Solo Guitar, Jazz-One thing I usually do every day is play guitar by myself. I live in a secluded neighborhood and there's no other musicians around. Playing jazz guitar in a solo environment would be very beneficial to my guitar playing and would improve my chops as a musician. I would do it a lot differently from other soloists in that I wouldn't be a traditional Joe Pass type (or better yet Ted Greene, I wish I could play like him but I don't think I'll ever be able to), I don't think I'm good enough to do that. Rather, I would do it my own way and with a looping pedal to loop the changes when I'm improvising. I've thought about doing this for a long time. Looping pedals don't cost that much money and they are definitely worth it if you play guitar solo most of the time.
Jazz duos-I've had my share of duo playing bands. For a little while I was playing with a clarinet player and we did a lot of old Dixieland jazz stuff. In the end it ended up not working out but I learned a lot from the experience. You can get a good sound out of two musicians and playing jazz in a duo environment is pretty damn fun.
I would be more interested in a guitar bass combo, guitar piano combo, or guitar drums combo. Honestly the guitar drums combo would be the best but where in the freakin' Valley am I gonna find a jazz drummer? So my best bet is to work with a bass player, those are easy enough to find. Bass players usually can play jazz, its pretty much a requirement in high school. Heck, I'd even be down to work with another guitarist. That would mean I'd always have somebody comping when I'm soloing. Plus guitarists are easy to find. Another thing I could do is work with a singer, something I haven't done for a really long time.
I'm more interested in doing jazz work because I feel like jazz is the future of guitar playing for me. I still like heavy rock and roll (even death metal and black metal lol) and I've even been going to open jams at bars to play classic rock like Hendrix. But my end goal is to move into a more sophisticated environment where I can really stretch out and display my chops as well as play standards my own ways. I still have a lot of training to do but I've come a long way from when I was jamming with that clarinetist playing Dixieland tunes. Until I find committed musicians I'm left to own devices.
Tomorrow I'm going to the music store to buy some recording gear. I'm planning on recording for myself but also for producers that have reached out to me. These are more pop, edm, electronica type stuff that has nothing to do with jazz but I'm interested to put my name out on something that has a professional sound quality.
If finding other musicians really becomes too difficult I could always go solo like Joni Mitchell lol.
No comments:
Post a Comment