Hey guys! I’m someone you could call a metal guitarist. I’ve been playing guitar for a few years now, but this year I got really into jazz after hearing Coltrane for the first time — I fell in love deeply. Then I discovered greats like Mahavishnu Orchestra and the whole Jazz Fusion genre, which really inspired me to dive deeper into learning the theory and the craft.

This is the first jazz standard I’ve learned by ear. My theory knowledge isn’t super advanced yet, but since I live in Poland and public music school is tuition-free here, I’m thinking about auditioning. Next year is pretty much my last chance due to the age limit (I’m 22 now).

It’s my first time improvising over a jazz standard and I’m still figuring things out, so I wanted to ask the experts here for some feedback! Am I moving in the right direction?

I have been playing more jazz focused for the last half a year or so. I am transcribing and playing solos but i feel its not seeping into my improvisation enough. What can i do if not just transcribe and play more

Also i know i have to improve on repeating ideas more and leaving more room to breathe.

Any additional thoughts/ helpful exercises?

For such a simple tune this took a lot of effort for me to work up. Hopefully it gets easier the more I do it. I know I flubbed that Dm a bit. And I’m not even sure if that chromatic walk down fits in time… I also threw in some tritone substitutions for some of the dominant chords. All in all I’m honestly feeling super discouraged with my playing when it comes to jazz. I’m totally getting my ass kicked with school, but hopefully it’s like a no pain no gain thing? I dunno, but some feedback would be helpful! Thanks

Merhaba, su son zamanlar bossa nova tarziyla ugrasiyorum ve iyi bir ilerleme kat ettigimi soyleyebilirim. Jazz gitarla aram iyidir akorlara ve genelikle ritim kismina hakimim. Onceden funk tarzi genreler ile ugrastim, ama su aralar daha fazla akustik gitara yoneldim ilk basta ne kadarda klasik muzikte ilerlesemde kendimi pek o civarda bulamadim, ballad,bossa nova,gypsy jazz tarzi jazz turlerini zorlanmadan calabiliyorum. Biraz fazla bos zamanim oluyor. Ama bir turlu hangi konservatuari okiyacigimi bilemedim, biraz arastirma yaptim ve von amsterdam,sibelius Helsinki tarzi avrupada baktim ama pek icim isinmadi turkiyede baktim ama pek emin degilim . Onerisi olan varsa

There’s this one Ted Green video on YouTube where he plays we’re off to see the wizard and it’s absolutely phenomenal because of course it is but for the life of me I can’t find it anymore. It’s just like a minute section of a much longer lesson videos. Anybody know this one?

Practice w/ Me Ep. 9: Long time no post

Work had to take priority, but I’m finding my way back to jazz standards. Here’s some playing around the tune, Along Came Betty.

One thing Ive noticed in some amateur players that don't transcribe is a lack of swing feel. They can have good technique, know the changes, and play the right notes and it still not sound right. Not something anyone is dying to hear again. To me that is often undeveloped swing feel.

One of the ways jazz musicians traditionally learned to swing was by imitating the swing feel of better players. They'd learn something from a recording or from a player in real life, and by doing so they would also learn to swing like that player. Swing music was the popular music of the day, people lived it. Regular audience members would clap to 2 and 4 intuitively. People danced to swing music, they felt it in their bones. This evolved into many different generations of jazz, and there are many different ways to swing. But I heard Sheryl Bailey describe swing feel as the heartbeat. "And if your heart ain't beating, your dead!"

In 2026 is this no longer the case. The average person is almost entirely disconnected from any music that swings. You will not learn to swing by accident, you have to immerse yourself in the music and try to recreate that feeling. You can do this without transcribing but I think that's taking the long way around. But if you've worked at this for a long time and still don't think you sound right, consider taking a look at your swing feel and see where you are. I've met multiple players that have taken learning to play jazz very seriously for years that cannot swing for shit. And as a result they don't sound good. I feel like this is rarely discussed online, as how you experience the groove is very individualistic and hard to teach. But it's one of the most important aspects of sounding like a great player. I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts/disagreements.

Just wanted to share my live solo arrangement paying homage to John Coltrane's October 1960 quartet version. Done entirely in real-time using two-handed tapping, fingerpicking, and foot percussions. No loops or backtracks used.

I’m looking at buying a mid 90ies Heritage H575, which I really like but I haven’t had a chance to try it amplified yet.
I know these have the old Schaller pickups, I’ve read mixed opinions on these. How are they?

Hi all. I’ve seen a lot of love for DV Mark’s Jazz amps, in particular the Little Jazz and the Jazz 12. I haven’t seen much at all about the 2x12 combo in the series. I have the opportunity to buy either an older Jazz 12 with the fan some people complain about or a newer 212 with the quieter fan. Anyone have any thoughts? Has anyone played the 212 in particular? Why isn’t there more feedback about the 2x12?

Hi there!
A wonderful solo by Dexter Gordon arranged for Jazz guitar.

My whole ambition since I started playing guitar as a kid was to make my own music. And I’ve always had fun doing that and put the work in for sometimes several hours a day for a decade or so. Whether it was playing in a band or jamming with friends or for an audience of one. I was no slouch when it came to practicing or learning theory as an adolescent. Recently, I’ve been wanting to make my sound more interesting by learning some jazz theory. And initially it unlocked so many doors for me and really expanded my playing.

But now I’m over analyzing everything. Probably due to my precociousness as a tow headed boy that needed to know how and why everything works. And I’m spending more time thinking about theory or watching dumb jazz theory videos rather than making music.

Can anyone here relate to this? Is this just a wall I need to break through? Would learning every single intricacy and perspective about music even make me a better musician?

TL;DR I want these ideas in my bag so I can utilize them, but I don’t want to optimize so much that I forget why I even like making music.

I've been learning jazz piano for the last two ish years and i've been finding youtube channels/creators such as open studio, jeremy siskind and noah kellman to be really valuable, and I'm looking for some similar channels and creators geared towards jazz guitar.

I've had a lot really good educational style jazz guitar videos show up on my reels feed, but I've really been struggling trying to find good long-form content on youtube. Any suggestions?

Sometimes simple melodies can be nice :)

Recently I've been seeing more and more comments on this topic that state something like 'no great improviser thinks like that'. They are almost always made in a very dismissive and authoritative manner. They pose that chord/scale theory is largely useless and imposed by academia. You can also find videos of people like Barry Harris saying that he 'have never heard of Dorian' and Cecil Alexander saying you don't really 'need scales to improvise'. A lot of people seem to support these ideas and even more people seem to just repeat what they heard.

The point I'd like to make is that it's not all black and white and at least for some players there's definitely some value to be extracted from c/s approach. I get that a lot of people had some bad experience with flawed Berklee method. Obviously if you going to think D Dorian, G Mixolydian, C Ionian over diatonic ii V I in C you're going to have a bad time. But that's where your critical thinking comes in to absorb the useful stuff and to disregard the rest. To say/think that a modern player's language is purely lick-based or imply that they operate on some 'higher plane of understanding' and 'simply play what they hear' 100% of the time is either disingenuous or ignorant IMO. Yes they're not playing scales (sometimes they do, lol) but to just assume they are not relating the stuff they play to some kind of tonal or modal framework is kind of ridiculous. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet to say that overwhelming majority of notable players post Coltrane had a solid understanding of diatonic modes, melodic minor modes, diminished scale etc. For a real life example take a look at some exercises that Kurt Rosenwinkel shows at his masterclasses, how exactly are you going to contextualize this stuff without relating it to c/s? Yes exercises and improvisation are not the same, but if you strive for that level of playing and understanding of your instrument, that is certainly something to consider. And to discourage people who are just starting out from investigating c/s relationships completely is not cool IMO.

Anyway, rant is over I guess. I'm just a nobody on Reddit, bla bla.

Favilla Archtop

Solid top Parallel top bracing 25.797 (655mm) scale length 40s period hardware

It's seen a lot of play...

Here is a long-distance collaboration with my friend Rob MacKillop reading one of his poems titled On the Edge of Sound. Rob's black and white still-photography, a series on "electricity" makes for an ethereal sequence of images for my videography. Rob and I may not likely ever meet in the real world, but here in the timeless space of digital connectivity, our collaboration speaks to the asynchronous era we inhabit. #jazzguitar #guitar #jazz #SoloGuitar #poems

I went to see Jesse van Ruller live today, and there was a tune in the middle of the set that I really loved, but I can’t figure out what it was called.
It sounds familiar, so I suspect it might be a jazz standard. I’ve attached a video clip — does anyone recognize it?