Guitar
First off, when this book says "beginning," it does NOT mean it is targeted to a complete beginner to guitar. It means it is written for a guitarist who knows the basics of rock guitar and would like to learn more about the more sophisticated and traditional jazz style.

The book assumes that you already know a couple scales (pentatonics, etc.) and most standard rock chords, and I greatly appreciated that it assumed I knew these, because I was afraid the book would be too "dumb" in the beginning.

This book is fantastic... it shows you what to play with clear diagrams and explanations and all the etudes and songs are written in TAB and traditional so it exposes you to playing guitar using traditional notation, which is an important skill.

I highly recommend this book. If you are a fairly good intermediate-level rock guitarist who knows all the basic open and barre chords, this book will pick up right where you want it to and help you add some sophistication to your playing... all you have to do is practice what it teaches you!

First book in an excellent jazz series
I got Beginning Jazz Guitar to go with the others in the series which I already have: Intermediate, Mastering Chord/Melody, and Mastering Improvisation. Beginning Jazz Guitar and Intermediate Jazz Guitar both have A (chords and Harmony) and B (Improvisation) sections. The two more advanced books cover these two topics in greater depth. The A + B approach is effective and also allows learners to choose what they want to concentrate on.

The A Section in Beginning Jazz Guitar starts from a very basic situation and covers basic chords and string sets, triads, extended and altered chords.

The B Section deals largely with major scale fingerings and briefly with modes from the major scale.

There are also some excellent notes on technique, practice, and soloing.

There are various etudes and tunes to play which match the teaching points.

The accompanying CD has 38 tracks to listen to and play along with.

This is in my opinion the best series available for anyone wanting to play jazz guitar and understand easily what it's all about. Beginning Jazz Guitar is probably the best book of its type by a master jazz guitarist.

Beginners BEWARE
The word "beginning" has no place in the title of this book. The editorial introduction..."Anyone with a knowledge of basic chords and guitar scale fingerings can dig right in and start learning to play jazz right away" is completely misleading. Those who are looking for an introductory book should pay attention to the reviewers who say that this book is for those with years of experience and an understanding of music theory. Even with that experience you are going to have to unlearn a good deal of what you have learned elsewhere, like standard scale patterns. Expect to spend a lot of time trying to understand and carry out instructions like, "...over the next three lessons, build major, minor, diminished and augmented triads in all keys, all inversions, on all string sets, and become familiar with their shapes on the fingerboard", on page 20.

I am truly puzzled by the high ratings that reviewers are giving this book. If this is one of the best introductions to jazz guitar then I would say there is a fortune waiting to be made for someone willing to put together an understandable text for beginners.

New Language?
Being introduced to jazz and note theories and inversions and triads and etc. is kind of like learning another language. I'm studying Biblical Greek and Hebrew and there is a lot of foreground work that needs to be covered and known before you can really have fun with the translation and interpretive process. I think this approach to jazz is much the same. Sometimes the lessons aren't fun, scales are only as boring as your lack of creativity, and you need to understand the structures before you can handle, with a confident degree, the translation and interpretation of the music. This is a good beginning primer to get you to think in jazz terms and concepts. I found that for a time I wasn't willing to do the work that is suggested in this book for whatever reason, but am now seeing the payoff. This method is informative, useful, and will bring you up to speed technically provided you do the work.

Complete and accessible
DVD/book combo make this introduction to jazz guitar very complete and accessible for even the most novice player. Doesn't get much better than this.