Originally Posted by: Hjorvard
I'm not exactly a huge jazz fan, but I do like the stylings of Django oddly enough, especially pieces like minor swing....So yeah I've realy wanted to add some jazz techniques and stylings to my playing, but I'd like to do something different in that I wouldn't want to mainly play in major tones and scales...maybe not neccesarily sadder and depressive, but a darker, more foreboding form of jazz haha...problem is, I have no clue where to start with my journey into jazz

you probably like django's take on jazz because it is more melodic and has only passages of disharmony and chromatic tones as opposed to hard bop jazz that contains a ton of extended harmonies using 9ths, 13ths, and every flat note in-between. django actually got me into jazz. i used to say "i don't want to play anything weirder than what i would hear him django play" but after you get used to the colors of jazz you grow more into the weirder stuff. it takes time, and i am by no means a hardened jazz player. it is the area of my playing where most progress is being made everyday, however. i have days where i practice yngwie solos and tech stuff like that, but the real joy of guitar comes to me from listening to jazz melodies and copying them onto my fretboard.

where to start, you say? well, if you look at music as "happy" and "sad" with the major and minor, you are only going to confuse yourself. you have to start looking at these scales we use as vehicles to get the sound you want. if you want more minor-sounding stuff, you stick to minor progressions, and it will be "brooding" jazz. try a ii-V-i in minor (in Cm, that would be: Dmb5, G7, Cm7) and improvise over that progression with a harmonic minor scale in C (C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, B). you're going to find out that to get a "jazzier" sound, you will have to incorporate not only diatonic ideas like you would find in that scale, but off-colour notes and harmonizations.

so in short, if you want to learn to mix some jazz with your playing, don't just memorize some jazz lines and call it good. THINK about the notes you are using, and that means knowing where the off-colour notes are. maybe you don't like using the major scale and whatnot, but start with it and move your way through the modes. learn where the b2, b3, b5, b6 and b7 is and start memorizing where these notes are as you work on your scales. then start working with arpeggios, doing triads all the way up a scale. (1,3,5, 2,4,6, etc.) then learn "digital lines" after you google it. it's the idea of taking the notes of your scale and numbering them, just like we do when we name chord tones. then, we set a pattern to work up this scale. charlie parker made the 1,2,3,5 thing famous. try doing that, and then pick up a jazz book and learn about "trapping" notes and how to use these chromatic tones more effectively.


it's a lifelong journey, and something that many rock players miss out on because there's only so much you can do with power chords and a diatonic scale.