I Learned Jazz Guitar in 7 Days

all right so let me be completely and totally honest for the first time in a while I'm not happy like really not happy now I know that's a very strong way to start so let me give you some backstory so you might understand a little bit of context as to where I'm coming from you see the day was January 20th 2023 and you're probably like Mike what the heck is that random date all about well you see that was my nine year anniversary of the day when I first picked up the electric guitar which was a really really big milestone if you know anything about me back in college I was called at times a Serial hobbyist which means I just jumped from one passion to the next and could never really find my thing but there was something so special about my connection to this instrument right like when I first picked it up there was just this initial spark it was like something special that I could connect to musically and all I wanted to do was absorb as much information as possible in the moment and it was this really beautiful thing but as of lately I've really felt like this spark has kind of diminished and not my spark for playing the guitar and enjoying music but that initial spark to learn the instrument and absorb all that information and I still do the occasional Church gig where I play I still make videos that I love doing and I still jam with friends and with my band but I can't remember the last time I really pushed myself like I did in the early days like to absorb all that information and to ignite that spark and I think because of that I've reached a juncture that a lot of guitar players have to face when you realize you're at a certain point in your life or a certain point in your guitar playing Journey I'm just not the player that I want to be and I want to be very candid about that there are a lot of flaws and weaknesses in my guitar playing that I've been very reluctant to address because I know how much hard work it would take and I remember how much hard work it took for me to just learn to strum a G chord and I was like man do I really want to go through that again but I think with the instrument and with any passion you have in life if you're not challenging yourself if you're not actively trying to get better like what are you doing so in order to reignite spark I knew I would have to find something challenging and if challenge is the Avenue that we're pursuing I know exactly what I have to do ladies and gentlemen we're going to try and learn jazz now you talk to any guitar player out there and they will tell you about jazz jazz I feel like in the guitar world as seen as this next level thing like if you can play jazz you can kind of play anything else so it's a road I've never gone down and in a lot of ways it's a road that I very intentionally kind of avoided and not only are we gonna try and learn jazz we're going to try and master Jazz within seven days you might be looking at me like Mike it took Charlie Parker Miles Davis John Coltrane like their entire lives to master Jazz and to that I say they never had Marty Schwartz so I'm gonna try and do it in seven days exactly 168 hours now the other thing I know is that mastering jazz is a very broad statement right there's so many elements of jazz so I tried to pick the elements that would challenge me the most that I feel like would promote the most progress in my play number one is a prepared piece I want to choose a piece of music that would really challenge me both harmonically and melodically to see if I could learn it on the guitar something outside of my comfort zone both speed wise and technique wise number two I want to get an understanding of arpeggios I preach and preach about like Target notes and like doing that in a blues context but rarely ever really use it and I know using that with jazz is like the most integral thing ever and third is improvising you talk to any blues player like myself they're going to take a lot of pride in their ability to improvise on the spot but for me that's one of the areas where more recently I've been really disappointed with my playing so learning a completely new realm of improvisation I feel like would take a lot of my playing to the next level now saying all this is cool making plans is great but if you never put those plans into action you're not going to do anything with your life and I didn't really know where to start so I actually ended up calling one of my friends for some help foreign dude how's it going what up you see this is my friend Grant he's a Belmont guitar of grad a huge polyphia fan and happens to be an excellent excellent guitar teacher so I asked him to show me some stuff and actually give me some pointers before I got going because I wanted to know from someone who actually knows Jazz like where in the world do I even start like what do I need to be learning let's play let's learn some jazz dude let's do it I'm super excited about it the main one we're learning is just kind of chord tones and how to build a solo around some chord tons very difficult so we're doing just two five ones in the Kia C going to kind of keep it simple ish okay and so with that we're going to start off first with our D minor seven nothing just like that and so we're kind of trying to build all of these chords around our one our threes or for miners flat threes fives and then sevens whatever kind of degree that is okay and so for our D we've got d f [Music] yep and then C coming back to D or big question yeah is like where do I start because like usually if we're playing like a two five one yeah I would just go straight but like do I start with the pentatonic and then go to the chord tones from there or do I start with the chord tones and then fill things in I would start with the chord tones to generally kind of structure anchor yourself all right so the lesson's going great at this point I'm really learning a lot it's a lot of information to take in but I think that's just jazz in general and then Grant my teachers suggests that we actually try some chord tone soloing and that's when I realized jazz is hard so let's just kind of take a second and work through that a little bit I'll just kind of loop it and let you start to start to figure it out just a little bit or kind of Tinker around with some of these ideas all right let's do this foreign [Music] so yes as you can see it was very difficult for me to solo like that and not immediately go to like my usual pentatonic scales but I was ready to be active about what I've learned and to try some of these new things so I'm listening back to just like the first 30 seconds of Donnelly so far and I'm like this is going to be an impossible task but something I want to take on okay [Music] I think I got that [Music] that's hard why do they do this with jazz man I'm gonna bring out the metronome we're gonna put it less than half we're at 50 vpm this is less than half [Music] literally just looped one quarter and whistle over foreign [Music] whatever I mess up all I can think is I wish JK Simmons was here to yell at me and motivate me the next phrase is like 10 times harder I just listened to it for the first time I was like oh this is gonna stink got that [Music] foreign I think this phrase is easy because of the minor Triads but I'm also struggling because it's just like it's a lot to choose so I don't know if I'm even gonna try the full one to do it today [Music] this second part is uniquely frustrating to me so I'm taking it literally like one bite at a time just like start with just that the last part was not really easy it was a lot easier and I don't think the notes I don't feel like it's that much more of a difficult part but I'm just having so much trouble memorizing it okay I have most of this phrase now three four [Music] we're consistent at around 70 percent right now I'm still like my brain hurts oh this is gonna be impossible I swear when it comes to scales if I ever have to hear a D Minor nine again I don't know if I'll be able to pick up a Guitar it's day three and I can still still feel like it's just D minor [Music] day four I really approach myself at 120. just the part just slow very slow like yesterday I'm starting out very slow [Music] there what that was close it's not flowing but that's at a hundred percent [Music] thank you [Music] all right so it's day five I started slow like I always do and I've been getting the pull-off wrong on the first like the lick that I thought I had 120 which I think is the reason why you do things slow so I'm bringing this one down to like 60 just to see if I can get the whole thing right because I don't want to get part of it wrong yep yep yep yep yep we got it [Music] I keep forgetting that if you're gonna be a jazz guy you need to turn the tone knob down it's the slide hey [Music] [Applause] today I'm tired because I was out all day and I don't really want to practice I know you won't get any better unless you practice when you don't want to practice [Music] I want to try playing this with my eyes closed because I hear that's the way to really get a song down I knew it ah ah I'm tired I've been waiting a lot of bars on 251 so I'm like you know this time we're just gonna do it full speed it's really hard oh my gosh my respect for jazz players is crazy because I have to even think before I press play I'm like wait which one is D minor [Music] all right it's the final day final day all right I'm just trying to take it slow still it's day seven I'm trying to take it slow [Music] this is getting a little better right [Music] so it's been seven days and I'm kind of scared but it's time to see like full speed can I play this lick see how it goes [Music] I'm equally as scared to show the solo part to see how much progress I've made on there [Music] so looking back on that immediately I can see some of the flaws that I had in playing that riff like I was really happy with the progress that I was able to make but it's not perfect yet and it's not something I feel like I could instantly bring to a jazz Jam yet and I think that's because it's not smooth and I think that's because I was really trying to push myself a little bit speed wise not as fast as some of the other you know guys who played Donnelly at 200 BPM but I think there were a couple rough moments where it wasn't as smooth as it could be and you could definitely hear some pick noise and I actually contacted one of my friends an incredible YouTube guitarist one of the best out there in my opinion named Rudy IU on some advice on playing fast and he actually told me about my picking hand and how I needed to pick way lighter to be able to to Really Glide along the string so thank you Rudy for that and that's one of the things I was really trying to get down during the last couple days is trying to pick lighter in terms of trying to gain that speed and that's something I really want to work on going forward but then amongst the arpeggios and like practical application in an improvising context that's where I also had to check myself after seven days and again it's something that wasn't in any way shape or form perfect but it felt like I was finally paying attention to the chord tones and finally starting to use the major scale a little bit more like a jazz player but overall the big question can you master jazz guitar in a week heck no man I'm not like West Montgomery level Prodigy but the bigger question I think I'm happy I'm not happy with my guitar playing but I'm happy that the spark is kind of back as a player who wants to practice more and I think that's what this is about in the end I didn't Master jazz guitar but I think the thing that I learned I think even more than learning some new stuff about jazz guitar I learned how to practice and I learned how to be excited about practice for the first time in a very long time even within this week I wasn't just practicing Jazz I went back to practicing a lot of my pentatonic stuff and a lot of the rock stuff that I was really having trouble mastering and it showed me how to slow down a song I really take the small elements and how to go into some of those technical aspects like what Rudy was talking about when I was struggling with speed and really break stuff down and I hope to continue but anyway thank you so much for watching if you want to know anything more about jazz make sure to check out Grant I'll leave all this stuff in the description it's been a fun Journey like And subscribe if you had a good time and most important of all like most importantly have a fantastic day foreign

Channel: Mike Cole

Views: 145,150

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Id: DOxKcCJ3OgY

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023