Tag Archives: learning

Learning Jazz Standards – What you need to Know and Be Able to Do With It

Playing Jazz Guitar should mostly be about playing songs. It is the goal and also the way we practice to get to the goal. In this video I will go over what it is to learn a jazz standard, give you some ideas on things you can work on and want to try to be able to do. The Idea is that you get the most out of the standard, and that you also train your skills as a jazz guitarist and improviser at the same time.

The video should give you some useful exercises and ways of thinking about learning melodies and chord progressions. Most Jazz Standards are great compositions and vehicles for improvisation and interpretation, and keeping that in mind helps when it comes to learning them.

Content of the video:

 0:00 Chord Melody excerpt of Days Of Wine And Roses 

0:05 Intro — Learning and studying songs 

0:46 Building a check list and suggesting some exercises 

1:21 The Melody — The Foundation of everything 

1:51Practice the melody — All positions, using your ear 

2:28 Demonstration with Days of W melody 

3:22 Using the melody to hear the changes 

3:42 Chord melody — Harmonizing the melody 

3:53 Basic Chord Melody excerpt 

4:04 Keep your harmonizations open ended for phrasing 

4:39 Low Chord Melody 

5:38 Learning and studying the chord progression 

6:02 2 Versions of Days of Wine and roses 

6:13 Bill Evans and the modulation arrangement 

6:32 Oscar Peterson Changes 

7:43 The art of harmonizing a Standard 

8:19 Improvising — some simple exercises 

8:57 Solo with just Arpeggios (in all positions) 

9:38 Demonstration of a chord tone solo on Days Of Wine And Roses 

10:28 Learning reharmonizations for solos 

11:00 Playing the reharmonizations as chords in the song to get it into your ear 

11:48 Do you have things you always check out on a Song or Jazz Standard? 

12:57 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

Vlog: Why you are not learning new skills on guitar

I did another rambling video on playing and learning guitar. The topic is something that I come across with myself but also if not daily then weekly in questions on my videos and social media. It is so often that people set a vague goal and then have trouble working their way towards it in any meaningful kind of way, and often just being aware and thinking like that can make the process much more efficient!

I go over how you need to get very specific about what you want to learn or achieve and how talk a bit about some concrete examples where this goes wrong and you end up practicing things that are not necessarily helping you that much.

This video is just mean as an opener for a discussion of this subject which I think is important so if you have something to contribute then please do so via YouTube comments, all input is greatly appreciated!