2014 Goals

In my last blog article, I outlined my goals for the next 10 years. In support of those long range goals, here are my goals for 2014. I have some other, smaller goals, but these are the main ones.

Weigh 195 pounds. I feel like my weight is finally (finally!) under control. I've been maintaining about the same weight since September. This year, I plan to make a final push and get it down to a healthy 195 pounds. My strength is improving, my resting heart rate is nice and low (in the 50s), and I feel good in general. While I am feeling quite healthy, I would like to actually look like I work out. I've been going to the gym regularly to add strength training to my cardio work. I'll continue to do that, and I'll tighten up my diet a bit.

Establish the NWUUC band and children's choir as regularly anticipated parts of Sunday services. This is in support of my goal of eventually building the job from a 15 hour per week position to a 20 hour per week position. The adult choir is a well established, cherished part of the music program. My hours increased this past year from 10 to 15 hours. I'm spending most of the additional hours on building the children's program and the church band. Those two new programs are keeping me busy, but once they are well established, I'll be ready to add more to NWUUC's music by either adding another program or by expanding the band and the children's choir.

Maintain a roster of at least 20 guitar or ukulele students. My long range goal is to have 30 students, but if I added so many students all at once, I wouldn't be able to handle the schedule and still juggle my other responsibilities. I have 13 students now, so I need to add 7 more to meet my goal. I generally add only one student each month, but I have a pretty good retention rate. I'll just keep building my roster slowly.

Add another event planner to my list of regular clients. I finally managed to get my foot in the door with a good event planner. I'm hoping that having one major event planner as a client will make me more attractive to others.

Become more comfortable with unaccompanied guitar improvisation. One of my long range goals is to improvise comfortably in the style of Joe Pass. I've been improving in this area, but I have a long way to go. I've been approaching this skill haphazardly, improvising unaccompanied on random songs. This year, I'm going to focus on a handful of songs and get really comfortable with them. Through my lessons with Dave Frackenpohl, I've learned that I can make good progress on improvisation in general if I focus intensely on one or two songs at a time.

The Next 10 Years

I started playing guitar 10 years ago. To make a long story short, I was a professional trombonist until an overuse injury ended my brass playing career. After a hiatus from any kind of performing, my wife (now my ex) gave me a guitar for Christmas, and I was immediately hooked. Even as I was struggling with my first chords, I was planning a new career as a guitarist. I originally intended to play folk and Celtic music, but I drifted toward jazz, which is my main focus.

When I decided I was going to become a professional guitarist, I drew up a list of goals for the first 10 years. My overall goal was to become an "entry level" professional. To me, this meant attaining a skill level that was high enough that I could do a good job at gigs. It also meant that, while I wouldn't necessarily be the first call player in Atlanta, I would develop enough connections to keep me gigging on a fairly regular basis.

I'm rarely satisfied with my playing, but I would like to pause for a moment and be grateful that I met my 10 year goal. I'm not a world beater on guitar, but I'm pretty good. I sight-read extremely well. I gig steadily.

Okay, the moment is over, and it's time to look at the next 10 years. This is my overall goal: To become a well established freelance musician making a comfortable living as a performer, teacher, and church musician.

That's a pretty broad goal. Maybe it's more of a mission statement, but it can be broken down into several goals. To be a well established performer implies an increasingly higher level of musicianship, so the most important goals to me are in the area of musical development.

These are my goals for 2024:

• Play an average of 2-3 good paying gigs per week.
• Maintain a roster of 30 students.
• Increase the NWUUC Music Director job to 20 hours per week.
• Memorize 100+ jazz standards.
• Comfortably improvise guitar solos in the style of Joe Pass.
• Become a good scat singer.
• Become a competent piano player.
• Become a competent ukulele player.
• Be financially stable enough to take 1-2 yearly vacations.
• Live in a rented house, big enough for a studio space, in a quiet, safe neighborhood.
• Comfortably maintain a healthy weight of 190-200 pounds.

Having all these goals without devising a way to meet them is no good. I've broken each of these goals down into separate steps, but I won't include them here, otherwise, this would be a really, really long article. I'll break down a few choice goals into steps in future articles.

Getting this far was a blast. It was 10 years well spent. Time to get busy and make the next 10 years even better.

Lesson #15

This is my usual recap following a jazz guitar lesson with Dave Frackenpohl of GSU.

We started off sight-reading from some books that Hal Leonard had sent to Dave. I was interested in perusing the Hal Leonard Jazz Guitar method, which looks like a very useful book for a couple students of mine.

After that little warm-up, we dove right into Blues for Alice. I played the melody in two different registers, played the piano solo I had transcribed, and then improvised. No problems here. Then we moved on to the Joe Pass solo from his recording of 'Tis Autumn with Ella Fitzgerald. I got through it okay, which is the best result I could have expected. My assignment was to finish the transcription and then start learning it. At this point, I have the solo memorized. It's just a matter of woodshedding until it's under my fingers. We followed this with an arpeggio exercise over a harmonic minor scale. No problems. Then we worked on There Will Never Be Another You, starting with an arpeggio exercise that I had created for over the chord changes and then improvising. Again, this went well, and we ended the lesson with a page from the Blues in All Keys study from Galbraith's Guitar Comping book.

The new assignment.

• Learn Four. I played this tune a long time ago, but it's time to get it going again. It's one of those bebop standards that you just have to know…plus it's fun. I'll be refreshing myself on the melody and changes this week. I predict that, at the next lesson, Dave will tell me transcribe a solo from a recording of Four. Dave is beginning to consistently assign bebop tunes. These are great for my technique.
• More Joe Pass! I had started to transcribe Joe's ending in his recording with Ella. Part of my Joe Pass assignment is to finish that. Then I'm supposed to pick out a medium tempo Joe and Ella song, begin a new solo transcription, and pick out devices that Joe uses when he's comping for Ella. I've selected You Took Advantage of Me for this part of the assignment.
• Arpeggio Exercise over Melodic Minor. I've worked up arpeggio exercises for major and harmonic minor, in which I outline 7th chords, ascending on the 1 chord, descending on 2, etc. This is the same exercise using the melodic minor scale. (For non-jazz players…In jazz theory, the melodic minor has the same raised 6th and 7th both ascending and descending. In classical theory, the melodic minor reverts to natural minor descending.)
• Old Devil Moon. When asked which jazz standard I'd like to work on next, I asked for Old Devil Moon. I like this song, but it's awkward, and I'd like to play it better.
• Galbraith's Guitar Comping. I'll be working on the next page of the Blues in All Keys study. I just finished the page that covers G-flat and B, which aren't exactly the most common blues keys! Next up are the keys of E and A – much more guitar friendly.

As usual, Dave has given me a challenging assignment. I discovered a while ago that jazz guitar lessons are quite different from the classical trombone lessons of my younger days. In classical trombone lessons, there were few long term projects except for solo and recital material. I was assigned a set of etudes, I learned them, and then I was assigned yet another set of etudes. The "long term" assignment was really to apply the fundamentals of good tone and articulation to each new set of exercises.

With my jazz guitar studies, the individual assignments are often long term. I'll work on the same song or transcription for 2, 3, or even 4 lessons in a row. With lessons spaced every other week, that means that I will sometimes be working on the same song for two months. Learning to play jazz and improvise is such an internal process that it often takes a long time for new concepts to settle in and become a natural part of your playing. Often, learning to play a particular song or transcription is almost a byproduct. The real payoff is internalizing new ideas that you can apply to everything else you play.

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.

Lesson #9

I'm continuing to summarize my lessons with Dave Frackenpohl at GSU to absorb the new lesson assignment and help others who may be on the same path.

After a short warm-up, Dave had me play Wes Montgomery's solo from his recording of Gone with the Wind. In our last lesson, I had to play it very slowly to get through it. Dave asked me to keep working on it and build up speed. I managed to increase the tempo from quarter = 80 to quarter = 110. I didn't play it well at this lesson. I probably counted it off too fast. Dave suggested some fingerings to help get through the more challenging licks.

Next, I requested that we work on It's Only a Paper Moon, specifically for unaccompanied improvisation. We worked through it, not just for soloing, but for comping styles. There's more on this below, where I write out my new assignment.

Then we turned to The Brazilian Guitar Book, where I'm working through the "Samba" chapter. We didn't do much with this. I'm learning the patterns pretty well, and he assigned a few more pages.

Toward the end of the lesson, I played Joe Pass' solo in the Ella/Joe Pass recording of I'm Beginning to See the Light. I had to play it very slowly, and so my next assignment is to work it up to speed.

The new assignment:

• Whole Tone Licks: Dave assigned three different whole tone scale fingers a few weeks ago, which I've been practicing daily. Now he's given me a sheet of whole tone licks to incorporate into my improvisation. Learning a scale is like learning the letters of the alphabet. Learning a lick is like forming those letters into a word. Incorporating that lick into your playing is like learning to use that word in a sentence. It takes time, but that lick eventually becomes part of your vocabulary. I'll focus two or three of these licks at a time.
• It's Only a Paper Moon: Part of this assignment is to find a solo that I like and to transcribe it. For unaccompanied soloing, Dave has given me a few options to try. There's his 2/2 plan, where you comp for two measures and then solo for two measures (or vice versa). Comping works particularly well in this song, because there are usually two chords in every measure. With so much harmonic activity, you can just comp and it still sounds like you're doing something. For soloing, he suggested arpeggiating chords. For comping behind a singer, he showed me a couple common Joe Pass arpeggio patterns, and then there's the classic Freddie Green comping that always works so well. Sometimes all you need to do is play quarter notes to lay down a nice groove for the singer.
• The Brazilian Guitar Book: I'm continuing to work through the "Samba" chapter. The last two assignments have been page after page of short samba patterns. Dave has given me a choice between a long comping etude or a chord/melody solo. I'll check them both out today to see which one seems more manageable.
• I'm Beginning to See the Light: I'll continue working on the Joe Pass solo, gradually bringing it up to speed.

As usual, I'm excited to be working on unaccompanied soloing. I'm also enjoying The Brazilian Guitar Book. I've worked through a lot of fun patterns. Now I need to start applying them to my own repertoire. To do this, I'll pull out some Latin songs in my book and sketch out some rhythmic patterns. Eventually, I'll be able to play these Latin grooves at will, but for now I need to write them out so that I can remember them.

Challenging Assignment

I'm taking another lesson in a few days. Wow, has this assignment been challenging! There are some motor skill assignments that aren't too bad, including more samba patterns and a Wes Montgomery solo. I've already worked out the solo, so now it's just a matter of playing with a metronome and drilling to build up speed.

I transcribed a Joe Pass solo for the next lesson. (I'm Beginning to See the Light from his Sophisticated Lady album with Ella Fitzgerald.) The transcription was difficult, but now it's just a matter of woodshedding to get the solo under my fingers.

The biggest challenge in my current assignment is more conceptual than physical. As I've mentioned in earlier blog posts, I'm working on being able to consistently solo well without any accompaniment. My dream is to be able to ditch the looper and fly completely solo.

The first step in this path is to simply comp for two bars and then improvise for two bars over a set of changes (and also reverse that – improvise first and then comp). This can scramble your brain. Most of us are used to just comping or just soloing, not mixing the two. Soloing this way from memory is a surefire way to make sure you know the chord changes! This has been a challenge for me, but I'm getting used to it.

The biggest challenge is the other concept my teacher assigned, which is to play melody for two bars and then improvise for two bars (and vice versa). It's pretty easy to do this when you're looking at the music, but this is all from memory. If you think you've memorized a melody thoroughly, just give this a try! It's one thing to play the melody of a jazz standard straight through. It's a greater challenge to improvise and then jump back to the melody the middle of a phrase! Maybe in a few months this will be old hat, but by then, my teacher will have thrown me another curve ball. (How's that for mixing metaphors?)

I've certainly hooked up with the right teacher in Dave Frackenpohl. Each lesson takes me closer to being the guitarist I know I can be.

Lesson #8

Continuing my practice of writing about each lesson with Dave Frackenpohl at GSU to help wrap my head around each new assignment and help other jazz guitarists who may be on the same path.

These past couple weeks have not been ideal for practicing my lesson material. I took a last minute gig a couple weeks ago, I've been doing the usual busywork that accompanies the end of a church year, and I've been preparing for a wedding gig by assembling a book for the bass player, writing up set lists, and a host of other niggling details that go into putting together a successful gig.

In spite of all that, I managed to make some progress on my lesson material. I didn't have time for every part of the assignments, but I worked up more than I thought I could.

We began with the three whole tone scale forms that Dave assigned and then went into the assignment from the new Brazilian Guitar Book. Then we played through I'm Beginning to See the Light. After that, we worked on Gone with the Wind, focusing especially on a Wes Montgomery solo that I just finished transcribing. That pretty much exhausted the material that I had prepared, but we still had plenty to work on.

We spent time talking about improvising without any back-up. It looks like we're going to be spending some lesson time on this for the foreseeable future, and I couldn't be happier! Dave gave me a sheet of ideas and strategies for pure solo improvising called Unaccompanied Jazz Guitar – Making It Manageable. This one page sheet is an absolute gold mine of ideas! We're going to focus on just one or two ideas at a time, which is good, because I think my brain would overload if I tried everything at once.

Here's my new assignment:

• Continue the "Samba" section of The Brazilian Guitar Book, pages 30-36. These are all four-measure examples of samba groove variations.
• Finish the transcription of a Joe Pass solo over I'm Beginning to See the Light. I had started this for this week's lesson but hadn't had time to finish it.
• Increase the tempo of the Wes Montgomery Gone with the Wind solo that I transcribed. I was happy just to memorize it for today. Now I just need to get it closer to tempo.
• Memorize Summertime and Corcovado. I already have Summertime memorized. I kinda sorta know Corcovado by memory just because I've performed it a number of times. We are using these two practice unaccompanied improvising. I'll be using two strategies for this. One is what Dave called the "2+2" plan: 2 bars of comping/2 bars of soloing and vice versa. The other is also a "2+2" plan: 2 bars of comping or solo/2 bars of melody or vice versa. I thought I knew the melody of Fly Me to the Moon pretty well until Dave had me try this approach! It was awfully tricky to jump from comping or soloing and pick up the melody in the middle. Back to the woodshed!

Unaccompanied soloing is one of the major skills I want to possess, so I'm super excited about this new direction!

Lesson #7

Continuing the practice of writing about my jazz guitar lessons with Dave Frackenpohl at GSU to get a handle on my latest assignment and hopefully pass on some wisdom to other developing jazz guitarists.

We started off running through three different chromatic scale fingerings that Dave assigned last time. I played them easily enough, but Dave noticed that my left hand was tense. From now on, I'll be focusing more on relaxing my left hand.

Next, we looked at I'm Beginning to See the Light. This wasn't part of my assignment, but I wrote to Dave yesterday, asking that we begin working on this song. It's a well known standard, and I should be able to improvise on it more easily than I do. We worked through it, and by the time we were finished, I was feeling more more comfortable with the tune.

Then we played through Girl from Ipanema. Dave specifically suggested that I experiment with some Mixolydian #11 licks to fit over the dominant chords in the bridge. This went pretty well. I had stolen a lick from the classic Stan Getz solo, and Dave showed me a few more. With a little more practiced, I'll be well armed the next time I play this tune.

Finally, we played through Gone with the Wind. This tune offers plenty of chances to play ii-V licks, which I've been working on quite a bit. Part of my assignment was to transcribe the first chorus of Wes Montgomery's solo over these chord changes. This was a difficult assignment. I've completed most of the transcription, and I've learned the first half of the solo. This solo is loaded with tasty licks, and I'll steal as many as I can! One thing that strikes me about Wes Montgomery's solo playing is how bluesy everything sounds. Gone with the Wind isn't even close to being a blues tune, yet Wes manages to infuse his solos with blues sounds. It works so well! I'll be studying Wes for a long time to come.

Here's the new assignment:

• The "Samba Intro" from The Brazilian Guitar Book by Nelson Faria. We're going to be alternating between this book and Galbraith's Guitar Comping. I'm really looking forward to expanding my range of Brazilian guitar styles.
• Whole Tone Scales. Yes, another scale to learn. This is jazz, after all! Dave showed me three fingerings for a whole tone scale. I had already figured out two of them on my own, so it's just a matter of learning the third form. Again, we're also using scales to focus on relaxing my left hand.
• I'm Beginning to See the Light. In addition to learning the song in greater depth, I'll be transcribing a Joe Pass solo from an Ella Fitzgerald/Joe Pass duo. I'm very much looking forward to this part of the assignment. When I perform in a voice/guitar duo setting, I will often loop the chords and then solo over the looper. Sometimes I will get brave, skip the looper, and "solo out of thin air," as Dave puts it. It's much more difficult, but I think the solos "out of thin air" sound better than the solos with the looper. Someday, I would like to leave the looper at home and solo out of thin air all the time, a la Joe Pass.
• Gone with the Wind. I'll finish transcribing and learning the Wes Montgomery solo.

Toward the end of the lesson, I commented on an observation that I blogged about a few days ago. Through much of our lessons, we hardly ever take music out and read it. There's a big emphasis on memorizing and listening. As we worked through I'm Beginning to See the Light, I improvised better than I ever have, mainly due to the fact that I wasn't reading music. I was listening very intently. When I'm reading chord changes and improvising, I tend to get too focused on the written chords, worrying about how I'm going to navigate from one chord to the next. When I take my attention away from the page, I play more musically. I still need to know the chord changes, but taking away the written music helps me calm my analytical voice and play more intuitively. I'm assigning myself is to memorize the repertoire for Tea for Two and Godfrey and Guy. This is going to be a major undertaking, but it's going to make me a better musician in so many ways. I'll have a host of standards in my head, I'll play more musically, and I'll be really good at memorizing!

Lesson #6

Continuing the practice of summarizing each lesson with Dave Frackenpohl and outlining each new assignment…

We usually start off playing whatever new scale has been assigned. This time, we skipped over the new scale (mixolydian bebop). I'll continue to practice this scale, along with the others Dave has assigned. We started off this lesson playing Jobim's Wave. I showed Dave an intro that he hadn't seen before. He's going to steal that from me. Dave showed me a way to play the bridge that I hadn't thought of. I'm going to steal that from him.

Then we moved on to The Girl from Ipanema. We first played it in the standard key of F, taking turns playing the melody, improvising, and comping for each other. Part of my assignment was to transcribe a solo from a recording of this tune. I had transcribed the classic Stan Getz solo, which was in the key of D-flat, which meant that I had to learn this tune in both F and D-flat. That was a good exercise!

We then went on to finish up the F Blues exercise in Barry Galbraith's Guitar Comping book. That was a long project. It took me six weeks to work my way through it, but the rewards were great. Thanks to this particular exercise, I have a lot of new chord voicings under my fingers.

Here's the new assignment:

• Three different chromatic scale fingerings. I'm already familiar with one of them. The others aren't too tricky. These are great warm-up and technique exercises.
• The Girl from Ipanema: We will continue to work through this song, focusing heavily on the bridge so that I can try out yet another new scale.
• Mixolydian #11 scale: This is the new scale to try out in Girl from Ipanema's bridge. Dave gave me a sheet of different ways to use the melodic minor scale. One way to think of the myxolydian #11 is a melodic minor scale starting on the 4th scale degree. The easier way to think of it is as a myxolydian scale with a raised 4.
• Gone with the Wind: I'll be doing quite a bit with this song! I'll be learning the Gone with the Wind comping exercise in the Galbraith Jazz Comping book. I'm also supposed to learn the melody, memorize the chords, and be able to improvise over the changes. Finally, Dave wants me to transcribe a Wes Montgomery solo from his recording of the song. Whew!

Since we were working on some Latin songs, Dave recommended The Brazilian Guitar Book by Nelson Faria. This book outlines authentic guitar comps for several Latin styles. I just ordered it and can't wait to work through it and put it to use in my gigs!

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.

Putting It to Use

This week, I'll take my second lesson with Dave Frackenpohl, who teaches jazz guitar at Georgia State University. I've discovered that I've already been able to apply some of my first lesson assignment into real world use. This was a surprise to me. In the past, it seems like I've had to work on something for at least two months before it began to surface in my playing, particularly my improvisation.

It helps that I'm playing with a quartet that plays low pressure restaurant gigs on a regular basis. I'm just a sideman in this group, which is a welcome relief. I don't have to worry about talking to the audience, negotiating with the restaurant owner, or keeping my musicians happy. All I have to do is set up my gear and play whatever song the leader calls out.

This quartet is a golden opportunity. We play a LOT of music. I basically spend 3.5 hours focusing on the music, looking for opportunities to try out new musical ideas or chord voicings.

Here is my first lesson assignment, and how I was able to apply most of it in live music settings.

TAKE THE "A" TRAIN:

• Memorize the melody and the chord changes.
• For improvisation practice, go through the chord changes, playing the root, 3rd, and 5th (1-3-5) of each chord in real time. Then reverse it, playing 5-3-1. Then add sevenths, playing 1-3-5-7, then 7-5-3-1. Then play the first five notes of each scale that belongs with each chord (1-2-3-4-5).
• Improvise around the melody.
• This certainly helped whenever the band leader called out "A Train." Beyond that, it was a good reminder that I don't always have to try to come up with a profound lick when soloing. The old time jazzers improvised almost solely around the melody, and there's nothing wrong with outlining chords in your solos. I found that outlining chords serves as a springboard for other good ideas.

MEMORIZE THE DORIAN AND MIXOLYDIAN SCALES

• This hasn't been of any practical use on my gigs yet, but it will. I've tended to "cheat" when playing mixolydian and dorian scales, just going back to the root of the major scale that they're based in. For example, if I'm playing G mixolydian, I'll just think "C scale, starting on G" rather than "major scale with a flat seven." What I've been doing this time is thinking within the two modes as I play the scale, essentially trying to "forget" the major scales in which they're based so that I can get a better feel for the modes.

BARRY GALBRAITH'S "GUITAR COMPING" (FIRST ETUDE, "SHINY STOCKINGS")

• This book offers a wealth of guitar comping ideas. This first etude has a lot of chord voicings that I haven't used before. There's no way I could put all of these voicings to practical use after a few days of practice, but two of the chord voicings stuck with me, so I used them on my gigs wherever I could. Actually, I'm sure I overused them! No matter where I was on the neck, I jumped for those two voicings almost every time and beat them to death! The customers didn't seem to mind. This weekend, I essentially spend 3.5 hours every night practicing those voicings in real time, and I got paid for it!

PLAY "ALL OF ME" IN DIFFERENT KEYS, AND TRANSCRIBE A SOLO FROM A RECORDING OF THIS SONG

• Before this lesson, I've always just transposed by interval. For example, if it's in F, and I need to transpose to A, I've just thought of moving everything up a major third. Now, I'm thinking in terms of function. For example, when I play the chords to "All of Me," I don't just thing "C, E7, A7, Dm7." I think "I, III7, VI7, IIm7," etc. Thinking in terms of function instead of the chord names will help me transpose more easily. I surprised myself by putting this concept into actual use after just a week of practicing it. Last week, I was playing through a new song with my friend Lori, trying to find the key that was right for her. The lead sheet was in F, but we needed to change it to A-flat. I stared at the lead sheet, played in A-flat, and spoke the function of each chord out loud…"One, six, two," etc. To my surprise, it worked! Now, I can't speak out loud like that at a gig! But it won't be long before I've internalized the process.
• I chose to transcribe a Django Reinhardt solo. It's hard to go wrong with Django. I found a solo that seemed approachable and proceeded to transcribe it. This is great ear training, and as you play the solo (very slowly), you are literally training your fingers to move in the same path as one of the masters of the instrument. Part of this solo even stuck with me on a gig. The leader called "All of Me," and as I came to the first E7 chord, I remembered the diminished lick that Django used…so at least one small part of my solo was really good! As I memorize this solo and pick it apart, other licks will stick, too.

To those of you who have been playing jazz for a while, this probably seems like a very basic assignment. This is exactly what I need, though. Except for a couple years at the beginning, I'm basically a self taught guitarist. There are so many approaches to jazz guitar – many of them conflicting – that it has been a challenge to find my way. These lessons are giving me some much needed focus. I finally feel like I'm on the right path.

Improv at Act3

A couple weeks ago, I led a music service centered around musical improvisation. This evening, I had to put my money where my mouth was when I played for an improv show at Act3 Productions.

Tonight's show was similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway. The "band" was Steve Weikle on sax and yours truly on guitar. We played a few numbers before and after the show, and we played for a couple of the musical games. One was pretty simple for us. The game was called "Half Life." The actors improvised a one-minute scene while we played background music. Then they were supposed to act out the same scene in 30 seconds, then 15, and eventually 5 seconds while we played faster and faster.

The other game, Greatest Hits, had me sweating a little bit. If you haven't seen this game, the audience comes up with someone that people usually don't write songs about. Tonight, it was the dentist. Then two actors pretend they're doing a "greatest hits" commercial for a compilation album (Songs of the Dentist). They name a musical style, and we come up with an accompaniment while two other actors make up a song.

I admit that I almost chickened out of the gig because of this game. I've seen Whose Line Is It Anyway, and those backing musicians can play anything. They're amazing! When I learned about this game, my first reaction was to think that I was a one trick pony…I can play jazz pretty well, but not much else. Steve reassured me, telling me that we could make up a list of styles to choose from so that the actors didn't stump us with something completely out of the ballpark. I started making a list of styles I could fake my way through, including blues, bossa nova, polka, folk ballad, Cajun, funk, reggae, and a few others I don't remember now. This helped me realize that I'm not the one trick pony that I thought I was. I've learned other styles mainly through playing with InTown Band and by performing musicals at Act3 Productions.

The game was a lot of fun. In fact, the entire evening was a blast. Those young performers are really talented! Steve and I received lots of positive comments, and Jesse, who led the show, told us his big idea, which is to bring in a few more musicians and improvise an entire musical! After tonight's experience, I'm up for anything!