I've got plenty of thoughts on the theft accusation our friend has leveled against me but I'll just let that be so as not to stir up a flame war. I'd rather send Mr. Baker or his descendants some money than some nebulous company who happened to scoop up a bunch of old copyrights they probably don't even know they own. Is a book from 1955 even still protected material?

It still in print so there are copyright issues. And who knows, maybe the Baker family get some of the royalties, I have no idea. The point is though, books like this are commonly found in libraries so I'm not sure how much difference there is morally between taking it out of the library and reading it on Scribd. Printing yourself out a copy is a different matter, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Furthermore, I bet most of the people who would moralize about you reading copyrighted material on Scribd think nothing of listening to or watching copyrighted material on YouTube.

just to be clear - the majority of my original post was suggestions of books that I've found helpful in my studies. I offered, I thought helpfully, that downloading copyrighted material is a frowned up, ok, I did call it pirating, but it is, so I was not in error on that point. I also pointed out that you could purchase a copy, I believe it is still under $10.

It was your response that caused me to respond more vehemently.

To turn a phrase, I don't feel too badly about it either.
 
There is a very big difference between borrowing a book, and then returning it, and downloading it. If you really don't see the difference well, that's on you. Are you really going to destroy your download after you've checked it out? You certainly gave the impression that you weren't.
 
The comment on YouTube is a very interesting one... I don't know many folks that knowingly search out copyrighted material on Youtube. There are too many avenues that protect the copyright holders. But I am pretty sure I've watched stuff I did not know was protected.
 
The Internet has, intentionally or not, blurred some of the lines. I watched a performance the other night, shot by a friend of the performer, whom I guarantee has covered all his bases, but did he have the right to put a recording of his performance on YouTube? I do not know, and I do not know if he considered it.

I think that's a very different case from knowingly downloading something that you can purchase legally, and easily, and for not a lot of money, and then not only rationalizing it, but admitting you don't care.

Copyright law is not perfect! It does not adequately cover resale, for just one example. And it doesn't even come close to covering software. I rent it? I license it? While I certainly understand that Cakewalk, or any developer, needs to earn a return on their investment, I find a lot of these arguments to be very difficult to comprehend.

But it is all that we have at the moment... we ought to respect the rules we have while we try to shape them for the internet age. The fact that it has not caught up with technology is not a reason to ignore it.

And back to guitar - the teacher that introduced me to the Mickey Baker books also introduced me to Clarinet method books. It turns out that the clarinet covers about the same range as the guitar (or vica-versa), and scale and arpeggio studies, while not terribly musically interesting, make outstanding exercises. It terms of plain old physical technique I think you'd be hard pressed to find a more efficient avenue of study.

I pushed back a bit when he put those arpeggios in front of me (I was a teen-ager, I was supposed to push back<G>) but the improvement in both left and right hand agility and accuracy was almost immediate, and obvious even to me. Some of the chord changes (GM7 to GM6 with the root on the sixth string) that I wrestled with literally fell under my fingers.

The other exercise, chord specific, that you might want to consider is to build the chords on any four strings, and then move them up and down the neck. I've only seen this explained explicitly in one place, but it has become a staple of my own teaching, and you will find oblique references to it in a number of books that focus on learning the neck. Start with a dominant 7 and find all the ways to play in on the first four strings. Now modify it to the more common 4 note chords (Maj7, Maj6, Min7, Min6, 7Sus4, 7sus2, add9, etc. don't overlook the diminished and half diminshed sevens) Once you get those down then you can start experimenting with voicings of more complex chords, and all the fun of figuring out which notes to drop.

The logical conclusion from that will be the three string comp'ing a la Grant Green and others. I know some teachers that use the three string chords as a device to teach the neck, but most of my students struggled with that, so I now save that for last. It certainly can be the source of some funny looks and head scratching - geez mr. teacher, we went from six strings to four strings to three????

Hi Beeps. You say you want to practice over some Jazz progressions so I assume you are meaning soloing.
 
When I started learning Jazz they got us into the Blues form first after all it is the root of all Jazz music in a way. Take a look here:
 
http://www.jazzguitar.be/jazz_blues_chord_progressions.html
 
Become familiar with the modes of the major diatonic scale and then you will see the Mixolydian mode is going to work over most of the blues changes. (Dom 7th chords)  With some of those other blues forms they are introducing extra chords eg minor, diminished and half diminished. Blues scales can also be introduced over the Dom 7th chords too.
 
Ultimately in the end the aim is to play more horizontally eg melodic lines over several chord changes rather than vertically. eg this scale goes with that chord etc.. The idea is that once you become familiar with the scales vertically then you can think horizontally and fall onto the right notes as the chords change underneath.
 
Tunes (eg Jazz standards) are also a great way to practice playing over chords. But I found working with the Blues form prepares you well for playing over tunes. Good thing about learning to play and solo over tunes is that you will know a whole bunch of tunes after doing it and that is not a bad thing. It also helps you write better as well.

Hiya, Jeff. Yup. I actually spent the past few years studying the blues and have taken that about as far as I can go without burning out on it I think and it was ideally in preparation for jazz studies so I think I'm ready to move on. It's funny I actually have that exact site bookmarked and have worked through many of the lessons, even the jazz stuff, and I'm sure I will continue to draw more insights from it as I progress but I was hitting a bit of a wall there too. When I started this thread I was kind of just looking for some progressions that I could create MIDI basslines with to jam over top of but now I'm working through the stuff sharke linked because it's turning into a real workout and giving me even more ideas. It's the traditional style too which is exactly what I'm looking for right now and the chord formations are quite different than some of the stuff I've seen elsewhere or constructed myself but sound about as "jazz" as you can get. Considering how many styles of jazz have been concocted over the years I guess it's easy to get buried/confused by it all so reaching all the way back to the fifties seems like exactly what I should be doing... and man those cats knew how to play.
 
And at this point I actually have no problems knowing which notes go with which chords and laying patterns right up the fretboard instantly. It's just trying to manipulate those notes, chords and patterns to get that specific jazzy style. I was trying out some stuff the other day over a ii V I pattern I created in Sonar using the 3, 5, 7, 9 concept but it was coming out kind of surfy, which is cool too, but it ain't the old school jazz sound I'm reaching for.
 
Anyway, just sitting down to dinner but saw your post. Thanks for tossing your input my way. It is always appreciated. Cheers.

Guitarhacker
... 
I recorded this back in 2008 : http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=6922964  It's a "jazzed up" version of the old church hymn called Power in the Blood. 

I quite enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Beeps OK that is all good. A good thing to do is to listen an album like Stardust by Willie Nelson and listen to the Jazz tunes on there. Very straight voicings but those standards are simple AABA form and the chords in the A and B sections are often easy to solo over. Check out some Rhythm changes as well.
 
Simple standards like 'All of Me' or 'All the Things You Are' etc are good starting points to solo over.  Look at the tunes and breakdown where the key centres are. You don't have to use a different scale for each chord from a key, you can also solo over a series of chords using the same key centre using one scale. The idea is to think melodically and try and construct something meaningful with your soloing.
 
A lot of Jazz guitarists actually don't say much at all and are playing vertically which is boring. You are just hearing the correct scale over any given chord. But creating horizontal melodic lines is a different matter. Much stronger and better.
 
You can use your DAW of course to create chord progressions. A program like 'Band In A Box' is also killer for extended Jazz practice though. And most Jazz standards are already programmed in there or easily obtained. Slow the tempos down too at first and ease into it. Playing at 300 BPM or higher is very hard to do without a lot of practice.
 
Listen to Kurt Rosenwinkel, he is probably the best (modern) Jazz guitarist in the world right now. James Muller from Australia is also a pretty cool player, one of the best. I was fortunate to hear him live the other night. OMG! playing was just incredible.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwzJmtaqNEM
 
 
 
 

Gotta love Willie, eh? I was in a band that was attempting to do a cover of Whiskey River ala Red Haired Stranger but sadly it never came to fruition (wrong type of band and trying to get those guys to stay focused was like herding cats). Perhaps I'll record a cover of it. Fun tune and the solo of the live version we were emulating is rawkin'!

Yeah you have to immerse yourself in jazz music to "get" it. The more you hear those voicings and how they go together the easier it gets. Listen to the masters - Wes Montgomery, George Van Eps etc. I will never be able to play like Van Eps because his technique is so far out there but your ear can learn a lot from listening to the color of his chords.

I need to hook up the stereo system in my living room so I can start listening to the CBC again. They have a bunch of their radio channels streaming online and IIRC they have 2 dedicated jazz channels (at least one but I'm pretty sure it's two) that play some great stuff all day. Not sure if those streams are available in the US or globally but they are definitely worth checking out or for you sharke you maybe be able to get those stations over the air.
 
We've got a bunch of greedy corporate shills trying to convince people the CBC should be defunded under the guise of cost cutting but all they really want is to make it so the big media moguls have a complete monopoly. The quality of radio and television up here is horrendous because of these moguls and costs a FORTUNE to access. I will be very disappointed if these people succeed and a lot of the opportunities the CBC provides to up and coming artists, writers, journalists, etc would cease to exist as well as all the training and experience they provide to broadcasting techs and the like who end up making careers for themselves elsewhere.
 
Murky times up here in Canuckerland I tells ya.