How to Play Jazz Guitar

So you want to be a jazz guitarist? Going from 0 to 60 is tough. Even for an established rock guitarist, turning to jazz means learning new skills and pushing your music theory to the limit. But it doesn't have to be overwhelmingly hard. Some short, easy steps can get you sounding like a jazz guitarist within a few weeks.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A decent guitar with an amplifier or ability to be amplified

1. Get a smooth sound. If you're like most jazz bands, you'll be providing smooth, cool music, sometimes as background or a stage act but always sophisticated. A guitar with gain or distortion can ruin your act. In jazz guitar, you have to be able to hear the strings.

2. Get to know the fretboard really well. Practicing scales helps a lot. You should be able to find "keys" so that when the band leader (lead vocalist) calls them out, you can follow.

3. Find out what chord types mean. Chords like "augmented fifths" or "sustained" chords are just names for regular chords with a note or two added. You don't have to be a chord expert, but getting beyond G and C major will help your jazz career.

4. Go beyond chromatic and pentatonic scales. You can use these scales as a basis for your work, but for jazz guitar, other notes should be added. The jazz guitarist dances a thin line between innovation and dissonance: Potentially dissonant notes, added in the right places, enhance a jazz riff.

5. Get "stock jazz" phrases. For example, instead of going up from A to B to resolve on B, try a three-note climb from A to A-Sharp/B-Flat and then to B. The sound will be a "da-da-da" sliding upward to end on the B note. Use stock riffs like this one to jazz your guitar.

Resources

• Jazz Guitar Online Resource.
• Just Jazz Guitar.