Talk:Guitar/Jazz

I've placed the material on Fake Books here. They were originally very difficult to buy (under the counter sales mainly) because they were unauthorized transcriptions of the head with basic chord symbols. They were published books and their quality and usefulness varied but obviously never received an ISBN number or official release.

You can read about them in the online book "A Jazz Improvisation Primer" by Marc Sabatella. Here's the linkː

http://www.outsideshore.com/music/educational-materials/primer/annotated-bibliography/

It is worth browsing through the whole book which presumes no expert knowledge and is well-written and very informative.

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Fake Books are collections of jazz standards (tunes that are in most musicians' repertoires) by the likes of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, etc. You should start by getting a Fake Book and recordings of the tunes. Listen to the songs and get a general feel for the jazz style.

Note that a fakebook is a good aid for learning tunes, but professional jazz musicians are expected to develop a large repertoire of memorized tunes. It is also helpful to learn tunes in every key, though the fakebook will usually present them in the most common key. This approach has two benefits: one, it forces you to consider the relationships between the chords rather than simply memorizing the chord names to play; and two, many singers perform tunes in keys other than the "book key."

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--Sluffs (discuss • contribs) 14:24, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

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Just placing some material that I wrote here for future use.

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So what are the causes for the development of harmony? The answer is that when three or four human voices form a choir each voice sings its own melodic line and it is this coincidental meeting of voices that led to the development of harmony. The human voice when combined with other voices is the origin of harmony. Every instrument except percussion, whether a monophonic trumpet or polyphonic keyboard, originates from the use of the voice.

The explanation above should hearten those who consider Jazz guitar difficult. More often than not a Jazz guitarist will not be asked to play dissonant chord after dissonant chord. A study of guitar parts as they appear on actual Jazz recordings, especially of the forties and fifties, shows that most of the time the guitarist is playing diatonic chords with seventh extensions using inversions to create interesting linking bass runs. The Jazz Basics section at the start of this chapter contains a set of chords that will suffice for many Jazz standards especially when combined with standard bar chords and open shapes. Before we finish this digression a caveat regarding Jazz sheet music must be stated. Glancing at the sheet music of some Jazz standards you may see a profusion of chords including diminished, augmented, altered bass, and flattened ninth chords. Bearing in mind the points made earlier what would be the effect of every instrument playing these dissonant notes together? The reason the pianist who transcribed the music has given these chords is not for the purpose of unison dissonance. A pianist transcribing the parts played by an ensemble is outlining the basic rhythmic, melodic and harmonic components of the song. It is up to you to play along to the original recording to discover what the guitarist is playing. As stated earlier many guitar parts from the forties and fifties are surprisingly simple chord progressions while the soloist explores the melodic potential of dissonance.

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Sluffs (discuss • contribs) 23:09, 9 July 2016 (UTC)