Hey, guys, welcome back to the channel Jazz Guitar Lessons. And in this episode I want to discuss the single biggest thing I've done for myself and for students. And that's like bait. I promise. It's tangible, something you can implement right off today immediately into your playing, and I will describe it in detail. So by the end of this video, if you're watching this on YouTube, by the end of the video, you can leave a comment below with your questions or your strategy for doing what I'm about to propose.
If you're listening into this podcast format. Thank you. You can leave a review or comment like and subscribe and everything. So let's get going. Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accents, make sure to subscribe.
All right. So now you may say Marc is going nuts. You know, it's just it's clickbait. He went haywire. There's no magic pill. It's like, no, there's no magic pill. It's pretty simple. I want to first make my point with a story, a pretty short story. So bear with me for maybe a minute or two. Imagine I had the intention of building myself a cabin, right?
I live in Canada. There's wilderness so I can buy a plot of land and go. I want to build myself a 20 by 20 cabin for fishing or other. I want to be in the woods. All right. Well, we'll get back to that for the reason why I want to go there. And of course, I need to go to the store and I'll buy some lumber, maybe get a stove used from Craigslist and get some bunks and a basic table, and I'll buy a door frame and imagine I'm pretty handy.
And I get a couple friends and we decide to lay this basic foundation and we build up this picture. This thing I have in my mind, which is basically a cabin in the woods. So now, knowing what I want and knowing how to build it, I would take a significant amount of effort to get there. So buying this stuff, getting a truck and getting all the materials and then digging, hammering, nailing, doing all sorts of stuff, putting the isolation foam, you know, for thermic effect.
I'm in Canada, so it would be cold making sure that the stove is something that's secure, that's in place, that's safe, that's not going to kill me overnight. Rachel does a whole bunch of work, right, to to ensure that we're doing all the steps. So imagine it would take a ballpark. This would take me 500 hours of effort.
Right? Building a cabin. Have the blueprint in mind. I know what it is like. It's effort. But imagine for a moment. Bear with me. I'm working on this 400 hours and I don't even know what I'm building. And furthermore, I don't even know why I'm building it. Catch my drift? Okay, so most likely when I'm above that 100 hours, even if I had someone over my shoulder tell me nailed this, do this, carry this, remove this, I would go like, Dude, what the f like, what are we doing and why are we doing this?
Right? So I think the same applies with a lot of my my guitar students in the sense that they're attempting to build something that's maybe not fully clear that I can help with. I do do coaching. We have practice plan, we know which tunes we're working on, we know which chords and scales. That's doable. But furthermore, the reason why.
So why would I build myself a cabin in the woods? Hmm. Interesting. I love fishing. It's because I want to fish. There's a lake, I've got a small boat, and I can just go in there and, like, catch whatever trout. Good. Here's a thing that you can implement, and you're playing pretty much right away is finding this big y, finding this bigger, larger purpose, finding the reason why you're doing all these things.
Because a learning jazz guitar as opposed to maybe learning other styles of guitar that you've done in the past, like blues, a rock or funk, you can pick these up pretty quickly relatively, but jazz is its own language. So I'm a jazz guitar teacher. If you don't know me, I've been doing this since 2009. Online jazz is not better than anything else, but it's its own language.
It comes with its own intricacies, and too often the people that feel discouraged will look at this and maybe have a blueprint. I'm building this cabin. I want to learn to play the standards and do this and go to jams, etc. but they don't really know why they're doing it. And now that's where I sort of unfold the secret to this video.
Yeah, I told you I'm not going nuts. The secret is, if I know why I'm performing something, why I'm rehearsing, it's going to give meaning to my efforts. If I see in my mind's eye the finished cabin. And I know that I love fishing, I will gladly put the 500 hours in it. Right. So it would be the same for you.
So my my best performing students, the people that got the best results in working with me are the ones that had something in mind. It can be as simple as there's this local jam. I always go grab a glass of wine on Monday nights and now I want to party. I want to go in and go on stage.
You go, Let's play tunes right? Some people will have a gig, they will book. They say there's this Christmas party at my office and some people say they're singing and I want to be sure I can accompany them on these standards. Good. Some other people see my daughter or husband or cousin sings and I want to be a good accompanist.
Some people said, I've been playing blues all my life. Now's the time to do jazz. But the clearer the picture, the more effort and dedication and commitment that we'll see the people get. And it's the same for me when I when I wanted to do this and become a jazz guitarist, I had a bigger, overarching goal. I wanted to record.
I wanted to make sure I played with the best people in town. I had to satisfy my own curiosity, which which is a valid why also which is a valid purpose going. I'm doing this for me for my own curiosity, which is fine, which by the way, for the record, Metheny said that in interviews Pat Metheny, which is sharing this music with the world, is just a happy byproduct of me sort of doing this experiment.
But he said, I would do it, do it alone on in an island, on an island alone, doing myself because I love it. So the audience is just a happy byproduct of exploration, which is interesting. It is a way to do it. Some people want to become famous rock stars. Some people want to go fish and just build a cabin in the woods.
Right? Regardless, does it matter what it is? What matters? And I've two more points about this. What matters that it speaks to you profoundly. If you look into learning jazz guitar and you reconcile this blueprint that there's this much work to do with the scales and with the song, and with the practice session and with the fingernails and whatever, and you see the effort and you have a purpose and you go, You know what?
I'd rather go find dining. Perfect. Some people love to go fine dining, and we'll see this as a more significant time and money investment. Say some people love to go see shows, some people love to build cabins. Some people would say, well, I want to learn to play hockey in my life. That's that's great. Anything works so long as it's been clearly defined.
Hey, guys, real quick, if you're enjoying this episode so far and you're interested in taking your guest or playing to the next level, please reach out to us. We've helped thousands of guitarists improvise on standards at a level they didn't even think was possible. So Lincoln Description or visit jazz guitar lessons dot net to start today. Okay, back to the episode Now.
The last thought on this, which I will call the fallacy. Be mindful when you are building a a big wire purpose to whatever you want to achieve. States learning jazz guitar because it's the jazz guitar channel that the problem with jazz guitar often is that we we create the fallacy of prerequisites, and well-meaning instructors do that. I was stuck in that thing myself as well, which is, hey, I can't go to the master guy, the guitarist that I want to take lessons with because he's going to tell me to learn skills so I can't go see him yet because I want to learn skills first.
Or I already saw this guy. I took lessons two or three times and I'm not even done practicing what he's given me. So it means that I'm not due to go back again. So those are fallacies of prerequisites. For instance, for me, I was a kid, I went to jams and there's this guy, the sax player, that said, you know, to hold on scale because we were playing Juju by Wayne Shorter.
Great song, by the way, and I am not sure. So he said, Learn to hold on scale and make sure you can shred on it. Make sure you can like take a big solo with just that one scale and make melodic ideas and whatever. I'm like, Okay, but why? Well, the greater purpose is if this song is ever called again in a jam, you'll know what to play on it.
I'm like, I fair right? In this case, like the blueprint is clear and I'm preparing for an eventual thing. Where it gets really toxic is that if the whole of your practice becomes this prerequisite, I have to play the chord inversions. I have to play scales in 12 years. This is my minimum technical requirements for today. I'm doing this, this and that.
It may start to feel more like a life sentence and it becomes a fallacy that I will eventually be ready. As soon as I finished doing all these scales and whatever, I'll be ready as soon as as soon as as soon as. And look, I have nothing against drilling, right? I mentioned hockey's like a young hockey player. He needs to practice the skating and needs to look at the stick and the handling and do small movements that are repeated so they become natural and intuitive.
With jazz guitar, I find there's this trap that a lot of guitarists get stuck into, which is basically, I must do all of this before I can do the thing. And I'm like, okay, what's the thing? The thing is to learn the song. I'm like, Well, let's just start learning the song and see what you need in accomplishing that goal, rather than having to do everything, grabbing all the books, grabbing all the exercises from YouTube and then saying, Well, this is it, this is not it, because the fallacy is being prepared for anything.
Well, then you get to improv and you know what? Blah, nothing happens in your improv because all you've been doing is concentrating on playing jazz, like chess, like guitar and plug and play formulas with arpeggios and maybe triads and whatever. And this can be very good. And you're going to be well versed at playing triads and such. But improvising jazz lines is another game.
So my, my advice again is just to go and play the game again. Not to say that everything I do should be super applied to a context. I know exactly where it leads, like there's a portion of songs and scales and stuff. We do this just like, Look, this is proficiency. You need some of the proficiency, but just be mindful of that trap.
So that's it for this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it, that it makes sense. Personally, it's been something that's been resonating really hard, which is why would I wake up in the morning and do anything right? What's the matter? Like what gets me out of bed to do and produce a lesson like this? Or teach my students and I?
I just realized that the bigger purpose of it makes all the sense of the world. It may not make sense to you or to someone else, but haven't found and discovered and journaled about and discussed with my therapist and whatever, and with friends and family discussing what's the big thing behind it. It just fuels this whole fire. It's like the wind beneath my sails in that I would not go as far without this big way.
So same with jazz guitar. I wish you the best in finding what that Why is the book the gig? Or to go to the jam so that eventually the hours pass by and you you invest the efforts as as I would say it becomes a labor of love because if you don't fight for your love, what kind of love do you have?
You know, I'm rather than being an obligation. All right. So on that note that we'll see you soon on the website, jazz guitar lessons are that improve. You're just not playing with a real teacher. Please remember to join the free school community. It's just our fellowship. Plenty of courses, lessons, life goals, hanging out with me and thousands of students, plus contests with prizes.
And everything you saw at one of the recent videos was a mash up of all the people that started to to play in the contest of that tune that we tackle this month is just fantastic. So please join us and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care. Bye.
