Acoustic Guitar Player

This Ali Farka Toure youTube also has Boubacar Traore. The musicians from Mali in Africa have a sound that to some of us sounds like the roots of the blues.  Listening and being inspired by musicians of other cultures is a very healthy thing to do., it will help you open up to new ways of exploring the music that is within you waiting to come out.  Blues great Ry Cooder recorded recorded a fantastic album with Ali.  A lot of the riffs these guys play are very hummable and have a nice bounce in them.  This video is well worth a look. This music has an almost trance like feel to it.

You might also like to hear Harry Manx the Canadian guy that mixes Indian music on his Mohan Vina with the Blues, I have posted at my other blog about him.  Click Here to see  Harry Manx youTube

The Kenny Rankin youtube video is from the seventies.  While many other players were playing steel strings in the 70’s Kenny Rankin preferred to play nylon string instead, and realistically it suited his style and complemented his voice.  THe video is a song that he wrote called Peaceful, made famous by Helen Reddy.  A lot of players were turning towards punk while Kenny Rankin was doing his own thing, quite mellow.  I particularly liked his voice and his style was often flavored  with latin rhythms in songs like Haven’t We Met.  Kenny Rankin did covers of songs like no-one else.  I remember him also singing backing vocals on one of the Joni albums.  If you were around and listenening to music at that time and had encountered Kenny Rankins music you might understand why I have posted this youTube, it’s historical. 

I like music of all styles and don’t limit myself.  It’s inspiring to hear different players all expressing their own musical voice in their own personal way.

Flamenco Guitar and Paco de Lucia for most of us are one and the same.  Paco and his guitar have been on the world stage for some years now.  His no nonsense approach has set the benchmark for other players to work towards. Many people became aware of him because of his playing in the trio with John McLaughlin and Al di Meola, or John McLaughlin and Lary Corryell.  I have a magnificent recording of him playing the music of Manuel  De Falla’s Three Cornered Hat.

This video was recorded just over 30 years ago, so keep in mind the standard that Paco is playing to now.  Another player that I also enjoy is Paco Pena, less fiery as de Lucia but still brilliant. 

Paco de Lucia’s music has transcended styles and has added a new dimension to Flamenco guitar by using elements of contemporary jazz.  Although this music is on nylon string guitar it is more than a worthy addition to this acoustic guitar site as many younger players may not be aware of Paco’s brilliance.

For transcriptions of Paco’s music, see below.

Paco de Lucia Scores, Book 1 La fabulosa guitarra de Paco de Lucia. For Guitar (Classical). Transcribed solos. RGB Arte Visual. Flamenco. Level: Intermediate-Advanced. Book. 160 pages. Published by RGB Arte Visual. (20983) See more info…

This site is about Guitar Education,  if you don’t know Norman Blake, his playing is worth exploring, that’s why I’ve posted about him.

Norman Blake is a Bluegrass Folk Country legend.  He is highly respected amongst guitar players and has played back up guitar for Bob Dylan.  He has influenced more guitar players than you imagine.

Have you ever wondered why some guitar players are so good?

Simple, in many cases they have worked through a lot of the old bluegrass / Irish tunes. 

I have noticed that players that play tunes and have avoided hours of scales have a much better sense of melody than those that ’shred’ scales.  In fact I find scale shredding quite horrendous. 

This important: Once you get rid of ideas of being stuck in one particular style your playing will open up. Be open to learning, all the great players are.

To watch Norman Blake flat picking guitar is a guitar lesson in fluency of both left and right hands. This tune starts on an Em shape with a Capo on the 3rd fret, this means it’s a G minor.  The tune is full of guitar fills, guitar breaks full of lines and chords.  Note his use of open strings in his solos and how all of his breaks resolve nicely.  to play to the standard that he does is no small feat, just try it!

This blog/site is updated regularly. Drop back regularly for articles, youTubes, TAB, notation and other material to aid you on your musical journey.

So here’s Norman Blakes youtUbe video live in action. enjoy it!
I also author another blog site. The acousticguitarist, here’s the guitar site link.

I’ve always l;oved Joni Mitchells guitar playing.  And as you may know she went on to play with some of the worlds great musicians, such as the late Jaco Pastorias, Pat Metheny and others.  This song Big Yellow Taxi, although simple in structure is rhythmically brilliant and has inspired many players to play.  The following video was recording was recorded in 1970.

This song was environmentally friendly when green was considered hippy and lefty.  Well it took almost 40 years for the community to catch up and it’ll probably take another 40 years for guitar players to recognize Joni’s contribution to the development of the acoustic guitar. Thankyou Canada.

Sometimes it gets a little hard to work out what chords guitarists are playing, especially if they are using open tunings on the guitar, or play chords that are not your standard Minors, Majors or Seventh.  I’ve listed  acouple of song books that are available that includes a lot of Joni’s tunes.  Hits and Misses.  Now don’t be fooled by the one called Misses, they are as good as the Hits.  You will find a lot of her common ones in the Hits book.  Click below for more info.

Hits By Joni Mitchell. Guitar tablature songbook for guitar and voice. 124 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.PG9666) See more info…

Misses By Joni Mitchell. Guitar tablature songbook for guitar and voice. 112 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.PG9667) See more info…

I love my Dog was one of the early songs by Cat Stevens.  It’s great every now and then to not be so serious about music and play simple tunes.  So here’s a song for all the dog loving guitar players.  It made me laugh when I first heard it, but really dogs often outlive many relationships.  I’m not sure if he had to explain himself when he wrote this song.

Listen closely to the second guitar in this tune that really compliments the main guitar part.  I’m sure many guitar players took up the guitar because they wanted to be singer songwriters in the style of Cat Stevens. 

To quote another site: Stevens wrote this about a dachshund he found tied to a post when he was young. When nobody claimed the dog, he took it home and grew attached to it. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=283

Hey thanks for the idea Ekim

Learning Acoustic Guitar can be a little easier than you think.  I have writiten an article at my other Acoustic Guitar Blog Site.  The article includes a couple of simple things that you vcan do to get yourself started.  If you are new to this site, you may not realise that I author a number of Guitar Blogs.  The article is at the acousticguitarist, the link will take you straight to the article.  Why do it the hard way?

Jazz Guitar moving bass parts is the third guitar lesson in this series of tutorials. Although this chord fretting exercise includes the previous guitar part, it moves up the guitar neck to the E minor to A Seventh chords, when you play it it will sound familiar.  After the Em7 and A7, it heads back down to the Dm7 and G7.

After that sequence, it goes back to the C major 7 and has a simple turnaround that goes back to the top of the chord pattern.  The chords after the Cmajor 7 are E flat 7, D7 and then a D flat 7.

Take your time working through this, this is a very useful chord pattern.  Once you know it inside out you’ll hear it coming in a thousand and one songs.

To download the printable version click jazz guitar moving bass parts

 This guitar site is regularly updated with guitar tutorials and lessons for guitar players of all standards and various style.

Ten Commandments as you would probaly know were handed from God to Moses on Mt Sinai. This post is in no way meant to be disrespectful so please understand this before you get too far.

Ok, well if God was a guitar player and he had to hand down the Tablets to Moses the budding guitar player, it might sound a bit like the following.  

 THE TEN GUITAR COMMANDMENTS
_____________________________

ONE: ‘Thou shall concentrate on the music when you are playing and not let my thoughts wander off’

TWO: ‘Thou shall not create a false image about myself but will remember that it is the music that counts’.

THREE: ‘You shall not speak badly of other peoples music or guitar players’.

FOUR: ‘Remember to take a break from music regularly’.

FIVE: ‘Honor the forefathers of music by taking their knowledge and using it wisely ‘

SIX: ‘Thou shall not kill a song by filling it with nonsense and improvising over everything.

SEVEN: ‘Thou shall not focus on the pretty women when you are playing but shall be committed to what you are playing’.

EIGHT: ‘Thou shall not steal the ideas of other; instead you will find your own musicality.’

NINE: ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against other musicians saying ‘you stole my song, when really it was just a 12 bar blues that everyone else has been playing for years

‘TEN: ‘Thou shall not desire to be just like any other player, you will recognise what you have to offer is very valuable and unique’ If you have any great ideas to add to them please let me know

 If you have any great ideas to add to them please let me know

In the early 1990’s the Acoustic Guitar Magazine had some wonderful articles about the Golden Age of Hand Made Guitars, which is now.  What the magazine articles covered was the emergence of the small luthiery shop and the ability of the makers to turn out prestige instruments and to compete with, if not blow away the big guys.  One of the guitar makers that they covered was William (Grit) Laskin a Canadian Luthier and guitarplayer from Ontario.  Grit’s guitars are fine instruments and are eye catching because its inlay. To check out some of his beautiful instruments have a look at his site at William Laskin.

 The image below features an inlay of the great jazz guitar player Django Rheinhardt and legendary violinist Stephane Grapelli.

Larry Corryell, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia help take guitar improvisation to new heights in the seventies. Many people that are new to guitar and not aware of the standard that these players reached. Paco with his Flamenco background, McLaughlin with his Jazz and Indian, and Coryell with his Jazz, Rock and Fusion explorations. This youtube video is a McLaughlin piece that he recorded with his electric band The Mahvishnu Orchestra. To have one guitar player with the ability to play to this standard is brilliant, but to have three together bouncing of each other is almost unheard of. Not all people may wish to play that fast or in that style but it shows the level that players can aspire to.

Jazz guitar is more than just playing a few major 7 and minor 7 chords.  These chords existed and can be found in many classical pieces and other music forms.  I will not in this article attempt to define jazz guitar but I will continue on from what I wrote just under a week ago about moving bass parts .   I have taken the previous exercise and added a little more to it.   What I have done is broken up the chord triad (three note chord) to seperate the bass part out from the rest of the chord.  This type of playing adds a bit more of a bounce to the chord progression. 

Take your time with it.  For those that have a bit of trouble reading dots the rhythmic pattern is just:

 1  +  2       3 +   4        1  +  2       3 +   4    (the + sign equals a half beat) 

If you are not used to this style, once you sort it you’ll see it opens up a lot of possibilities in your playing. Let me know how you go with it.

For a printable version click  Jazz Guitar Moving Bass Parts Free Tab and Notation

 I will write the 3rd part to this article with the next 7 days

My other guitar blog is at acousticguitarist.wordpress.com
 

John McLaughlin and Shakti came to the fore in the mid seventies, at the time they had John McLaughlin on a guitar with a scalloped fretboard, some drone strings and an Indian gentleman L Shankar on violin both playing at an awesome speed.  John was known for his explorations into electric improvised music with Mahavishnu Orchestra.  John McLaughlan studied Indian music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, at one point Ali was rated the greatest musician in the world by Yehudi Menhuin (one of the worlds greatest classical viloinists) . 

Unless a person has studied Indian music it could be difficult to miss how complex it is and in a way this playing is a part of guitar history because it took the guitar into new areas and created new possibilities and raised the standard of guitar playing way above what we had considered possible.

My favourite Shakti album was Handful of Beauty

The folowing John McLaughlin youTube was from 1974. The interplay between musicians is of an unbelievably high standard

To show the diversity of this musician I’ve added a youtube of him playing a jazz standard for the fun of it.

By the way he’s still playing.

David Grisman and Jerry Garcia are both legends in their own right.  Gerry Garcia a former member of the Grateful Dead has long moved on to wherever ALL the dead go; wheras David Grisman is a living legend that has made a name playing Dawg music, bluegrass, country, folk with some serious jazz overtones at times with players such as Tony Rice, Mark O’Connor and Stephane Grapelli to name a few.

The youtube that I have posted about today is a cover of BB King’s The Thrill is Gone, it is held together by an all acoustic rhythm section of Bass and Percussion. This is a basic A minor blues that really lends itself to classic Grisman style of mandolin improvisation which is instantly recognizable and has the classic trademark of melody and and fluent flowing lines.  The video is very theartical in its presentation and Garcia’s guitar playing although simple is perfectly suitable for this song,  the choice of f hole guitar and slightly gravely voice only add to it’s brilliance.

I first heard of Ralph Towner in the mid seventies when he played with the acoustic ensemble/ band called Oregon.  I rember at the time they .played 72 instruments amongst the four members, Colin Walcott (late), Glen Moore,  Paul MaCandless.  Ralph Towner single handedly opened the door for many players to follow, he played a form of contemporay jazz on the nylon string guitar and also 12 string guitar.  Ralph Towner is also one of my favourite piano players, his chord playing at times reminds me of Bill Evans. His guitar playing is a mix of jazz improvisation and classical (to say the least).  You may hear him play straight jazz tunes at times but his approach makes them unique.  Personally I think he is one of the truly great guitar innovators of our time and his impact on a lot of players has been to think a little differently about the nylon string guitar.

Ihave owned about fifteen albums featuring Ralph Towner, not only with Oregon but with Paul Winter, Chic Correa, John Abercrombie and numerous others  on Manfred Eichers ECM label. The youtube I have posted about is called the Reluctant Bride, it is typical of Towners playing, a cross betwen arranged music and improvisation.  What i like about Ralphs playing is his willingness to take risks and head into harmonic areas that other players don’t dare to go. 

I have been fortunate to see Ralph Towner play a couple of times in my life, once with Gary Peacock in Athens Greece and with the band Oregon in Sydney Australia. If you get the chance to see Ralph Towner live, make the best of the opportunity, it truly is a music lesson on the guitar.

This guitar blog site is updated regularly with quality content to inspire other guitar players and also other guitar teachers

If you are just begining to learn to play jazz guitar chord changes, you’ll love this.  It is a simple four chord pattern in C major: C major 7 , A minor 7 , D minor 7 and a G 7; commonly known as a 1 6 4 5 chord pattern.  I’ve written the chords as triads, triads are three note chords.  Each chord is approached from one note (one fret) above,.

 It should have a bit of bounce in it when you play it. It’s very normal to play this sort of thing when accompanying a jazz singer or in a small group that has no bass player.

Click the link for the free TAB and notation of this simple guitar lesson.  Moving bass parts jazz guitar

Please note, there was a small music typo in the origanl pdf file that was uploaded, it had a Bb insead of an Ab in he second bar.  It has been fixed.

I first became aware of the jazz guitar player Martin Taylor in the early eighties when I was studying withthe brillian  jazz guitar legend Ike Isaacs.  Over a ten year period Ike made it quite clear that ‘Martin Taylor’ was the best.  After hearing what he does and having a good understanding of the technical side of guitar playing, and trusting in Ike Isaacs experience there’s no question about Martins credentials.  If you’ve heard Martin playing jazz ballads solo you’d get what we are discussing here. 

I’ve posted about this acoustic guitar youTube because I thought it would be great for you to hear Martin Taylor doing something outside the straight jazz guitar style.  This youTube of Martin is extremely interesting, he was inspired by one of my other all time favourite guitar players Ralph Towner, Towner plays nylon string and 12 string acoustic guitar.  there is a preamble before the tune starts and it is really worth listening to and when he finally starts playing I have no doubt you wil be inspired in some way.  I was fortunate to see my dear friend Ike play duets in concert with Martin Taylor not so long before Ike Isaacs died.  Ike, although a jazz player of the highest standard would always encourage us to be creative and partiucularly like it when I played open tuning guitar, no doubt he would love what Martin is doing these days.

The song is called “Down at Cocomos”, it is  a very lighthearted piece of music, don’t underestimate what you are seeing.

Here is a link to Martin’s Homepage