- Hello guys, welcome to this Masterclass. My name is Marc from JazzGuitarLessons.net And for this one, it's the 6th and final masterclass. I wanted to do something a little bit different. Maybe you've already watched previous sessions, with Nathan and I, where we discuss these topics that as we said, do not necessarily fit the curriculum of the mastery program or your concierge show. It's like speaking of jazz as a language, like the vocabulary of jazz is one, or of music is one perspective. There's tons of stuff that we've covered, if you haven't, I really highly encourage you check out these other videos that are approximately hour-long discussions, basically between Nathan and I, today, it's a tiny bit different, it's a primer on theory. Or do we say primmer? I think I've heard people in the UK say primmer. Is it possible? I don't know, I'm French anyways, I'm French Canadian. So, a little bit of a theory overview, a survey of theory, all right. And you see the shot is not necessarily the studio shot with my black background, we have some beautiful natural light coming in. So, I want to go over things that I believe as an instructor, you shouldn't take time to study, and I want to do this today, I took a bunch of notes, and I want to do this today, without necessarily going into deep end, going, as one of my friends would say "into the weeds," we're not going into the weeds, I'm just telling you, Well, if you wanna learn theory, here's a broad overview of the stuff that matters, and let's get going. And let's get going, and I have my fabulous nylon string, to cover the stuff, that in case we need it, and as always Jazz IIIs, I hope you have Jazz IIIs, the red ones, they sound better. I don't know why the red ones sound better, maybe it's my boy imagination. All right, so the first thing, a little bit of a caveat. A lot of the students on this website, on and off this website are approach learning jazz, almost like a purely theory endeavor, going like, "Oh, if I finally know all my chords and versions, "and if I finally know all these scales, "then I will be a jazz player." And just the caveat here is theory is only theory, and there's theory versus practice, so, you have to put some distance between yourself, so, you have to put some distance between the knowledge and the playing, because there's a lot of players that said, "That their knowledge came after the fact." Right, so the language of playing, the feel, for playing that music is more important, to overall your performance and how you sounded like an understanding everything. Understanding then comes in due time, but just slight caveat, be mindful that, it has to go through your ears, you have to be aware of how it sounds and what's its place in the musical context, more so, than just purely understanding, understanding drawing on paper because there's a lot of things you can't understand unless you've been through them. So, that's just my slight caveat. Don't approach jazz as a purely intellectual endeavor please. And I think you know enough of my teaching on this website for you not to fall into that trap, keep learning the techniques, keep learning the songs, also on this website we provide standards, that's really the way to go, for you to become familiar with certain chord progressions, certain idiomatic things we do on guitar, and of course, certain scales and theory. Okay, that's my caveat. That's me being an instructor with a little asterisk sign, right? Like, well, you know, to take take theory with a grain of salt, it's a system that we created to make sense of what we heard and not vice versa. We didn't come up with the theory first, and then start music making music from the theory. It's not mathematics, right? It's art. All right, let's get going. Here are a few areas, I believe you should cover, if you are interested in theory in general. So, the first area is how to build scales, how to build a key signature, and how to look at a collection of notes. as a key signature, we say it's in a tonality, it's an a key center. Namely, I will use a plant example here. We have the key of C major. It's C, D, E, F, G, A, B, right? So, there are seven notes, and the best way to do that, if you wanna start small, is to look at the distance in between the notes. So namely, if you've never done this, this is really a good place to start. So, look at one string, so, pick your C here, and go C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Notice, that the C and D are two frets apart, which is two half steps, so it's a whole step. Whole step, D, E, whole step, E, F, half step, all half steps, F, G, whole step, G, A, whole step, A, B, whole step, and B, C, half step. So, you notice there's two half steps, so, the scale construction for the major scale is whole-Whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. So, W-W-H-W-W-W-H. So, if you've never done this, I highly encourage you to check out, Harmony 101 which is in your platform right now. All right, so that's the scale construction. You will see in certain scores, and maybe I have one lying around, do I? Yes, I just happen to have one, awesome! So, you will see these key signature. I'm gonna try to put this on camera, see on the right here, you have these three sharps after the treble clef, right? And that represents the key of A major. So, if you are into building scales, you have to look at the distance in between the notes, and then you have to look at... Sorry about the paper. You have to look at the way we alter the notes, if we start on a different route, so that we have the proper distance. So now we've done C, D, E, F, G, A, B. So if you've never done this, I challenge you to build the F major scale. So we started with an F, but remember between F and F, you have to have W-W-H, whole-whole-half, and then W-W-W-H. So, you still need that same structure, but you need to name the notes from F to F, so first, and this is really important, first you write, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, and then you will change, you will alter the notes, and within these consecutive letter names, so that you get the proper distance in between the notes, namely, in the key of F you will need a B-flat, to make sure that there's the half step in the proper place. So the keep A major, and I'll challenge you to pause this video and do it, right down on a piece of paper, A, B, C, D E F G A, and then look at where you need to put sharp notes, so that the structure of half step and whole steps is respected, that's the major scale, right there. You will wind up with three sharps , and those are the sharps that you write at the clef. So, that's why there's a whole method to the madness, there's a whole way of thinking of key centers as related to their key signatures, near the treble fluff. That's a classical music thing, right? So, that's my first tip, the first step, as well. As far as any theory goes before you even think about chord progressions, or chords whatever, you should have the ability to build scales from the ground up. If you wanna take it advance and do it like I did, that was 14. I took Warrem, Barbara Warren, Warrem, with an M as in mama. That's Royal, is it Royal Conservatory of Music? It's probably Canadian conservatory of some sorts, and it's just a pure dry theory text with exercises, so you fill in your scales, and then you fill in your key signatures,, and then you fill in your half steps, and then you discover how the minor scales are built, et cetera, which I will not get into right now, but that would be another step. If you learn your scales, learn the minor scales as they're a whole step in half-step structures that that's really how you do it. Look at harmonic minor, look at how melodic minor is different from that, and even different than natural minor. After you do that, then the whole modes will just become another pattern of half-step and whole steps, that's gonna help. If you look at C major, "Oh the C major contains the same notes as the D Dorian." Yes, that's right. But then where is the structure of pattern of whole step and half steps in D Dorian, is the type of stuff you have to uncover. Now let's move on, because I'm spending way too much time on the scales right now. Second topic I want it to cover, "Building Chords." So chords put simply, are when you play three or more notes together. You should learn how to build triads, there are four kinds of triads; the major the minor, the diminished, and the augmented triads. And they all have either, a minor third, in between the notes, or a major third. So, namely I'll take, let's stick to C major because that's still C, E and G. So there's a major third in between C and E, and there's a minor third of between E and G. All right. After you learned the structure, you go... That's C minor. Then C diminished, and last one the C, the C augmented. I won't get into the details of this, but this is how you build those basic chords that are found within the scales. Then of course, you look at the conservatory theory, they will tell you, "Well, here's a scale, "but you can build a triad on each degree. "What is the quality of this triad?" Well, it depends how it's built and where it's at, so, now not only do you know the scale, meaning, you know the distance in between each note, but when you look at three notes, played consecutively, you know what interval is in between those. So, now you're getting your intervals education, we've done this in "Harmony 101" by the way, you're getting your intervals education, just like for free as you built chords. And then while you're on that topic, you will learn to recognize the same three notes, but maybe have them in a different inversion. So, instead of C, E, G what if I put the C on top and I went, E, G, C, right? So, that's still C major, it's a C major triad, but it's reverted in another way. There's countless ways of looking at inversions, one of which is looking at which one is the lowest note. Then you might start to look into spread triads, meaning that the notes are not as close as they can. It's like C, E, G, but what if I took that E, but I put it on top here, and it's an octave higher, then instead of sounding It will sound like, you know that's a different voicing, not to be confused with inversion. It's still in the root position, because it's not an aversion. So, inversion is defined as which node is lowest, and there's an amazing blog post on JazzGuitarLessons talking about this, by the way, inversions versus voicings. So, in version is only describing which note is lower, voicing is telling you about the spread of note within the voicing itself, all right. So, after you know your triads, and you've dwelled into the the whole inversion paradigm, and maybe a bit of voicing, then you have to build your seventh chords. So, now since there's four notes, so 1, 3, 5 and 7, there's a wider variety of types of chords that have seven notes. So, in this case you have C, E, G, and B natural, that's called a C major 7, right? You've seen this on scores and on sheets all the time, but then there's also, C7, that's a dominant. I don't have enough fingers, welcome to the world of the guitar, you have to revert this, and this, and make it into a bar chord, for this to be playable, C minor 7, C minor 7 flat 5, C diminished 7th, C dominant 7 sharp 5, You know, there's all these sorts of things, So, it's good to just get a rudimentary understanding of what the basic seventh chords are. seven chords are? So, that would be the second thing I do, to recap the first, the third thing, So, to recap, the first thing, not the second thing, yeah. First thing is about scales, then build triads and chords, just as a rudimentary understanding of the intervals in between these notes. And an interval is the degree of distance, between notes. And then the third thing I would tell you, suggest you take a look at, is building progressions. So, building progressions is also, is it happening in harmony 101 or 102? I forget, but it's on your portal, you have access to this material. And also it's important to look at how, in the progressions, you don't just don't have a bunch of random chords, you have cords that pertain to a certain key. So, there are progressions, and there are for jazz progressions at least guide tones, so if you look at the progression of the third and sevenths, these degrees of chords, as you go through a progression, they work very well with everything you've seen, Comping 101, and Improv 101, et cetera. And also they tend to follow down, because tunes move in the cycle of fourths which is another topic of discussion on entirely. So, as you learn to build progressions, and look at progressions, you will start to identify them, as chords that pertain to a key. So, the word for this is, diatonic. When you say diatonic chords, I'm gonna play you the seven, seventh chords, that are diatonic to key of C major. For instance, you could do this simply by going C major 7. D minor 7, E minor 7, F major 7, G7, you know et cetera, you build all your chords. So those diatonic chords, you then number them which Roman number. So, one is I like "I" Roman, right? And two is II and three is III, and four is IV Roman, right? So, you identified those, and then once you reach... You identify your diatonic chords into key, you put a number to them, and then you identify a chord progression, so now you can say, what key is that in? Hint, look at the key signature at the top near the treble clef, and the other hint is look at the scale that is using the melody, like, "Look at that, this tune is in A flat, "Oh, it's all the things you are. "Oh, cool." Then you look at the chords and go, "Oh, these cores are in the key of A flat, "but I built them ahead of time." Okay. So then you might look at the Roman numbers of that progression and that's where you to get in the world of cadences. So, that the basic cadence we call them just, II-V-I. So there's II-chord, there's a V-cord, and there's a I-cord. If you look at the song, "All the Things You Are," for instance, it's in the key of A-flat, and the first chord you play is an F minor. All right cool, so F minor is VI, so VI Roman. So, it's VI, II, V, I, IV, VI-II-V-I-IV, it goes on the cycle, so it becomes really, really obvious after you've identified your diatonic chords that you start to identify the cadences. So a cadence is... Sorry neck, maybe it's just today. You identify the cadence, so the cadence is where you get the rest point of V-I, it's is like, "Oh we're resting "I" is a point of arrival. So, then you identify your cadences, now you identify the cycle, so this is a really good example of identifying a cycle and all the things you are, you go through the cycle, IV-VI-II-V-I, So, you were playing five chords that pertain to the key of A-flat major. A-flat major has seven chords in total, right? But there's two that we didn't play, because it didn't really fit in the progression yet, if you will. So, it was like, "Oh we're actually, "these five chords outline pretty "much super well to key of A-flat major." So, after you do this, you realize, "Oh, they're in a cycle." They appear in the same distance to each other, so that would be called a diatonic cycle, and a diatonic cycle can also be, it pertains to a key to a diatonic, but there is also a chromatic cycle, so a chromatic cycle would be go up a fourth. Up a fourth, I'm just gonna show you an example, a Joe Pass example, all these dominant chords they are played in the same sequence. So, as you build, so to recap again, "Scales," two, "building chords," then three, "Building Chord Progressions," how do chords move to from one to another? And the progressions of chords and the jazz language is really what we've covered and tailored in "Harmony 102 and 103." We wanna get you to understand, how do these chords, there's a chord here, and this happening, and then there's another chord, how do they connect? Why do they happen after one another, right? So, that's really the study of what you should be doing. So, identifying cycles, diatonic cycles, chromatic, non diatonic cycles, and then modulations. "All The Things You Are," is a prime example of this. and mind your key, yeah. So you hear, you know the song probably, if you don't go on YouTube, find it. So, we're resting on C major, but all the while told you these chords so have a II-V-I cadence in C major. So we had five chords pertaining to the key of A-flat major, A-flat, D-flat major, all right, and then we go, "Oh, there's a C major there." So, this is called a modulation, it's temporary, but we're going to another key. and we're going to another key by means of using a cadence in that key. So, we're using the II-V-I cadence and C major, right? So, that's a realm of things to explore, to know when, "Oh, now we're in the B, "the bridge section of the song, "and we're going to a totally different key." That's really important as well, and what you'll see in "Harmony 102 and 103" secondary Vs. So, how do you get to that next key? You're going to it through a cadence, so you have to say, "Well, even though I'm in the Key of C major, and then I see a chord that doesn't belong, and it's a E7, like, "Oh yeah, that E7 is helping me to go to A major" A major does not relate to C major, but that's just how the song is written, right? So, those are the tips I have for you for my 3 main so. So, those are the three biggies, if that's all the theory you see, meaning building scales, building chords, and building progressions, you'll be, what's that what's that American expression? You'll be really going to town, with that kind of stuff, right? Next, if you are looking, to really raise up your game and start to play with people that write music on paper, as in not just like progressions and not just tabs, you may start to read, I will do a short chat about this. Reading music is not for the faint of heart, but it's doable because, you know, people on sax or piano they don't deal with tabs to deal with, well, the music is written. So, there's two big components to writing music. There's the pitch component, which is in that direction, and then that horizontal direction is the length of time. Things are like, "Oh, are we going in? "Okay, sorry, screensaver." So, the time happens in subdivision. so a quarter note is one beat, an eight note is half a beat, right? So these things are easily understood, it's doing them on the fly, that's pretty challenging. So, if you want to go there for your own musical education it's not the stuff we covered on JazzGuitarLessons.net but I recommend you pick, I'm looking at my bookshelf right now, all of sudden, where's that book? "A Modern Method for Guitar" by Bill Leavitt, William Leavitt, Leavitt, Leavitt, Leavitt, yeah. "A Modern Method for Guitar," there's three volumes, in volume 1, you start with like, those are your fingers, and this is a staff, and whatever, and you start with C and you build your skill, and open notes, and it's super easy, but it goes to the deep end, as well on deconstructing the guitar, with scale positions and chord studies, and beautiful voicings, it's a really well-done book to be honest. So, that's how I learned to read, there's other means of doing it, but being confronted with these dotted quarters, and these 8 notes and these 16, it's really important to read them and to be able to do, it's not really easy, like I have to tell you, it's a lifelong process to read well, but that's when one of the things you might wanna look at. If you do write your own music, and you wanna do it in treble clef, no tabs, you use staff paper, one of the key crucial lessons to look at written music is a rhythm part, always ensure that you have a bar, and that you can see the middle. There is no way, I should... I can't right now, but I would share my screen with you, show you what I mean. So, when you have a bar 4/4, it's really important that you see "B3," that is not buried within a note. So, if you have a note, that's held over "B3" it's important to have a note here to tie it, into the next note. And namely you would not write a dotted quarter note followed by another dotted quarter note, although you see this in jazz, it's not a good example, but that, yeah, write down a quarter note followed by half note. You don't see, you have your quarter here, your half notes here, so it's two beats so you don't see where "B3" is happening. So whether you're writing in 3/4, 4/4, or 16/8 or whatever, or 12/8, it's really important that you see the middle of the bar, it really orients you, because we always think in in duple, we think in half and half, it really helps us. That's just a little guideline. Remember also to read music, that's not been written by guitarists for guitarists. If you want to get really good at reading, which I never did, by the way, I never got like really good. I got good, but like super good. Anyways, buy books of stuff that's not a guitar, buy like the second violin part from a Beethoven symphony, sit down and read it, yeah. Or flute stuff or whatever, it doesn't matter. Just be sure that you read things that were not idiomatic to guitar, or else you just wind up reading stuff, that's easy on guitar, right? There's a book called, "Rhythms Complete" by Bugs something that I'd also recommended snippets of 8 bars, which it shows you a rhythm, then you read in that rhythm, So, it's really easy or "Melodic Rhythm" by Bill Leavitt, Leavitt, as well, which is also another good resource, and the last thing I wanted to tell you is, you can practice reading as in reading, reading, but you can also practice sight reading, and practicing sight reading would be like that. Pick first violin in that Mozart symphony of sorts, bring it, read it, study the metronome and you read through, and you don't go back and correct your mistake, you sight read it, and then you're done. You close it, you don't look at it. Sight reading is a different beast than reading, because when you read, you get to go have multiple passes on the same thing until you got it, right? But sight reading is just the art of putting yourself in time, in tempo with no, no mercy, no mercy, just you and the sheet, right? So, that's a big, that's a big component. And where are we? So, right now, I just going to jot us down actually, to have good notes after. So, "Building Scales" is number 1, "Building Chords" is number 2, "Building Chord Progressions" is number 3 "Reading Music is number 4. And number 5, is "Learning Song Forms." So, it's really important that not only you play standards but also you understand that you have well, certain progressions, they call them standard progressions, like "Stella by Starlight" is a standard progression, "Giant Steps" is a standard progression. Now, it's really important that you look at the amount of bars and the amount of sections, and how songs are structured, because there's a lot of commonalities in between the song. So, I'll give you an example, "Rhythm Changes," So, "I Got Rhythm," has been used and reused and abused, as much as a 12-bar blues progression. there's countless 12-bar blues, right? So, the rhythm changes for instance, is an AABA form. And that AABA means that, all the A's are pretty much the same, well, we'd say the first A's slightly different, because it's going to repeat A, but the second A, and the last A, are pretty much similar in ending. And the B section, we call it the bridge, it's a contrasting, it goes to a different key. So, if you're looking at a song that's not "Rhythm Change," it might still be AABA form. It might be that the, A sections are 16 bars, instead of 8, that's possible. Another very common form is ABAC. Like you play the, A, have the B, you have the A again, then the C is like the ending. ABAC would be "Green Dolphin Street" would be a good example. You have songs that are say like, "Stella by Starlight" ABCA prime. We say A prime, because it resembles how the A has started but it finishes differently. You see, there's all these kinds of forms that you have to get accustomed with that are macro and not micro in terms of outlook on how chords go to another. So, it's much easier to rehearse things when you can break them down and segmented. That's one of my, well, one of my key tips in learning anything, at least, it's divided and conquer. If it's a big chunk, look at the first little thing, and then work on this until it makes sense, and then work on each individual part, and then put the put it all together at the end. That's how my brain, at least. All right, slowly but surely losing my voice, so, let's just move on, so, learn forms. Learning forms is really important, not only for learning more songs faster, but also playing with other musicians, people do get lost, just be really mindful, especially when you're playing AABA forms. People will do AABA, then you're wrapping up, you're going back to A, but there's two A here. So AA and the B and A, so think about it. when you do this one, it means you have three As in a row, that messes up people to a point where people often would go AAB, AAB, AAB, you hear this at like college jam sessions, people mess up the form, and that's okay. You have to make those mistakes but just be mindful of learning your forms correctly. All right, but what else? Oh, okay, Number 6 yeah. One tip I have for you is it's good to be comping like a really good jazz guitarist, learning the chords, learning the guide tones, doing voicings that do not contain the bass note, that that's really important but also walking bass and walking chords. I saw, that's a personal experience as well, I saw a guy comping for sax solo, just, I think it was Rico, you know, Rico, the Reeds for saxophone, and it was in New York. And there were three saxophones saying, I'm gonna demonstrate this Rico Reed. This is a hard one, So, there were probably three sax players just showing off their chops, but also showing how the reeds sounded differently. And like, "We need someone." So, there's this professional New York cat who just showed up and played chords of blues. I'm like, "Oh, I know the blues." But then he started to do all these things, right? The guy, certainly did not go like, he did not do that, which is what I would have done at that point. I was, maybe I was like 21. The guy went like, all right, 3/4, See, I'm doing a little bit of maybe doing walking boards and walking base. So, there is something to be said about becoming a very proficient at accompanist that I covered in a few blog posts on this platform, but I don't cover at length in any of the modules, and this thing is just to become a very broad, not just a specialist of chord in the versions, like on your top strings, but be able to use all of that vocabulary that you have, and walking cords as part of this walking base. So playing, so you gonna walk chords, but you can walk just the base, and then pluck chords once in a while, there was some of that on the website, as well, in some of your modules, probably the "Chord to Melody" modules, I forget. There's just so much stuff on the website at this point. So, become a good accompanist just overall, that's the theory of it, and the theory is just learn it, grab... All right, Randy Vincent's "Three-Note Voicings" it's a book it's Sher publishing S-H-E-R, Chuck Sher publisher. Randy Vincent's book is brilliant, because there's a lot of that stuff like the walking base, the walking chords style, and it shows you alternatives to comp on, "Blues" and on "Rhythm Changes," and stuff like that. I know it's supposed to be a theory, a theory masterclass, but the point all theory here is like, well, there's a theory to being a good accompanist, which is beyond, the progression does not change, it's the same progression, it's just how you ornament around it, and it's not more Flat Nines, and more of this, more of that, it's just like being a very smart accompanist, and making use of that. So, check this out, about by Randy Vincent. All right, number 7, Theory Caveat, another caveat. If you start to analyze things in the same way we would analyze a Mozart Sonata, and you take blues or gospel or blues orange or jazz, it's not gonna make sense, always. When there's a bluesiness factor to it, when there's a blue scale or whatever, you start to analyze, it's like, "Hmm, no." It doesn't work, I mean that's totally okay. Because like who wants to analyze Tower Power? It's like, "Yeah, you know, backbeat, it's sounds good." So, just be mindful that the theory of things, as far as classical theory, it has certain limitations, and we've employed that old classical system to describe what happened in jazz music. Although say, if you look at the "Charlie Parker Omnibook," there's not even phrasing markings, so we didn't even take it to that extent. Like, well, listen to how it sounds, and it's written and then grab it, you'll figure out where the phrase start and phrase ends. Remember that the phrasing marking in classical music are telling you when to "breathe" So, even the violinist is like, "Here's the beginning of a phrase, the end of the phrase." So, there's a lot of... It's also how to tell you to slur notes, there's all kinds of sorts of things happening in classical notation, which as jazz guys, would go like, "Yeah, the chord symbol is that, yeah, all right. "It's a G major or something all right, all right." And then, all the melodies that like "So Long," it's sorta clear, we'll grab it by ear anyways, because that's how even big bands work. They learn a thing and then like, "Okay, that's written that way. "Now, let's just all learn to breathe at the same time." It's more like that, like they can't account basis stuff, right? It's more like that than it is about the paper. So just be mindful, that's my caveat. Whenever you come to analyze, and look, even look at a chord progression to a 12-bar blues, say you do the very basic, basic basic chord progression to 12-bar blues, you have three dominant chords, and it's the I the IV and the V. That's a very basic 12-bar blues. So, it's more cultural and idiomatic, than it is fitting that a concept, of how to explain music theory in a broad sense. So just be mindful of that, right? It's just a little caveat. Don't overanalyze, blues and jazz, to an extent because it's not going to make sense, it doesn't. In functional harmony, so functional harmony is where you have cadences, and resolution points, whatever, although for a modern jazz often these are in there, but they're hidden, very, with a lot of craft, and a lot of wisdom, you still get a resolution to a cadence, but there's a spin and a pivot in a certain other way. So, that's just my caveat. And last but not least. And of course now shameless self-promotion, all of these things are difficult, and especially the eighth, the number 8 point for this masterclass, that I don't wanna cover, and this point is you need to learn the vocabulary of the bebop legends, if you want to become a great jazz guitarist. So, this is what I do personally, with my coaching students my mentoring students, I work with a handful of people, like literally not like dozens, and there's just a few people. And I mentor them through my own, I would say my secret recipe, but I build for every one of them, I build a blueprint, to take their playing to the next level, so speaking of which, if you haven't done so already, feel free to book a call with me, it's totally free of charge, and we'll just get on the phone, and just discuss how I can can map out a custom plan for you to take your playing to the next level. And see if we could implement my strategy for taking those students to the next level together. It's totally free, so go to nextlevel.jazzguitarlessons.net nextlevel.jazzguitarlessons.net book a call, and we'll talk, we'll see how it's going, my students and that side of the program that work with me directly have done 6 to 8 months minimum on the Jazz Guitar Mastery program. So, if you're watching this you are towards the mid of your year in your 1st year of mastery program, it means that you're probably a fit for that, depending on how high and how fast you wanna take your knowledge. So, that ties into my eighth point, which is, you want to improvise like a serious jazz guitarist. You will need to go ahead and learn the vocabulary of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and the likes. Simply because you will, agree with me, if you've been listening to jazz for a certain amount of time, you will hear two improvisers, and one of them sounds good, but not great, and he's somehow playing all the correct scales and progressions in arpeggios, and you're the one sounds like a real jazz player. Chances are when it tastes like jazz, when it it's like, "Oh yeah that's jazz," because there's a bebop component to it. All right, so let me just put a bit of a historical perspective on this. Bebop is the common era of jazz music, and by common era, I mean, not necessarily the golden era, although we could say it's both, the common era in classical music is Mozart, and Haydn, and Beethoven. So, if you hear something and you go, "Oh that sounds like classical music." Is because there is a part of that classical era. Mozart was born in 1756, I think. So, think late 18th century, so 1700s between 1750 and 1800, there's these composers that were born and were prolific Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart. And also what's interesting is J.S. Bach passed in 1750. So, it's like Bach is like, all right, he encapsulated and formalized and digested and synthesized the language of Baroque music, and that Baroque is a thing of the past. So, you know, Renaissance music and Baroque music, and classical music have common points, but certainly classical, the classical era was a departure from that, because it was a departure from a Baroque and Renaissance, because it was simpler, the elegance was in simplicity, and it was more tonely oriented, musician started to get better at their instrument that their craft and the technology started to evolve to build, I don't like clarinets, and things like that. So sorry, I digress because I'm a, I wouldn't say I'm a history buff, but I like these things. So, if you listen to classical and you'd go, "Oh, that sounds like classical music." Because there's some elements of Mozart in there. So, if you listen to jazz today, you hear someone improvising and you go, "Oh, that sounds jazzy." It's because there's a certain element of Charlie Parker in there. All right, that's my takeaway. So you, in theory, should study that language as well. Bebop is the perfect language to study, because it contains everything, contains all the chromatic variations, melodically, harmonically, a lot of the Rhythmic activation. so, things are displaced, whenever, and it's a language that's been formalized, and adopted and studied by many. Not to discourage you, the theory of it is pretty simple to understand, after you got your II-Vs, you got your major and minor scales, Mm, you know, all right. And the trick, the difficulty will be in playing that stuff. So in the theory of it, I'd say just after you learned your "Summertime," and "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Stella by Starlight," go ahead and learn the "Ornithology" an the "Confirmation" and the "Freight Train" and the "Oleos," and I don't know, too many, Donald Lee, you know all these songs, just because something happened there, right? And I know it's supposed to be a theory masterclass, but as far as becoming a complete jazz guitarist that's the point where you say, "Oh, that's a language." And I transcended the language. Like I like to say in my vlogs, it's one thing to be of that language, and to master it, but then you need to transcend it, to tell a story, same way a literature author, would need to transcend grammar to tell the story. The story is much more important than which words and which sentence, and how the subject and verb were... That didn't ruin that, but it's stylistic, but the story's really important. So that's what you're looking to do, as a complete jazz guitar. It's to understand in theory, on paper that language, and to really internalize the rhythms, the chord progressions and the melodic components, and lyrics and phrases from that era. So, I think that's my 8th point, and I will leave it at that. So, quick recap, we addressed 8 points in that masterclass, and I'm telling you those are my suggestions for you to further study, to become a completely knowledgeable jazz guitarist. I went over a caveat and I said, "Well, you have to keep some distance "between your knowledge and your playing." Don't fall in the trap of just going through understanding everything. There's parts of it that do not make sense, as I said, in my 7th point. All right, so number 1, I said; learn to build your skills understand the intervallic structure of whole steps and half steps. Number 2, I said; learn to build chords, triads and seven chords to learn the intervallic components of building these things vertically. Number three, I told you; look at the chord progressions. So, progressions, including your guide tones, identify your diatonic chords, identify the chord cadences, II-V-I, is a example of a cadence. Chord cycles; diatonic and non-diatonic, modulations to different keys, by different means such as secondary dominance and secondary, II-V and II-V-I interpolation, also known as like tonicization. Tonicization, it's like tonicize, is that a verb? I don't know. So you look at the target chord, you make it your new tonic, and then you aim there through a cadence like a II-V. That was my 3rd point, 4th point, reading. So, that's bit of theory, but make sure you see the middle of the bar, if you're reading or writing any music down. 5; study your forms, the typical forms, AABA, ABAC, ABAB, so we'll just AB, with different lengths, of different bars. I forgot about this. So number 5; study, Brazilian music, the Bossa Nova stuff, the Jobim stuff. There's a lot of interesting forms, that are like, "Oh, it's like AABA." But then, "Oh, the B section is 12 bars." You know, there's all these sorts of things. Number 6; I told you about becoming a broader accompanist learn walking base, learn the theory of it, learn walking chord style, and just instead of being stuck in... Well, you want to become a one man band. Right, you wanna be behind a sax player, behind a singer, and just be complete on your own. That's the theory of it. Sorry about that. Number 7; just you'll find a lot of places where the theory music is NA, non-applicable blues, gospel, some jazz, R&B music, sometimes it's pop music. Take theory would have grain of salt, to remember that it's a system we built, after the fact to understand the stuff we were doing, on our instrument that we found sounded good. And number 8th, don't forget, study the language of bebop. All right, so that's it for this masterclass, I hope you have enjoyed the series of masterclasses we have on this program, which are there's 6, right? That's the 6th one, but there's a tremendous amount of knowledge, and stuff for you to use, the jam sessions, album... All right, sorry about the cutoff guys, so don't forget to go back and use your jam sessions, your album deep dives, your 20 modules with your concierge week by week stuff, as well as any inner circle, live sessions, and all the stuff we have on YouTube, and on Facebook and on the vlog. Once again, my name is Mark from JazzGuitarLessons.net, you can reach me directly at [email protected]. Send me an email or you can comment below any of the videos you will find on this platform. On that note, I wish you a happy success with your jazz guitar learnings. Keep me posted, if you have any questions, I'll see you soon on the website. Take care.
