Jazz Players

Just wondering how many jazz players or appreciators come here...any instrument, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, uke, piano whatever...

I waited too long to head in that direction, maybe cause I've always been nothing but an ear player and know some theory, enough to get me in trouble, heck I don't even know the name of some chords I wander upon, the root but not the voice.

and as anyone knows it's a lifetime study and I waited until 4 or 5 years ago to start working on trying to figure out some standards on my guitar. I have to record a vid of everything I work on so I can go back and watch it because I kinda figure something out and soonly forget.

I haven't even scratched the surface on guitar and trying to find my way doing it on mandolin...I've got a whole lot of work to do.

I am a now retired professional jazz bass fiddle player.
I've also played a bit of jazz guitar over the years.
I always thought jazz improvisation was easier on the mandolin than on the guitar.

To be a good jazz backup player on either the guitar or mandolin, it helps to know a bit about chord substitution. A hint: If you separate chords into the following groups, you'll find that you can substitute one chord in a group for another in the same group.

Majors-- includes major 7th, major 6th, major 9th, and 6 add 9.
Minors-- Minor triad, minor 7th, minor 9th, and sometimes minor 6th.
Dominants-- 7th, 9th, and 13th chords.
Altered dominants-- any dominant chord with a flatted or augmented 5th or flatted or augmented 9th.

Diminished chords are a distinct and separate group.

For more, see a good teacher.

Few people can get by on the ear alone in jazz. Theory helps a lot. But you have to find a good balance between the two. I've seen folks over-obsess with theory, fall into the rabbit hole and never find a way out.

"If you can sing it, you can play it." Dizzy Gillespie

Good luck and enjoy.

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Originally Posted by CBFrench

... I waited until 4 or 5 years ago to start working on trying to figure out some standards on my guitar.

...I've got a whole lot of work to do.

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There are several similar threads on the forum, you can use the search function to find them.

However, don't let the complexities of jazz scare you off, if you want to learn to play jazz, play some jazz,as you seem to be doing.

A few tips from my past experiences;

1. learn your chords as suggested by https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/members/51460-rcc56

2. work on all your major and minor scales; there are many others to learn but you need the basics first.

3. Also as noted, though many great players have played jazz strictly by ear, far more of them also use written music in some form or other, even if not when performing. You don't need to be a great sight reader, but knowing how to read tunes in a fakebook is one way to study and learn songs, which brings me to

4. Style and repertoire - jazz has had many style periods (New Orleans/trad, Chicago, swing, big bands, "Gypsy" jazz, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, fusion, etc.) and each style has a musical "dialect" and a common core repertoire.

Don't try to learn all styles at once!

Pick a handful of tunes you like, and work on learning them in your favorite jazz dialect. Many tunes like "Bye Bye Blackbird" have been played in 3 or more of the styles, too.

Listen to lots of jazz players of ALL instruments, particularly the greats and originators of your favorite styles...and typically they were horn players, as no common style was developed by mandolin players (sorry Dawg music fans, it's great stuff but not a major style of jazz).

Nowadays, almost all jazz teaching materials begin with late bop a.k.a. "modern jazz" and the chord-scale approach. I suggest learning the chord tone or chord arpeggio method too, as it was the way the older players played.

One thing about learning your theory, it's applicable to both guitar and mandolin. Sure, you have to learn two fingerings, but so did the guys that played sax and doubled clarinet or flute. :)

I started on trumpet. Jazz, baroque, classical etc. The tuning in 5ths was a nice and familiar change from the 4ths on bass and guitar.

Big Jethro Burns fan.

I'll be 70 in a few months, came up playing in the 60s and have played most my life. Mostly jump and Chicago blues for the past 30 years. For a number of reasons I quit playing out about 7-8 years back. So I'm just a home player now but constantly playing/practicing on a daily basis. I'm not as said "scared or looking for lesson" love of music is just my life. I've always listened to jazz and love old swing and traditional, never much cared for bebop and fusion, I need that beautiful melody.

No need to be in a hurry for nothing at my age ha. I have thousands of tunes in playlist on my youtube account of all genres. I think the first jazz tune I worked on when I decided to start exploring playing and learning was an old song I remember hearing Dean Martin do "Talk Of The Town" I swear it took me two months to figure out the basic chord structure but it was such a great feeling, it was a major accomplishment for me. I then started working on standards like Autumn Leaves, Satin Doll, Take Five, All The things You Are. Moon RIver etc etc.

Like I said at this point I'm in no hurry, it just feels wonderful to figure out a few new things in music, even a generic version of a beautiful tune. I started on Tenderly a few weeks back, what a beautiful song. If I'm not listening to music I'm playing around on my acoustic, archtop or mandolin it help keep my mind busy and that's fine with me.

Howdy,

I love rcc56's reply.

You should consider taking an on-line swing mandolin class with Matt Flinner who offers them periodically throughout the year. You might even be able to purchase lessons from previous classes at his website:
https://www.mattflinner.com

I've recently become a fan of the iReal Pro app for practicing improvisation over jazz standards. If you have the app you can download hundreds of them for free to your computer or smart phone. I've posted a couple of charts here:
https://www.irealb.com/forums/showth...Scotter-charts

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Originally Posted by Scotter

Howdy,

I love rcc56's reply.

You should consider taking an on-line swing mandolin class with Matt Flinner who offers them periodically throughout the year. You might even be able to purchase lessons from previous classes at his website:
https://www.mattflinner.com

I've recently become a fan of the iReal Pro app for practicing improvisation over jazz standards. If you have the app you can download hundreds of them for free to your computer or smart phone. I've posted a couple of charts here:
https://www.irealb.com/forums/showth...Scotter-charts

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I'll check out Matt. I do have ireal pro on my imac and I just downloaded a great standards list of tunes a few weeks ago but just haven't got around to working with it yet. Did Matt put anything on iReal, I was thinking the iReal jazz tunes I got were from a mandolin post.

I ran across this a year or so back, very nice...

https://youtu.be/cV67IbubPrw

I used to play 'jazz'-style guitar - studying a lot of Metheny, Towner, and these folks .. but the first time I heard Sun Ship sometime in the 80s I was gone - hooked on avant jazz ever since. I play a bunch of trad/folk - which totally interferes with my jazz studies - but jazz is America's great contribution to the world. My best jazz instrument is drums, but I no longer play - so I study on my horns now.

One thing that mandolin did for me was open me up to 'trad'/early jazz - the first time I heard Danny Barker I started on tenor banjo. This led to infatuation with Jelly Roll. This got me into plectrum banjo and singing standards. Good fun.

I'd suggest learning 12 basic chord/inversion forms (maj, min, dim, 7th) which you can start using for chord melody and start improvising. Scale studies.

I'm way way less than a mediocre mandolin player. I'm always recording vids on tunes because I move from one thing to the next so much I forget what I've worked on, might be my senile mind. Sitting around one day just playing with my thumb as if pick isn't hard enough ha notes gets real tight but it's quite and I like quite. Anyway I was just messing around trying to remember this old Brubeck tune...aye it ain't much but I don't have anything else to do...I record things on my phone and upload to my google drive

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VLj...ew?usp=sharing

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Originally Posted by CBFrench

I'll check out Matt. I do have ireal pro on my imac and I just downloaded a great standards list of tunes a few weeks ago but just haven't got around to working with it yet. Did Matt put anything on iReal, I was thinking the iReal jazz tunes I got were from a mandolin post.

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If you click on the link in my last post, you'll see a few charts that I've posted, with permission, from Matt's courses.

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Originally Posted by Scotter

If you click on the link in my last post, you'll see a few charts that I've posted, with permission, from Matt's courses.

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Oh ok that's the one I got and probably got it from your post and it is absolutely fabulous!!

I watched the video. Great! I got caught up in YouTube and watched others of Isaac Eicher and am just amazed, He is really good and I, very much.enjoyed his playing. Thanks.

I recently learned Don Stiernberg has some prerecorded online Jazz lessons: https://donstiernberg.com/instructional-materials/. Worth checking out!

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Originally Posted by joh

I recently learned Don Stiernberg has some prerecorded online Jazz lessons: https://donstiernberg.com/instructional-materials/. Worth checking out!

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Don's Soundslice courses are great. Highly recommended, along with all of his recordings.

I haven't tried Matt Flinner's online courses, but if you want to hear some crazy good music try Walking On The Moon - not a swing album but really great A lot of other good comments in this thread as well, including using the search feature to find many other threads on jazz ad jazz players.

And remember, you can play just about anything over the dominant chord, as long as you resolve it (Unless you're the bass player or comping).

In addition to all the other fabulous recommendations, Aaron Weinstein has a outstanding chord melody program going on Peghead Nation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KsPvh99plJk

I'll give big thumbs up to the Stiernberg Soundslice lessons, Aaron's Pegged Nation course, and Flinner's Swing sessions - they've all helped me get through this year.

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Originally Posted by CBFrench

I'll check out Matt.

I ran across this a year or so back, very nice...

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Yes, I am a big fan of Isaac Eicher's playing also. His father wrote one of my favorite tunes, "Night in Paris", which I cover in a trio. Shelby Eicher plays Gypsy swing violin and his band covers that genre very well. Isaac is playing mandolin on the below linked cut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKE567Rv0mI

I’m a jazz fan. Started playing mandolin before really get into jazz. Grisman led me to Django and Django eventually led me to all types of jazz. Learning to play swing and jazz helped me develop as a more whole musician. I started playing mandolin in a gypsy swing band. At that point I had only learned songs by tab. I had to learn to read music to really learn the songs. I also had to learn more music theory to get the jazz chords down. After coming to a better understanding of the theory I was able to creat my own chord voicings up and down the fret board, which really helped open up my accompaniment as well as improvisation. Since covid I purchased a selmer style guitar and now I have fallen down another rabbit hole.