![Gibson ES-175](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Gibson_ES-175.png)
Jazz guitar may refer to either a type of
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
or a guitar playing style in
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, using
electric amplification to increase the volume of acoustic guitars.
In the early 1930s, jazz musicians sought to amplify their sound to be heard over loud
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
s. When guitarists in big bands switched from
acoustic to
semi-acoustic guitar
A semi-acoustic guitar, hollow-body electric, or thinline is a type of electric guitar that was first created in the 1930s. It has a sound box and at least one electric pickup. The semi-acoustic guitar is different to an acoustic-electric guit ...
and began using
amplifier
An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost the v ...
s, it enabled them to play
solo
Solo or SOLO may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Comics
* ''Solo'' (DC Comics), a DC comics series
* Solo, a 1996 mini-series from Dark Horse Comics
Characters
* Han Solo, a ''Star Wars'' character
* Jacen Solo, a Jedi in the non-canonical ''S ...
s. Jazz guitar had an important influence on jazz in the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the earliest guitars used in jazz were
acoustic and acoustic guitars are still sometimes used in jazz, most jazz guitarists since the 1940s have performed on an electrically amplified guitar or
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
.
Traditionally, jazz electric guitarists use an
archtop
An archtop guitar is a hollow electric or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz, blues, and rockabilly players.
Typically, an archtop guitar has:
* Six strings
* An arc ...
with a relatively broad hollow sound-box, violin-style
f-holes
A sound hole is an opening in the body of a stringed musical instrument, usually the upper sound board.
Sound holes have different shapes:
* round in flat-top guitars and traditional bowl-back mandolins;
* F-holes in instruments from the v ...
, a "
floating bridge", and a
magnetic pickup.
Solid body guitars, mass-produced since the early 1950s, are also used.
Jazz guitar playing styles include ''
comping'' with jazz chord voicings (and in some cases
walking bass
Bassline (also known as a bass line or bass part) is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, Dub music, dub and electronic music, electronic, traditional music, traditional, or classical music for the low-pitched Part ( ...
lines) and ''blowing'' (
improvising
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
) over jazz chord progressions with jazz-style
phrasing and ornaments. Comping refers to playing chords underneath a song's melody or another musician's solo improvisations.
History
1900–mid-1930s
The stringed, chord-playing rhythm can be heard in groups which included military band-style instruments such as brass, saxes, clarinets, and drums, such as early jazz groups. As the acoustic guitar became a more popular instrument in the early 20th century, guitar-makers began building louder guitars which would be useful in a wider range of settings.
The Gibson L5, an acoustic
archtop guitar
An archtop guitar is a hollow electric or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz, blues, and rockabilly players.
Typically, an archtop guitar has:
* Six strings
* An ar ...
which was first produced in 1923, was an early “jazz”-style guitar which was used by early jazz guitarists such as
Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang (born Salvatore Massaro, October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American musician who is credited as the father of jazz guitar. During the 1920s, he gave the guitar a prominence it previously lacked as a solo instrument, as p ...
. By the 1930s, the guitar began to displace the banjo as the primary chordal rhythm instrument in jazz music, because the guitar could be used to voice chords of greater harmonic complexity, and it had a somewhat more muted tone that blended well with the
upright bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
, which, by this time, had almost completely replaced the tuba as the dominant bass instrument in jazz music.
Late 1930s-1960s
During the late 1930s and through the 1940s—the heyday of
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
jazz and
swing music
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands ...
—the guitar was an important
rhythm section
A rhythm section is a group of musicians within a music ensemble or band that provides the underlying rhythm, harmony and pulse of the accompaniment, providing a rhythmic and harmonic reference and "beat" for the rest of the band.
The rhythm sec ...
instrument. Some guitarists, such as
Freddie Green
Frederick William Green (March 31, 1911 – March 1, 1987) was an American swing jazz guitarist who played rhythm guitar with the Count Basie Orchestra for almost fifty years.
Early life and education
Green was born in Charleston, South Ca ...
of
Count Basie
William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...
's band, developed a guitar-specific style of accompaniment. Few of the big bands, however, featured amplified guitar solos, which were done instead in the small combo context. The most important jazz guitar soloists of this period included the Manouche virtuoso
Django Reinhardt
Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...
,
Oscar Moore
Oscar Frederic Moore (December 25, 1916 – October 8, 1981) was an American jazz guitarist with the Nat King Cole Trio.
Career
The son of a blacksmith, Moore was born in Austin, Texas, United States. The Moore family moved to Phoenix, Ariz ...
who was featured with
Nat “King” Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued f ...
's trio, and
Charlie Christian
Charles Henry Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist.
Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar and a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained nati ...
of
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".
From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His co ...
's band and sextet, who was a major influence despite his early death at 25.
![Duke Ellington - Hurricane Ballroom - rhythm section](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Duke_Ellington_-_Hurricane_Ballroom_-_rhythm_section.jpg)
It was not until the large-scale emergence of small combo jazz in the post-WWII period that the guitar took off as a versatile instrument, which was used both in the rhythm section and as a featured melodic instrument and solo improviser. In the hands of
George Barnes,
Kenny Burrell
Kenneth Earl Burrell (born July 31, 1931) is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on numerous top jazz labels: Prestige, Blue Note, Verve, CTI, Muse, and Concord. His collaborations with Jimmy Smith were notable, and produced the 1965 ...
,
Herb Ellis
Mitchell Herbert Ellis (August 4, 1921 – March 28, 2010), known professionally as Herb Ellis, was an American jazz guitarist. During the 1950s, he was in a trio with pianist Oscar Peterson.
Biography
Born in Farmersville, Texas, and raised ...
,
Barney Kessel
Barney Kessel (October 17, 1923 – May 6, 2004) was an American jazz guitarist born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Known in particular for his knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies, he was a member of many prominent jazz groups a ...
,
Jimmy Raney
James Elbert Raney (August 20, 1927 – May 10, 1995) was an American jazz guitarist, born in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, known for his work from 1951 to 1952 and then from 1953 to 1954 with the Red Norvo trio (replacing Tal Farlow) and ...
, and
Tal Farlow
Talmage Holt Farlow (June 7, 1921 – July 25, 1998) was an American jazz guitarist. He was nicknamed "Octopus" because of how his large, quick hands spread over the fretboard. As Steve Rochinski notes, "Of all the guitarists to emerge in th ...
, who had absorbed the language of
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
, the guitar began to be seen as a “serious” jazz instrument. Improved electric guitars such as Gibson's
ES-175
The Gibson ES-175 (1949-2019) is a hollow body Jazz electric guitar manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. The ES-175 became one of Gibson's most popular guitar designs.
History
In 1949 the ES-175 was introduced by the Gibson Guitar comp ...
(released in 1949), gave players a larger variety of tonal options. In the 1940s through the 1960s, players such as
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a dist ...
,
Joe Pass
Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua; January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. Pass is well known for his work stemming from numerous collaborations with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, an ...
, and
Jim Hall laid the foundation of what is now known as "jazz guitar" playing.
1970s
![John McLaughlin 1 fcm](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/John_McLaughlin_1_fcm.jpg)
As
jazz-rock fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyb ...
emerged in the early 1970s, many players switched to the more rock-oriented
solid body guitars
thumb , Sound sample of solid-body electric guitar.
A solid-body musical instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electromagnetic pickup system to directly detect th ...
. Other jazz guitarists, like
Grant Green
Grant Green (June 6, 1935 – January 31, 1979) was an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Recording prolifically for Blue Note Records as both leader and sideman, Green performed in the hard bop, soul jazz, bebop, and Latin-tinged idioms ...
and
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a dist ...
, turned to applying their skills to pop-oriented styles that fused jazz with soul and R&B, such as
soul jazz
Soul jazz or funky jazz is a subgenre of jazz that incorporates strong influences from hard bop, blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues. Soul jazz is often characterized by organ trios featuring the Hammond organ and small combos including ten ...
-styled
organ trio
An organ trio is a form of jazz ensemble consisting of three musicians; a Hammond organ player, a drummer, and either a jazz guitarist or a saxophone player. In some cases the saxophonist will join a trio which consists of an organist, guitarist, ...
s. Younger jazz musicians rode the surge of eclectic popular genres such as blues, rock, and funk to reach new audiences. Guitarists in the fusion realm fused the post-bop harmonic and melodic language of musicians such as
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...
,
McCoy Tyner
Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938March 6, 2020) was an American jazz piano, jazz pianist and composer known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet (from 1960 to 1965) and his long solo career afterwards. He was an NEA Jazz Masters, NEA ...
,
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Colle ...
, and
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...
with a hard-edged (and usually very loud) rock tone created by guitarists such as Cream's
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is often regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s list of ...
who had redefined the sound of the guitar for those unfamiliar with the black blues players of Chicago and, before that, the Delta region of the Mississippi upon whom his style was based. With
John Mayall
John Mayall, OBE (born 29 November 1933) is an English blues singer, musician and songwriter, whose musical career spans over sixty years. In the 1960s, he was the founder of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among it ...
's Bluesbreakers, Clapton turned up the volume on a sound already pioneered by Buddy Guy, Freddie King, B.B. King and others that was fluid, with heavy finger vibratos, string bending, and speed through powerful Marshall amplifiers.
Fusion players such as
John McLaughlin John or Jon McLaughlin may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* John McLaughlin (musician) (born 1942), English jazz fusion guitarist, member of Mahavishnu Orchestra
* Jon McLaughlin (musician) (born 1982), American singer-songwriter
* John McLaug ...
adopted the fluid, powerful sound of rock guitarists such as Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. McLaughlin was a master innovator, incorporating hard jazz with the new sounds of Clapton, Hendrix, Beck and others. McLaughlin later formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, an historically important fusion band that played to sold out venues in the early 1970s and as a result, produced an endless progeny of fusion guitarists. Performers such as
Pat Martino
Pat Martino (born Patrick Carmen Azzara; August 25, 1944 – November 1, 2021) was an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Biography
Martino was born Patrick Carmen Azzara in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, to father Carmen "Mickey" ...
,
Al Di Meola
Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as ' ...
,
Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell (born Lorenz Albert Van DeLinder III; April 2, 1943 – February 19, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist.
Early life
Larry Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas, United States. He never knew his biological father, a musician. He w ...
,
John Abercrombie,
John Scofield
John Scofield (born December 26, 1951), sometimes referred to as "Sco", is an American guitarist and composer whose music over a long career has blended jazz, jazz fusion, funk, blues, soul and rock. He first came to mainstream attention in the ...
and
Mike Stern
Mike Stern (born January 10, 1953) is an American jazz guitarist. After playing with Blood, Sweat & Tears, he worked with drummer Billy Cobham, then with trumpeter Miles Davis from 1981 to 1983 and again in 1985. He then began a solo career, re ...
(the latter two both alumni of the Miles Davis band) fashioned a new language for the guitar which introduced jazz to a new generation of fans. Like the rock-blues icons that preceded them, fusion guitarists usually played their solid body instruments through stadium rock-style amplification, and signal processing "effects" such as simulated distortion, wah-wah, octave splitters, compression, and flange pedals. They also simply turned up to full volume in order to create natural overdrive such as the blues rock players.
1980s–2000s
By the early 1980s, the radical experiments of early 1970s-era fusion gave way to a more radio-friendly sounds of
smooth jazz
Smooth jazz is a genre of commercially-oriented crossover jazz and easy listening music that became dominant in the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.
History
Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 19 ...
. Guitarist
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce Metheny ( ; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progre ...
mixed the sounds of rock, blues, country, and “world” music, while still maintaining a strong foundation in bebop and cool jazz, playing both a flat-top acoustic guitar and an electric guitar with a softer, more mellow tone which was sweetened with a shimmering effect known as “
chorusing". During the 1980s, a neo-traditional school of jazz sought to reconnect with the past. In keeping with such an aesthetic, young guitarists of this era sought a clean and round tone, and they often played traditional hollow-body arch-top guitars without electronic effects, frequently through
vacuum tube amplifiers.
As players such as
Bobby Broom
Robert Broom Jr. (born January 18, 1961) is an American jazz guitarist, composer, and educator. He was born and raised in New York City, then moved to Chicago, which has been his home town since 1984. He performs and records with The Bobby Broom ...
,
Peter Bernstein,
Howard Alden
Howard Vincent Alden (born October 17, 1958) is an American jazz guitarist born in Newport Beach, California. Alden has recorded many albums for Concord Records, including four with seven-string guitar innovator George Van Eps.
Early life
How ...
,
Russell Malone
Russell Malone (born November 8, 1963) is an American jazz guitarist. He began working with Jimmy Smith in 1988 and went on to work with Harry Connick, Jr. and Diana Krall throughout the 1990s.Neuroth, Matt. (2008). ''Bio: Russell Malone.'' Retr ...
, and
Mark Whitfield
Mark Whitfield (born October 6, 1966) is an American jazz guitarist.
Life and career
Whitfield was born in Lindenhurst, New York. He has worked with Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Courtney Pine, Nicholas Payton, and Chris Botti.
In 2000, Whitfiel ...
revived the sounds of traditional jazz guitar, there was also a resurgence of archtop luthierie (guitar-making). By the early 1990s many small independent luthiers began making archtop guitars. In the 2000s, jazz guitar playing continues to change. Some guitarists incorporate a Latin jazz influence,
acid jazz-style dance club music uses samples from
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a dist ...
, and guitarists such as
Bill Frisell
William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts ...
continue to defy categorization.
Types of guitars
Archtop guitars
![Guitard Epiphone 03](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Guitard_Epiphone_03.jpg)
While jazz can be played on any type of guitar, from an acoustic instrument to a solid-bodied
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
such as a Fender Stratocaster, the full-depth archtop guitar has become known as the prototypical "jazz guitar." Archtop guitars are
steel-string acoustic guitars with a big soundbox, arched top, violin-style
f-hole
A sound hole is an opening in the body of a stringed musical instrument, usually the upper sound board.
Sound holes have different shapes:
* round in flat-top guitars and traditional bowl-back mandolins;
* F-holes in instruments from the vi ...
s, a "
floating bridge" and
magnetic
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particle ...
or
piezoelectric pickup
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instru ...
s. Early makers of jazz guitars included
Gibson
Gibson may refer to:
People
* Gibson (surname)
Businesses
* Gibson Brands, Inc., an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and audio equipment
* Gibson Technology, and English automotive and motorsport company based
* Gi ...
,
Epiphone
Epiphone is an American musical instrument brand that traces its roots to a musical instrument manufacturing business founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire, and moved to New York City in 1908. After taking over his f ...
, D'Angelico and Stromberg. The electric guitar is plugged into a
guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier (or amp) is an electronic device or system that strengthens the electrical signal from a pickup on an electric guitar, bass guitar, or acoustic guitar so that it can produce sound through one or more loudspeakers, which a ...
to make it sound loud enough for performance. Guitar amplifiers have equalizer controls that allow the guitarist to change the tone of the instrument, by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain frequency bands. The use of
reverb effect
A reverb effect, or reverb, is an audio effect applied to a sound signal to simulate reverberation. It may be created through physical means, such as echo chambers, or electronically through audio signal processing.
Echo chambers
The first re ...
s, often included in guitar amplifiers, has long been part of the jazz guitar sound. Particularly since the 1970s
jazz fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...
era, some jazz guitarists have also used
effects pedals
An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing.
Common effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in ele ...
such as
overdrive pedals,
chorus pedals and
wah pedal
A wah-wah pedal, or simply wah pedal, is a type of electric guitar effects pedal that alters the tone and frequencies of the guitar signal to create a distinctive sound, mimicking the human voice saying the onomatopoeic name "wah-wah". The ped ...
s.
The earliest guitars used in jazz were acoustic, later superseded by a typical electric configuration of two
humbucking pickups. In the 1990s, there was a resurgence of interest among jazz guitarists in acoustic archtop guitars with floating pickups. The original acoustic archtop guitars were designed to enhance volume: for that reason they were constructed for use with relatively heavy
guitar string
A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments such as the guitar, harp, piano (piano wire), and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material that a musical instrument holds under tensi ...
s. Even after electrification became the norm, jazz guitarists continued to fit strings of 0.012" gauge or heavier for reasons of tone, and also prefer
flatwound strings. The characteristic arched top can be made of a solid piece of wood that is carved into the arched shape, or a piece of laminated wood (essentially a type of plywood) that is pressed into shape.
Spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...
is often used for tops, and
maple
''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...
for backs. Archtop guitars can be mass-produced, such as the
Ibanez Artcore series, or handmade by
luthier
A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...
s such as
Robert Benedetto
Robert Benedetto (born October 22, 1946 in The Bronx, New York) is an American luthier of archtop jazz guitars. In 1968, he made his first archtop guitar in New Jersey and has handcrafted nearly 850 musical instruments. His guitars appear on many ...
.
Other guitars
* The
Selmer-Maccaferri guitar
The Selmer guitar — often called a Selmer-Maccaferri or just Maccaferri by English speakers, as early British advertising stressed the designer rather than manufacturer — is an unusual acoustic guitar best known as the favored inst ...
is strongly associated with
Django Reinhardt
Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...
and
gypsy swing
Gypsy jazz (also known as gypsy swing, jazz manouche or hot club-style jazz) is a style of small-group jazz originating from the Romani people, Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt, Jean "Django" Reinhardt (1910–53), in conjunction with the Fre ...
.
* The
resonator guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator gui ...
was used (but not exclusively) by
Oscar Aleman.
*
Nylon string guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...
s are associated with
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, whic ...
, for instance in the work of
Charlie Byrd
Charlie Lee Byrd (September 16, 1925 – December 2, 1999) was an American jazz guitarist. Byrd was best known for his association with Brazilian music, especially bossa nova. In 1962, he collaborated with Stan Getz on the album '' Jazz Samba' ...
and
Laurindo Almeida
Laurindo Almeida (September 2, 1917 – July 26, 1995) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer in classical, jazz, and Latin music. He and Bud Shank were pioneers in the creation of bossa nova. Almeida was the first guitarist to receive Gra ...
.
*
Flat-top steel-string guitars (particularly
Ovation guitar
The Ovation Guitar Company is a manufacturer of string instruments. Ovation primarily manufactures steel-string acoustic guitars (both 6 and 12-string versions) and nylon-string guitars, often with pickups for electric amplification. In 2015, ...
s) have been used in the "acoustic
shredding" of
John McLaughlin John or Jon McLaughlin may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* John McLaughlin (musician) (born 1942), English jazz fusion guitarist, member of Mahavishnu Orchestra
* Jon McLaughlin (musician) (born 1982), American singer-songwriter
* John McLaug ...
,
Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell (born Lorenz Albert Van DeLinder III; April 2, 1943 – February 19, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist.
Early life
Larry Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas, United States. He never knew his biological father, a musician. He w ...
and
Al Di Meola
Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as ' ...
.
* Solid-body
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
s have been used in
Jazz-rock
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...
, for instance by
Bill Frisell
William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts ...
and
Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan (born July 31, 1959) is an American jazz guitarist noted for his playing technique, which involves tapping his fingers on the fretboard of the guitar with both hands.
Music career
Jordan was born in Chicago, Illinois, United St ...
. The
Telecaster
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid bod ...
in particular has a jazz following, e.g.
Ed Bickert
Edward Isaac Bickert, (November 29, 1932 – February 28, 2019) was a Canadian guitarist who played mainstream jazz and swing music. Bickert worked professionally from the mid-1950s to 2000, mainly in the Toronto area. His international reputat ...
and
Ted Greene
TED may refer to:
Economics and finance
* TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar
Education
* ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association
** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey
** Transvaal Education Depart ...
.
*
Synthesizer guitars in jazz-rock and avant-garde jazz, e.g. by
Allan Holdsworth
Allan Holdsworth (6 August 1946 – 15 April 2017) was a British jazz fusion and progressive rock guitarist and composer.
Holdsworth was known for his esoteric and idiosyncratic usage of advanced music theory concepts, especially with respe ...
and
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce Metheny ( ; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progre ...
.
*
Seven string guitar
The seven-string guitar adds one additional string to the more common six-string guitar, commonly used to extend the bass range (usually a low B) or also to extend the treble range.
The additional string is added in one of two different ways: by ...
s by
George van Eps
George Abel Van Eps (August 7, 1913 – November 29, 1998) was an American swing and mainstream jazz guitarist.
Biography
George Van Eps was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, into a family of musicians. His three brothers – Fred ...
,
Lenny Breau
Leonard Harold Breau (August 5, 1941 – August 12, 1984) was an American-Canadian guitarist. He blended many styles of music, including jazz, country, classical, and flamenco. Inspired by country guitarists like Chet Atkins, Breau used fingers ...
,
Bucky Pizzarelli
John Paul "Bucky" Pizzarelli (January 9, 1926 – April 1, 2020) was an American jazz guitarist.
He was the father of jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli and double bassist Martin Pizzarelli. He worked for NBC as a staffman for Dick Cavett (1971) ...
and
Howard Alden
Howard Vincent Alden (born October 17, 1958) is an American jazz guitarist born in Newport Beach, California. Alden has recorded many albums for Concord Records, including four with seven-string guitar innovator George Van Eps.
Early life
How ...
.
*
Eight-string guitar
An eight-string guitar is a guitar with eight strings, or one more than the Russian guitar's seven. Eight-string guitars are less common than six- and seven-string guitars, but they are used by a few classical, jazz, and metal guitarists. The e ...
s by
Ralph Patt
Ralph Oliver Patt (5 December 1929 – 6 October 2010) was an American jazz guitarist who introduced major-thirds tuning. Patt's tuning simplified the learning of the fretboard and chords by beginners and improvisation by advanced guitarists. ...
.
[: ]
Musical elements
Rhythm
Jazz rhythm guitar often consists of very textural, odd-meter playing that includes generous use of exotic, difficult-to-fret chords. In 4/4 timing, it is common to play 2.5 beat intervals such as on the 2 and then the half beat or "and" after 4. Jazz guitarists may play chords "ahead" of the beat, by playing the chord a swung eighth note before the actual chord change. Chords are not generally played in a repetitive rhythmic fashion, like a rock
rhythm guitar
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section (e.g., drum kit, bass guitar ...
ist would play.
Harmony
Jazz guitarists use their knowledge of
harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
and jazz theory to create jazz chord "voicings," which emphasize the 3rd and 7th notes of the chord. Some more sophisticated chord voicings also include the 9th, 11th, and 13th notes of the chord. In some modern jazz styles,
dominant 7th
In music theory, a dominant seventh chord, or major minor seventh chord, is a seventh chord, usually built on the fifth degree of the major scale, and composed of a root, major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. Thus it is a major triad tog ...
chords in a tune may contain altered 9ths (either flattened by a semitone, which is called a "flat 9th", or sharpened by a semitone, which is called a "sharp 9th"); 11ths (sharpened by a semitone, which is called a "sharp 11th"); 13ths (typically flattened by a semitone, which is called a "flat 13th").
Jazz guitarists need to learn about a range of different chords, including
major 7th
In music, a major seventh chord is a seventh chord in which the third is a major third above the root and the seventh is a major seventh above the root. The major seventh chord, sometimes also called a ''Delta chord'', can be written as maj7, M7, ...
,
major 6th
In music from Western culture, a sixth is a musical interval encompassing six note letter names or staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and the major sixth is one of two commonly occurring sixths. It is qualified as ''major ...
,
minor 7th
In music theory, a minor seventh is one of two musical intervals that span seven staff positions. It is ''minor'' because it is the smaller of the two sevenths, spanning ten semitones. The major seventh spans eleven. For example, the interval ...
,
minor/major 7th,
dominant 7th
In music theory, a dominant seventh chord, or major minor seventh chord, is a seventh chord, usually built on the fifth degree of the major scale, and composed of a root, major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. Thus it is a major triad tog ...
,
diminished,
half-diminished, and
augmented chord
Augment or augmentation may refer to:
Language
*Augment (Indo-European), a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages
*Augment (Bantu languages), a morpheme that is prefixed to the noun class prefix of nouns i ...
s. As well, they need to learn about chord transformations (e.g., altered chords, such as "alt dominant chords" described above),
chord substitution
In music theory, chord substitution is the technique of using a chord in place of another in a progression of chords, or a chord progression. Much of the European classical repertoire and the vast majority of blues, jazz and rock music songs a ...
s, and re-harmonization techniques. Some jazz guitarists use their knowledge of jazz scales and chords to provide a
walking bass
Bassline (also known as a bass line or bass part) is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, Dub music, dub and electronic music, electronic, traditional music, traditional, or classical music for the low-pitched Part ( ...
-style accompaniment.
Jazz guitarists learn to perform these chords over the range of different
chord progression
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice ...
s used in jazz, such as the ubiquitous ii-V-I progression, the jazz-style
blues progression
The 12-bar blues (or blues changes) is one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics, phrase, chord structure, and duration. In its basic form, it is predominantly based on ...
(which, in contrast to a blues-style 12 bar progression, may have two or more chord changes per bar) the minor jazz-style blues form, the I-vi-ii-V based "
rhythm changes
Rhythm changes are a common 32-bar chord progression in jazz, originating as the chord progression for George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm". The progression is in AABA form, with each A section based on repetitions of the ubiquitous I–vi–ii–V s ...
" progression, and the variety of modulation-rich chord progressions used in jazz ballads, and
jazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive lis ...
s. Guitarists may also learn to use the chord types, strumming styles, and
effects pedal
An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing.
Common effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in ele ...
s (e.g.,
chorus effect
Chorus (or chorusing, choruser or chorused effect) is an audio effect that occurs when individual sounds with approximately the same time, and very similar pitches, converge. While similar sounds coming from multiple sources can occur naturally, ...
or
fuzzbox
Distortion and overdrive are forms of audio signal processing used to alter the sound of amplified electric musical instruments, usually by increasing their gain, producing a "fuzzy", "growling", or "gritty" tone. Distortion is most commonly ...
) used in 1970s-era jazz-Latin, jazz-funk, and jazz-rock fusion music.
Melody
Jazz guitarists integrate the basic building blocks of scales and arpeggio patterns into balanced rhythmic and melodic phrases that make up a cohesive solo. Jazz guitarists often try to imbue their melodic phrasing with the sense of natural breathing and legato phrasing used by horn players such as saxophone players. As well, a jazz guitarists' solo improvisations have to have a rhythmic drive and "timefeel" that creates a sense of "
swing" and "groove." The most experienced jazz guitarists learn to play with different "timefeels" such as playing "ahead of the beat" or "behind the beat," to create or release tension.
Another aspect of the jazz guitar style is the use of stylistically appropriate ornaments, such as grace notes, slides, and muted notes. Each subgenre or era of jazz has different ornaments that are part of the style of that subgenre or era. Jazz guitarists usually learn the appropriate ornamenting styles by listening to prominent recordings from a given style or jazz era. Some jazz guitarists also borrow ornamentation techniques from other jazz instruments, such as
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a dist ...
's borrowing of playing melodies in parallel octaves, which is a jazz piano technique. Jazz guitarists also have to learn how to add in passing tones, use "guide tones" and chord tones from the chord progression to structure their improvisations.
In the 1970s and 1980s, with jazz-rock fusion guitar playing, jazz guitarists incorporated rock
guitar solo
A guitar solo is a melodic passage, instrumental section, or entire piece of music, pre-written (or improvised) to be played on a classical guitar, electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular m ...
ing approaches, such as
riff
A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or accompani ...
-based soloing and usage of
pentatonic
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale).
Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancie ...
and
blues scale
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African- ...
patterns. Some guitarists used
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...
-influenced distortion and wah-wah effects to get a sustained, heavy tone, or even used rapid-fire
guitar shredding techniques, such as
tapping
Tapping is a playing technique that can be used on any stringed instrument, but which is most commonly used on guitar. The technique involves a string being fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion. This is in contrast to stand ...
and
tremolo bar
A vibrato system on a guitar is a mechanical device used to temporarily change the pitch of the strings. Instruments without a vibrato have other bridge and tailpiece systems. They add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the string ...
bending. Guitarist
Al Di Meola
Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as ' ...
, who started his career with
Return to Forever
Return to Forever was an American jazz fusion band that was founded by pianist Chick Corea in 1972. The band has had many members, with the only consistent bandmate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke. Along with Weather Report, The Headhun ...
in 1974, was one of the first guitarists to perform in a "
shred" style, a technique later used in rock and heavy metal playing. Di Meola used alternate-picking to perform very rapid sequences of notes in his solos.
Improvisation
When jazz guitar players
improvise
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. The approach to improvising has changed since the earliest eras of jazz guitar. During the Swing era, many soloists improvised "by ear" by embellishing the melody with ornaments and passing notes. However, during the bebop era, the rapid tempo and complicated chord progressions made it increasingly harder to play "by ear." Along with other improvisers, such as saxes and piano players, bebop-era jazz guitarists began to improvise over the chord changes using scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) and arpeggios. Jazz guitar players tend to improvise around chord/scale relationships, rather than reworking the melody, possibly due to their familiarity with chords resulting from their comping role. A source of melodic ideas for improvisation is transcribing improvised solos from recordings. This provides jazz guitarists with a source of "licks", melodic phrases and ideas they incorporate either intact or in variations, and is an established way of learning from the previous generations of players.
Playing styles
Big band rhythm
In jazz
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
s, popular during the 1930s and 1940s, the guitarist is considered an integral part of the rhythm section (guitar,
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
s and
bass). They usually played a regular four strums to the bar, although an amount of harmonic improvisation is possible.
Freddie Green
Frederick William Green (March 31, 1911 – March 1, 1987) was an American swing jazz guitarist who played rhythm guitar with the Count Basie Orchestra for almost fifty years.
Early life and education
Green was born in Charleston, South Ca ...
, guitarist in the
Count Basie
William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...
orchestra, was a noted exponent of this style. The harmonies are often minimal; for instance, the
root note
In music theory, the concept of root is the idea that a chord can be represented and named by one of its notes. It is linked to harmonic thinking—the idea that vertical aggregates of notes can form a single unit, a chord. It is in this sense ...
is often omitted on the assumption that it will be supplied by the bassist.
Small group comping
When jazz guitarists play chords underneath a song's melody or another musician's solo improvisations, it is called "
comping", short for "accompanying". The accompanying style in most jazz styles differs from the way chordal instruments accompany in many popular styles of music. In many popular styles of music, such as rock and pop, the
rhythm guitar
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section (e.g., drum kit, bass guitar ...
ist usually performs the chords in rhythmic fashion which sets out the beat or groove of a tune. In contrast, in many modern jazz styles within smaller groups, the guitarist plays much more sparsely, intermingling periodic chords and delicate voicings into pauses in the melody or solo, and using periods of silence. Jazz guitarists commonly use a wide variety of
inversions when comping, rather than only using standard voicings.
Chord-melody and unaccompanied soloing
In this style, the guitarist aims to render an entire song — harmony, melody and bass — in something like the way a
classical guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...
ist or
pianist
A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
can. Chord roots cannot be left to the bassist in this style. Chords themselves can be used sparsely or more densely, depending on both the individual player and his or her arrangement of a particular piece. In the sparse style, a full chord is often played only at the beginning of a melodic phrase.
The denser chordal textures, in contrast, approach chord soloing (see below). A third approach is to maintain a steady, busy bass-line, like a New Orleans pianist. Here, no more than two or three notes are played at a time, and the full harmony is indicated by arpeggiation. Exponents of this style often come from a
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
,
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fol ...
or
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
background, such as
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music s ...
, although it is also sometimes employed by
straight-ahead jazz practitioners, for instance
Martin Taylor. Chord-melody is often played with a
plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In harpsic ...
(see
Tal Farlow
Talmage Holt Farlow (June 7, 1921 – July 25, 1998) was an American jazz guitarist. He was nicknamed "Octopus" because of how his large, quick hands spread over the fretboard. As Steve Rochinski notes, "Of all the guitarists to emerge in th ...
,
George Benson
George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist.
A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, pla ...
and others); whereas
fingerstyle
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of guitar picking, playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with ...
, as practised by
Joe Pass
Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua; January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. Pass is well known for his work stemming from numerous collaborations with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, an ...
,
George van Eps
George Abel Van Eps (August 7, 1913 – November 29, 1998) was an American swing and mainstream jazz guitarist.
Biography
George Van Eps was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, into a family of musicians. His three brothers – Fred ...
,
Ted Greene
TED may refer to:
Economics and finance
* TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar
Education
* ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association
** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey
** Transvaal Education Depart ...
,
Robert Conti
Robert Conti (born November 21, 1945) is an American jazz guitarist and educator.
Conti was born in Philadelphia and was an autodidact, first performing locally at age fourteen and mentoring with Pat Martino. In 1966, after four years on the ro ...
,
Lenny Breau
Leonard Harold Breau (August 5, 1941 – August 12, 1984) was an American-Canadian guitarist. He blended many styles of music, including jazz, country, classical, and flamenco. Inspired by country guitarists like Chet Atkins, Breau used fingers ...
or
hybrid picking
Hybrid picking is a guitar-playing technique that involves picking with a pick (plectrum) and one or more fingers alternately or simultaneously. Hybrid picking allows guitar players who use a pick to perform music which would normally require ...
as practised by
Ed Bickert
Edward Isaac Bickert, (November 29, 1932 – February 28, 2019) was a Canadian guitarist who played mainstream jazz and swing music. Bickert worked professionally from the mid-1950s to 2000, mainly in the Toronto area. His international reputat ...
, Laszlo Sirsom and others allows for a more complex,
polyphonic
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...
approach to unaccompanied soloing.
"Blowing" or single-note soloing
Charlie Christian
Charles Henry Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist.
Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar and a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained nati ...
and
Django Reinhardt
Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...
are generally held to have initiated the use of the guitar to play melodies and improvisations over other instruments, the former using an early form of amplification, the latter playing forcefully on an acoustic guitar. Over the years, jazz guitarists have been able to solo in standard jazz idioms, such as
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
,
cool jazz
Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the fast and complex bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and ...
and so on, while in also absorbing influences from rock guitarists, such as the use of electronic effects.
Chord soloing
Jazz guitarists are not limited to single note improvisation. When working with accompaniment, chord solos are created by improvising chords (harmony) and melody simultaneously, usually in the upper register on strings 1,2,3 and 4.
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a dist ...
was noted for playing successive choruses in single notes, then octaves and finally a chord solo - this can be heard in his improvisation on the standard
Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)
"Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" (often called simply "Lover Man") is a 1941 popular song written by Jimmy Davis, Roger ("Ram") Ramirez, and James Sherman. It is particularly associated with Billie Holiday, for whom it was written, and her ...
. When playing without accompaniment, jazz guitarists may create chord solos by playing bass, melody and chords, individually or simultaneously, on any or all strings - such as the work of
Lenny Breau
Leonard Harold Breau (August 5, 1941 – August 12, 1984) was an American-Canadian guitarist. He blended many styles of music, including jazz, country, classical, and flamenco. Inspired by country guitarists like Chet Atkins, Breau used fingers ...
,
Joe Pass
Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua; January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. Pass is well known for his work stemming from numerous collaborations with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, an ...
,
Martin Taylor and others. This technique can also be incorporated into unaccompanied soloing: for instance
Django Reinhardt
Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...
's ''"improvisations"'', as he called his solo pieces.
See also
*
List of jazz guitarists
The following is a list of notable jazz guitar players, including guitarists from related jazz genres such as Western swing, Latin jazz, and jazz fusion. For an article giving a short history, see jazz guitarists.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
...
*
Jazz guitarists
*
Swing (jazz performance style)
In music, the term ''swing'' has two main uses. Colloquially, it is used to describe the propulsive quality or "feel" of a rhythm, especially when the music prompts a visceral response such as foot-tapping or head-nodding (see pulse). This sens ...
*
Jazz bass
References
Further reading
* The Guitar, in:
Joachim-Ernst Berendt
Joachim-Ernst Berendt (20 July 1922 in Berlin – 4 February 2000 in Hamburg) was a German music journalist, author and producer specialized on jazz.
Life
Berendt's father, Ernst Berendt, was a Protestant pastor belonging to the Confessing ...
''The Jazz Book'',
Lawrence Hill
Lawrence Hill (born January 24, 1957) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for his 2007 novel '' The Book of Negroes,'' inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the ...
& Company, New York
*R., Ken (2012). ''DOG EAR Tritone Substitution for Jazz Guitar'', Amazon Digital Services, Inc., ASIN: B008FRWNIW
External links
Jaén, Fernando Alonso (date unknown). “The Archtop Jazz Guitar”* Wilson, Gerald (2005). Personal interview with the author.
* Yanow, Scott (date unknown). “Wynton Marsalis.” All-Music Guide.
* Yanow, Scott (Date unknown). “Pat Metheny.” All-Music Guide.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jazz Guitar
Jazz instruments
Guitars
Occupations in music