Preparing to Jam
Jamming Ammo
- Secret weapons
- Call and Response
- Building up phrases
- Expanding the scale
- Moving positions
- Jamming around positions
Playing Techniques
Preparing to Jam - Lead Ideas
Listening to the guitar solo in Masquerade, we can hear one of the elements of jazz guitar playing that helps to characterise its style - namely the use of octaves. We will now learn how to play them and use them.
We know that the scale to use is F harmonic minor.
First off we will learn to play the scale on the strings 6, 5 and 4:
After learning to play the scale on the strings 6, 5 and 4 we can build octaves upon each of those notes:
Record yourself playing the chord progression with a metronome or simple drum backing, but record the track slower than the original.
Whilst you play the rhythm track back to yourself on a tape or CD player you can practice the octaves in time with the main beat. Try these out:
- Play the octaves ascending and descending.
- Move across the strings using any interval.
- Slide between different notes on the same strings.
Now it's time to improvise! Don't panic, just play the rhythm track again and move between any of the octaves on any of the strings. Slide between them, move across the strings, repeat the notes, add staccato and dynamics and use different rhythm. In short just explore the sound. Try to remain laid back and carefree, don't worry about notes that sound awkward - after all it is jazz!
Once you are relaxed with the octaves you can go on to learn the scale over the entire fret board. This will allow you to add single line riffs and other technique such as bends, hammer and pull-offs. You can see you in the Playing Techniques section. Then the only task left is to combine together the octaves and the single line riffs.
You can also go a step further and use these two scales, but you will have to experiment a lot to realise where they fit best.
