Description
As a bassguitar teacher for almost 20 years now I have noticed that most advanced bassplayers have the tendency to play either "thinking" and "seeing". What I mean is: they look at a part and see, let's say, a C minor chord. Immediatly there is an association with the graphic on the neck like in little flashes. Or a complete scale. And they SEE all the options. But these options are often played randomly. So theoretically their lines are right but they sound bizar. It is because their knowledge of these graphics is not connected to the main thing: The Ear!
Gary Willis has written the method that I would have loved to have written. In this method he connects the ear to the knowledge that very often is already there. Finally someone wrote the book in which the basis of good improvisation is explained. Thanks Gary, this is gonna be my bible!

Pages: 64
Year: 2008
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Description
I have never played funk music before - thanks to this book, now I have a clue and I'm having fun playing along with the tracks on the CD of this outstanding method. The exercises are truly useful and build gradually your funk chops from the scratch (no pun intended).
The book is much easier if you already know about dominant chords, but it does not require advanced playing.
Verry fun and instructive! A great book!

Pages: 32
Year: 2001
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Description
Vol 1:Complete Jazz Guitar Method: Beginning Jazz Guitar

Anyone with a knowledge of basic chords and guitar scale fingerings can dig right in and start learning to play jazz right away. Spanning from the major scale and basic triad theory all the way up to extended chords and the modes, this book features a full-length etude or song to go with every new concept introduced. Beginning Jazz Guitar breaks the age-old tradition of dry, intimidating and confusing jazz books, and provides an actual step-by-step and enjoyable method for learning to play in this style.
Clearly organized into easily mastered segments, each chapter is divided into separate lessons on harmony or improvisation. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the CD demonstrates the examples in the book.

Vol 2:Complete Jazz Guitar Method: Intermediate Jazz Guitar

This book is great for guitarists who have learned the basics of jazz harmony and improvisation. Topics include the ii-V-I progression, creating solo lines, altered chord formulas, and comping in different jazz feels such as Latin, swing, ballad, and even funk. Continuing in the format of Beginning Jazz Guitar, every new concept is accompanied by etudes and songs for practice, and every chapter is clearly divided into lessons on harmony and improvisation. Packed with literally hundreds of chord voicings and improv ideas, this book is a must for any serious student of jazz guitar. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the CD demonstrates the examples in the book.

Vol 3:Complete Jazz Guitar Method: Chord/Melody

Your guitar becomes the ultimate jazz solo instrument when you master the techniques and concepts in this book. Picking up where the harmony lessons in Intermediate Jazz Guitar leave off, topics include melody and harmony integration, bass line development, chord enhancement, quartal harmonies, and how to arrange a guitar solo. Learn to simultaneously play the harmony, melody, rhythm, and bass parts of any song! Concepts are illustrated with lots of examples to practice, including arrangements of some traditional melodies. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the CD demonstrates the examples in the book.

Vol 4:Complete Jazz Guitar Method: Improvisation

Expand the boundaries of your knowledge and improvisation skills with this exciting book, which picks up where the improv lessons in Intermediate Jazz Guitar leave off. Topics include improvising over altered dominant chords, the diminished scale, the whole-tone scale, targeting the altered chords, revamping licks, modes of the minor scales and more! Loaded with easy-to-read scale diagrams and example phrases, this book is packed with essential information for the improvising jazz guitarist. All music is shown in standard notation and TAB, and the CD demonstrates the examples in the book.

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Description
While "Jazz Guitar Technique," Andrew Green's first book, (highly recommended) covers many facets of jazz guitar playing, "Jazz Guitar Structures" is focused on the process of solo line development. "Jazz Guitar Structures" provides a detailed approach to building improvised jazz lines using short identifiable structures. Anyone familiar with Andrew Green's first book, "Jazz Guitar Technique," knows that he is concise and direct in delivering information. This new book also includes a CD that demonstrates many of the lines in the book with bass & piano rhythm section accompaniment.

This book details an approach that includes hearing, facility and visualization exercises by which the reader gains experience in hearing and applying familiar melodic figures to most chord types. This approach really helps to reduce the seemingly huge amount of material that one can feel confronted with when working at jazz improvisation. This is not a book of licks or stylistic examples. Rather, it is a detailed approach to making the greatest use of short melodic structures. What excites me is that this approach, once mastered, will enable a person to fully develop many, many uses for melodic structures as they come into one's musical consciousness. As a student of improvisation, I have read interviews with the masters where one will refer to hearing one of her or his favorite players apply an idea in many different contexts. I am quite sure that "Jazz Guitar Structures" provides a method with which to do that. This is excellent material.

Pages: 136
Year: 2004
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Description
This is a great book. However, I should warn some, you'll need the appropriate mindset to get anything out of it. There's really not much theory in here. Basically it's ALL technique. Excercises designed to strengthen left and right hands separately and then putting them together.

At first when I got this book, I kind of skipped around to the stuff I liked practicing better -- more along the picking excersizes for right hand and cross picking. I found the first chapter on just left hand REALLY TEDIOUS. Basically it's lots hammers and pulls in various patterns all over the fretboard. The pull-offs I found especially tedious and difficult.

I got some speed up in the picking, but really discovered that I could only get so far because I was finding that feeling what my left hand fingers were doing was rather muddy. Then I went back to chapter 1 on the left hand and really concentrated on it.

First off, it hurts! Which is good! If you're hurting, you're using new muscles and you're beginning to teach those muscles how to move. I found that after only a few days I was getting a LOT better at hammering and pulling all over the neck and also the finger muscles were getting stronger. Also, synchronizatiion with fast picking was getting better. Now, I'm mostly concentrating on left hand technique and seeing a lot of improvement.

When I first mentioned the right mindset, what I meant was some of you may find practicing this stuff BORING. You're not going to be ripping melodic solos with these excersizes, the concentration is on TECHNIQUE. If you can't play some of this simple stuff fast amd clean, how can you expect to play a real solo fast and clean? Your mindset has to be to make the exercises interesting so you can get over the hump. Once you start seeing improvement, it will naturallty become more interesting. What helps a lot is a metronome. You can make it kind of a game with yourself too see how fast you can set the tempo and still play clean, and then go back and forth between slow and fast.

I also have Paul Hanson's "Shred Guitar". That book is more along the lines of presenting a chord progression and then analysizing the progression a bit and then covering a bunch of licks for each progression. You'll get more immediate soloing out of that book, but IMO, in terms of basic mechanics for speed, Stetina'ws book is much better. Getting both books wouldn't be a bad idea.

For what it's worth, I've been playing guitar over about 30 years although I went through several years without picking up my guitar at all. I played a lot my first 10 or so years, but really stopped progressing after a while. I just wanted to play stuff, not practice. I can tell you from experience, if you don't have a good practice methodology, you'll never get better. I picked up the guitar again about a year ago and now concentrate mostly on HOW I play, not WHAT. It makes a real difference. Also, I don't much like heavy metal. Both this and "Shred" focus on metal, but don't let that deter you from buying these books as there's plenty in here that is universally applicable.

Pages: 80
Year: 1992
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