Guitar: Jazz: An Open Learning Guide

Early jazz bands used the banjo as an accompaniment instrument because its loud volume gave it the ability to be heard, unamplified, against brass and percussion. As an acoustic instrument, the banjo was limited to a rhythmic role.

The electric guitar eventually replaced the banjo mainly due to its extended range and improvements in timbre and the volume boost provided by amplification. The early jazz guitarists played block chords to provide the rhythmic support that was once the role of the banjo. They had to adopt an economic chordal style to match some of the fast tempos they were expected to play. This involved three or four note chords and this legacy is to be found in all jazz guitar styles. Here are three movable exercises illustrating the basic jazz chord vocabulary:

Note that in each of the above exercises there is a change of only one note to form the next chord and that this change takes place on one string.

The two main forms in Jazz are the twelve bar blues and the thirty-two-bar ballad. The "rhythm changes" chord progression is a 32-bar form.

Each section consisting of eight bars. Section B is sometimes described as the bridge and will usually modulate to a related key eventually returning to the home key towards the end of the section. Each section can respectively be labelledː

A famous thirty-two bar ballad is "Misty" by Erroll Garner with lyrics written by Johnny Burke. Using the lyrics from the Sarah Vaughan version of "Misty" and taking into account the four bar instrumental introduction we can separate the sections into their respective componentsː

Jazz rhythms are meant to swing. While not all jazz consists of swinging rhythms, some may have a straight eighth note feel, it is important to become familiar with this style of playing. Swing is a difficult style to notate because it involves pulling and pushing against the beat and therefore students approach jazz by listening to the music first. If you are new to jazz then the song "My Favorite Things" from the musical The Sound Of Music is a good place to start. Listen to John Coltrane's jazz version and compare it against the original soundtrack version. You will notice that the original version swings less and that Coltrane's version lasts longer. Jazz musicians are expected to be able to improvise and this is exactly what Coltrane does by extending the song's harmony and melody beyond its original form. The drums and piano in Coltrane's version swing in comparison to the backing instruments of the original. Swing may be difficult to notate on manuscript paper but it is easy to hear in performance.

The use of octaves is a common technique in jazz guitar. Once a jazz guitarist has learned the notes to a melody they will then play the same melody using octaves. Audiences hear octaves as a single melodic line and therefore using octaves is a highly effective technique for reinforcing the melody line. Jazz guitarists are also very adept at playing scales backwards. The jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell on the album Midnight Blue uses simple minor pentatonic scales to great effect starting on their highest note and descending through the scale to the lowest note. Playing scales backwards is a technique that provides for surprise openings, unusual bridges and tension releasing.

Many famous early jazz guitarists cited horn players as a major influence. The rise of jazz coincided with the development of the radio and gramophone and early recordings of jazz played a major role in developing the main stylistic elements of the genre. Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" (Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five - 1928) is considered one of the masterpieces of early jazz and cemented the role of the brass soloist. Jazz guitarists from that period took note and soon it became standard practice for guitarists to copy horn riffs.

Charlie Christian (Benny Goodman Band 1939 - 1941) is still considered by many as one of the great players of the instrument with many of his riffs displaying horn-like qualities. Christian also played a role in the development of Be-Bop participating in jams with Dizzy Gillespie and Theolonius Monk at Minton's Playhouse in New York (1941) which were recorded by a jazz fan. These recordings represent the transition from Swing to Be-Bop and offer a rare chance to hear the informal after-hours meetings of some of the greatest players in jazz.

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Text adapted from Guitar/Jazz by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.