Workshop: RJS - Guitar Intermediate

Come and join our Saturday Jazz School. If you are a guitarist who is already competent in other styles, or has recently started to play jazz, this course will equip you with the basic technical skills and musical knowledge for playing jazz on the guitar.

The course is hands-on, designed to help you develop your guitar technique and expand your knowledge of chords, scales, arpeggios and melodic patterns on the guitar. From the start you will learn to play jazz tunes - their chord progressions and melodies - and begin to improvise on them. You will receive guidance in developing your improvisation, accompaniment and performance skills and an understanding of music theory. We also study the work of the major jazz guitarists and other leading jazz artists.

Course Content

Your course will have a practical focus and offer you opportunities to learn and further develop your jazz guitar skills
Topics will include:

1. Basic chords for jazz guitar: Major; minor; dom.7; major 7; minor 7; half-diminished; dim.7; chord embellishment: maj 6; maj 7th; maj 9; 6/9
2. Chord voicings for common progressions: 11,V7,1; 111,V1,11,V7; etc.
3. Basic music theory for the jazz musician: Intervals; Cycle of 5ths; Harmonising the major scale; chord/scale relationships.
4. To identify and play common rhythms.
5. Basic scales - Major, minor, pentatonic in several positions and fingerings; Scale variations e.g. scale in 3rds; scale in broken 7th chords.
6. Major, minor and 7th chord arpeggios over 1 octave and 2 octaves with inversions.
7. 4-in-the-bar rhythm guitar style: using 3-note and 4-note chord voicings.
8. To play chords, melodies, chord melodies, accompaniments and to improvise on several jazz standards such as the following: 12-bar blues (in F major); 12-bar blues (in Bb major); Honeysuckle Rose; Perdido; I Got Rhythm; Sweet Georgia Brown; Saint Thomas; Pennies From Heaven; One Note Samba; Yardbird Suite; Take the A Train; Satin Doll, Blue Bossa, Nuages, Autumn Leaves, It Had To Be You, Oh Lady Be Good, All of Me, Scrapple from the Apple, There Is No Greater Love.
There may be opportunities for class members to perform at one of the Student Concerts that takes place on the evening of the final class of each half-term.