If you study jazz guitar theory you will learn to rely on the seventh and third notes of a chord and how interest can be added by the aid of the ninth, eleventh or thirteenth notes. These notes may be totally foreign to the original melody the guitarist is improvising over, but jazz guitar players have the work of guitarists from previous generations to draw on when they make use of these unusual voicings.

A big Element of jazz guitar theory is the type of techniques used to express musical feelings. Jazz guitar players have their own strumming patterns and chord progressions that may vary greatly from the Methods of playing the original genre they might be interpreting. Also, although rock and blues guitar players of the past thirty or so years have left their mark on jazz, there is a tendency among jazz guitarists to use electronic effects rather sparingly.

To Look at the basis of jazz guitar theory we need to be aware of the founders of modern jazz guitar playing, like Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass and Herb Ellis as well as the founders of jazz guitar tradition like Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. Jazz guitar theory has been shaped by modern players who have departed from tradition, such as John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Pat Metheny.

Here is a great introduction to jazz guitar chords from TresMambo

If you want to learn more about jazz guitar, Jazz Guitar Online Their free guitar lessons cover a wide range of topics. There are lessons for beginners as well as for the guitar professional. All online guitar lessons are illustrated with guitar tabs and traditional notation, some have video and audio. Some of the subjects include: Jazz Guitar Chord Theory, Jazz Guitar Scales, The Pentatonic Scale, How to Play Bebop, Latin & Blues Guitar, Arpeggios for Guitar and Guitar Technique Exercises.

The site features a licktionary which has guitar riffs, licks and patterns from master jazz guitar players such as Pat Metheny, George Benson, Bill Frisell, Django Reinhardt, John McLaughlin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Pass, Al Di Meola, Mike Stern, Les Paul, John Scofield, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, but also Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. You can use these jazz guitar licks as an inspiration for your guitar solos. They are written in both standard notation and guitar tab.

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The group played popular jazz tunes of the time with Django and Grapelli alternating on the lead with the two other guitars playing rhythm and Vola playing walking bass figures. A drummer was never in the mix. They also wrote their own tunes, many of which have themselves become standards. Some of the group’s compositons include blue Drag, Minor Swing, Djangology, Django Rag, Django’s Blues, Django’s Tiger and Nuages.

The group’s violinist, Stephane Grapelli continued making music until his death in 1997 but the figure that has proved to be the inspiration of many gypsy jazz groups, Django Reinhardt only lived to be forty-three years old. Gypsy jazz has been behind the popularity of the Maccaferri and Selmer style guitars. The guitar that Django Reinhardt made famous was made by the Selmer company in Paris based on a revolutionary guitar design by Mario Maccaferri, one of the first generation of classical guitar players. Surprisingly, Maccaferri was never familiar with Django Reinhardt’s music.

As with all music associated with the tag “gypsy” the music is usually passed on directly from one musician to another. The Quintet Du Hot Club came out of an environment where playing music was simply a part of life. Each musician was both student and teacher. And there were not too many note readers among them. In fact Stephane Grapelli, a classically trained musician used breaks in the groups playing schedule to tutor Django in music. So every guitar player wanting to learn to play gypsy jazz is faced with learning the music of Django Reinhardt, as played by Django Reinhardt.

One element that made Django’s music unique was the fact that, due to an injury in a fire, Django played the guitar using only the first and second fingers of his left hand. This limited the range of notes available to him as he worked his way up and down the fretboard was severly limited. As a result of his injury, barre chords are not found in gypsy jazz guitar musicA close look at Django’s music will tell you he had little use for sevenths in his music.

If you want to listen to some contemporary gypsy jazz guitar, American groups devoted to the genre are Pearl Django and the John Jorgenson Quintet but Europe is still the place where there is most interest in this music, with groups like Hot Club of Hungary and Hot Club of France. If you want to learn to play gypsy jazz guitar, the ability to read tab would be a minimum requirement because there are many examples of Django’s music available as guitar tab.

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The aim of a jazz guitar player is to make new music using other musical genres or the music of composers from genres other than jazz. A jazz guitarist will have developed his own methods of improvising over a song or instrumental. Sometimes his improvisation will be rooted in the techniques of using the notes in the chord he is playing to give him the material for the solo, or just to use the notes he finds in the melody.

Whatever method the jazz guitar player uses he will always find his own direction away from the melodic structure of the musical work he is improvising over and use melodic figures or “licks” which he has composed or learned from other guitar players. A lick is a sequence of notes which can be utilized in improvising over music in any key. Not quite a melody, lick is like a short tune or fraction of a melody. Listen carefully to a jazz guitar solo that you enjoy. Try imitating some of the licks that you can make out. Imitate them and see how they fit with other licks to take the solo to its ending.

Other jazz guitar techniques consist of substituting chords with more interesting sounding chords, the use of walking bass to make a piece more interesting or changing the rhythm of a song. You can see examples of all these jazz guitar techniques when you listen to the music of jazz guitar players like Charlie Christian, one of the pioneers of jazz guitar, Charlie Byrd, an exponent of latin jazz guitar who developed a genre of his own using classical guitar techniques to play jazz, or Wes Montgomery, a very popular guitar player who ventured into many fields of music.

Anybody who wants to learn to play jazz guitar will be wondering what guitars give you that distinctive jazz sound. You can play jazz on any guitar but when musicians talk about a “jazz guitar” they mostly have in mind a guitar with a “f” holes in the body, an arched top and a piezoelectric pickup. This guitar provides that warm, jazz feeling that people associate with the jazz guitar which is expressed eloquently in the music of Wes Montgomery. Epiphone is the brand name most jazz players associate with this kind of guitar but they are also made by D’Angelico, Gibson and others.

Here is a YouTube video of a Jazz guitar harmony lesson:

To learn to play jazz guitar, even in a comparatively superficial sense entails listening to alot of jazz guitar music. As you listen you need to analyze what jazz guitarists do and what you, as a musician, WANT to do. Maybe you do not want to learn jazz as a genre but just to play in the style of a certain jazz guitar player. This will cut your work load considerably as you can find tabs for the work of many jazz guitar players on the internet.

And for newcomers to jazz here is a video of Joe Pass playing Summertime:

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Video of Stella by Starlight Theme
Ted Greene Playing Autumn Leaves on video.
In this video of a jazz guitar masterclass, guitar legend Ted Greene goes through the changes of Autumn Leaves and applies some very nice reharmonizations.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow
In this jazz guitar video, Tommy Emmanuel plays a beautiful version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow on his worn acoustic guitar. The way he uses harmonics is amazing.

Wes Montgomery in Jazz Guitar on TV

Jazz Guitar Video Lessons

Incredible Solo Jazz Guitarist
This guy is incredible! John Phil Wayne is a guitarist from London, England who has been pursuing a career as a solo jazz guitarist since 1961. He plays walking bass, chords and solo improvisation at once in a way and with a speed I have never seen before. He has a very strange, but very effective right hand technique.
Jazz Guitar Blog

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