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The Jazz Guitar Handbook: A Complete Course in All Styles of Jazz
The Jazz Guitar Handbook is a step-by-step guide to jazz guitar playing. It takes you from the basics through to advanced harmony and soloing concepts, and teaches you the music theory a jazz guitarist needs to know. Along the way it covers a wide range of styles, including jazzy blues, swing, bebop, modal, jazz-funk, Gypsy, and more. The handbook features over 120 exercises in notation and tab and includes a 96-track CD of examples, play-alongs, and backing tracks. It also presents the history of the jazz guitar and its great players. Easy to use and useful for players at various levels, this volume is a must-have reference for players looking to expand their jazz skillset.
268 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 22, 2018
Excellent, essential; here's why:
It passes the cd listening test: Take any instructional music book and play the cd--skip any tracks that are just scales or arpeggios--are there tracks left over that are interesting and sound good? Do the tracks sound like real music? If you close your eyes can you picture overhearing this music in a club? Many books fail this simple test, and you shouldn't waste your time studying stuff that isn't going to sound interesting to play. You will quit out of boredom first. Rod Fogg's Jazz Guitar Handbook should be called the Jazz Guitar Music Handbook because it is chock full of good, decent music.
The Good:
-The book contains an encyclopedia of styles, and contains many 32 bar compositions to practice and learn, and all the backing track tabs are provided, so one can jam and practice play rhythm and lead!
-All chords and pentatonic patterns are given with their scale positions annotated (R,2,3,4,etc) so users can get started on thinking about how theory applies to novel chord shapes and patterns.
The Bad:
Sadly there are some chord diagram mistakes, e.g. p.72, the third chord shape is just a reprint of the second chord shape (spanning frets 5 to 7) whereas it should be spanning frets 7 to 9--the correct can be found on p. 54. Also, the C7 chord on p. 98 should be tabbed as x3535x instead of x3636x. And some of the strings that should be muted are implied, but not consistently indicated, e.g., p. 96, second row of diagrams. Overall, these are minor issues, and if the reader would be hoodwinked by these hiccups then that reader isn't ready to work through this book.
Who this book is for: Ideal reader will be an intermediate guitarist with a basic understanding of music theory. While there is introductory material, the book is challenging both conceptually and musically; but that's the price of entry to a book where even the demo tunes sound interesting and worthwhile.
It passes the cd listening test: Take any instructional music book and play the cd--skip any tracks that are just scales or arpeggios--are there tracks left over that are interesting and sound good? Do the tracks sound like real music? If you close your eyes can you picture overhearing this music in a club? Many books fail this simple test, and you shouldn't waste your time studying stuff that isn't going to sound interesting to play. You will quit out of boredom first. Rod Fogg's Jazz Guitar Handbook should be called the Jazz Guitar Music Handbook because it is chock full of good, decent music.
The Good:
-The book contains an encyclopedia of styles, and contains many 32 bar compositions to practice and learn, and all the backing track tabs are provided, so one can jam and practice play rhythm and lead!
-All chords and pentatonic patterns are given with their scale positions annotated (R,2,3,4,etc) so users can get started on thinking about how theory applies to novel chord shapes and patterns.
The Bad:
Sadly there are some chord diagram mistakes, e.g. p.72, the third chord shape is just a reprint of the second chord shape (spanning frets 5 to 7) whereas it should be spanning frets 7 to 9--the correct can be found on p. 54. Also, the C7 chord on p. 98 should be tabbed as x3535x instead of x3636x. And some of the strings that should be muted are implied, but not consistently indicated, e.g., p. 96, second row of diagrams. Overall, these are minor issues, and if the reader would be hoodwinked by these hiccups then that reader isn't ready to work through this book.
Who this book is for: Ideal reader will be an intermediate guitarist with a basic understanding of music theory. While there is introductory material, the book is challenging both conceptually and musically; but that's the price of entry to a book where even the demo tunes sound interesting and worthwhile.
June 4, 2017
The book is Perfect for Beginner and Intermediate Guitarists aiming to learn how to play Jazz and it's not bad for a reference book either but there are better reference books out there.
July 14, 2015
The book is ok, but not great. The theory descriptions are sparse and not very helpful. The most helpful thing about the book is the included CD, which can prove really helpful for people like me that have a difficult time interpreting/understanding the rhythmic portion of sheet music. There's a lot of explanation of techniques and specific examples from selected passages, but so far has done little to explain broader concepts and how to apply ideas generally. I'll update my review when and if further reading changes my opinion.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews