Paying Dividends

My younger guitar students are always surprised to learn that I take lessons from a teacher, too. Surprise, surprise, I don't know everything about guitar. I may be further down the path than my own students, but and I am a student, too.

My own teacher, Dave Frackenpohl, is taking time off during the summer, so I've had a couple months without a lesson. I'm continuing to practice the lesson material he last assigned, though, because these lessons with Dave are paying dividends.

Jazz guitar is such a different animal than classical trombone. When I was a classical trombonist, it was fairly simple to measure my progress. I couldn't play a certain etude at first, and then I could. Or I could play with fewer cracked notes or expand my high range. My progress as a jazz player is harder to gage, because the nature of the music is more ephemeral. With classical trombone, I would practice the same solo over and over until I got it right. Because jazz is improvisatory, you never play the same solo twice.

I can't use a specific solo or exercise as a measure of progress, but I can get a sense of my progress by my comfort level when improvising.

We work on a variety of things in my lessons that have helped me to develop as a jazz musician, but I think the most important is transcription. I transcribe solos of great jazz musicians and learn to play them. This helps me understand how these world class musicians crafted their solos. It also gives me an opportunity to steal licks from the greats. There might be a couple measures of a solo that I especially like. I'll take that lick, learn to play it in all keys, and find ways to use it in my own solos. It's very similar to learning a new vocabulary word. You learn its meaning and how to spell it. Then you learn to use it in a sentence. At first, you may feel awkward using the new word, but the more you use it, the more natural it feels, until it is a regular part of your vocabulary. Then you learn a new word.

I've noticed that my solos are becoming more coherent over the past few months. Sometimes it feels like I actually have something to say instead of just babbling. I still play my share of crappy solos. It's all made up, after all, and sometimes you paint yourself into a corner. Still, I'm feeling a greater confidence in my soloing these days, and I owe a lot of that to Dave.

Know the Melody

When learning to improve, one piece of advice you'll come across again and again is to learn the melody. Last year, I watched Frank Vignola and Vinnie Raniolo perform. It was a terrific show. About halfway through the first set, I realized that most of the improvised sections were just variations of the melody. It was an important lesson to learn. It's one thing to understand academically that you should know the melody. It's another thing to watch a master guitarist use the melody for his own improvisation. Frank really drove the lesson home when he spoke up in the middle of one of his solos and said, "You can't go wrong with the melody!" Lesson learned.

When you learn to play the melodies of the jazz standards, you are learning the language of the music. Eventually, you may find that you are naturally inserting bits and pieces of various melodies into your improvisations. The "Cry Me a River lick" is simply the opening two measures of that song. It works beautifully over any minor chord or its relative major. I can't seem to get through a gig without quoting the first measure of So Nice.

Ray Sasaki was the trumpet teacher at my alma mater, the University of Illinois. Now he teaches at University of Texas at Austin. Ray is equally great at jazz and classical music. One piece of advice he offered for learning to improvise over a particular song was to play the melody 100 times in a row. I think anyone else would be exaggerating, but I have no doubt that Ray practiced what he preached.

Aside from using the melody as a springboard for improvisation, it can help you keep your place. I play in a quartet that reads out of a The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook and some Wikifonia charts. The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook has almost (but not quite) all the right chords, but there are enough substitute chords (or sometimes plain wrong chords) that make you do a double-take. And to be quite frank, the Wikifonia chord changes are just crap. In our last gig, we were playing a Wikifonia chart of It Had to Be You, and the chords don't make much sense. Distracted by these bizarre chords, I found myself a little lost toward the end of my solo. Fortunately, I've played and sung this song often enough that part of my brain seemed to be singing along. That's the only way I can describe it. The part of my brain that was lost started listening to the part of my brain that was singing the melody, and I got back on track and finished strong.

If you are learning a song with the intention of improvising over the chord changes, try learning the melody first. Play it again and again. Sing it in the car. If you get to the point where it drives you crazy because your brain keeps playing the song in the middle of the night, then you're doing it right.
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If you live in Atlanta and are interested in private or group guitar lessons, please check my website at www.godfreyguitar.com for more information or email me directly.

Bit by Bit

As a jazz guitarist, I've made a lot of progress in a short time, but sometimes I receive a clear reminder that I have a long way to go. This is not a bad thing. It's simply part of the process.

I've been working on some new licks. At last night's gig, I planned to use as many of them as I could, but once the gig got underway, I had so many new licks to think about that I hardly used them at all. I found myself noodling a lot, looking for places to play the new material. My solos weren't horrid, but they weren't very inspired, either.

I approached this morning's gig differently. Instead of trying to use all my new licks, I decided to just focus on two of them – one for a major key, and one for a minor key. I didn't put pressure on myself to use them all the time. Instead, I played them whenever it seemed right. It worked like a charm. Overall, I was satisfied with my solos.

So, lesson learned. I'll continue to learn new licks in my private practice sessions, but when it's time for a gig, I'll plan on incorporating just one or two of them into my solos. Quality over quantity. Eventually, the new material will become a natural part of my playing, and then I'll add some more, bit by bit.

Musical Workout

Tonight's gig at the French Market sure was a workout. Normally this group's lineup is sax, guitar, bass, and drums, but our sax player had car problems. The sax normally carries the melody while I accompany, and I generally play an improv solo somewhere in the middle of each song. Tonight, it was the "Tom show"…all Tom, all the time! It required quite bit of energy and concentration to be "on" all night, but it was a good experience.

Essentially, I took this opportunity to spend 3.5 hours putting my guitar lessons to use. We haven't talked about specific licks in our lessons, but I've gleaned a few licks through transcribing solos. Rather than try to remember every lick that I've worked on, I picked out a couple and played them wherever I could. Eventually, I'll be able to incorporate those licks without having to think about them, but for now, I'm consciously looking for opportunities to fit them in.

We've also talked about different ways to approach solos. In particular, if I'm not feeling too inspired, I'll play around with the melody. Another good way to generate ideas is to outline the chord changes.

My teacher gave me an exercise to solidify my time. (I'll talk about this simple exercise in the near future.) This exercise paid off tonight. My time was more solid, and I played in the groove more easily.

When you're sight reading for 3.5 hours, you're bound to hit some snags. There were a couple moments I'd rather take back, but I was pleased overall with how things went tonight.

I didn't incorporate a ton of new licks and tricks into tonight's gig. Instead, I concentrated on a few things and drove them into the ground! For me, this seems to be the best way to add new concepts into my playing. If I try to incorporate everything I'm working on, I'll get flustered. If I just focus on a few ideas, they seem to stick more easily. If I can incorporate just one or two licks each gig, they'll accumulate over time and become a natural part of my playing.