Guitar Lessons for Jazz & Blues – Danville – San Ramon
Tony, a jazz, blues and rock advanced guitarist, recently contacted me for private guitar lessons. We meet at his home studio in San Ramon. Tony spotted my car at a Starbucks in l Danville, California. He decided on a one hour guitar lesson every week.
Tony has not studied guitar in last 10 years but wants to get back into jamming with his friends who are professional musicians. They jam at local open mic clubs in the Bay Area and Tony needs to learn more rhythm guitar chord patterns as well as exotic scales and modes for soloing. Tony has been into commercial construction all his life but also loves music as a stress releaser and even has his daughter who is 14 is jamming on guitar. Tony has studied guitar with the late great jazz guitarist Warren Nunes and has played guitar with local cover bands.
I took lessons from Warren Nunes back in 1985 – 1987. Warren was from Hayward and had his own scale systems and approached guitar differently in his mind than everyone else in his day… he was a straight traditional jazz guitarists. All the jazz greats know his name.
I’m honored to have Tony as an advanced guitar student who needs theory review and that is why I’m showing him solo guitar 12-bar blues a la great jazz guitarist Joe Pass. One time I was playing with Frank Sinatra at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and met Joe Pass as he was playing a gig in another part of the hotel
You have to really know all your basic 7th chords as well as 9ths and 13ths along with altered chords which means 7th,9th,11th or 13th chords with sharping or flatting either the 5th degree or 9th degree of chord.
12-Bar-Walking-Bass and check out the mp3 at the bottom of this post.
Most guitarists lack knowledge with chords fingerings (also known as voicing’s) which is a term that is used by professional jazz keyboardists. Joe Pass, a great jazz guitarist incorporated keeping pick in picking hand as well as using remaining right hand fingers to pinch so you simulate a jazz big band sound. It creates a fat sound especially if you are playing solo guitar. Notice on beats one and three you form chord and picking hand executes by first picking single bass note on downbeat and then on the upbeat pinches remaining strings. I recommend first learning in measures of 2 at a time. Also you will note that you always have pick in picking hand so if you wish, u can do melodic single note guitar runs.
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