Work, with Miles Okazaki

This video is open to everyone. A few people have asked me for book recommendations, so I go through what's on my studio shelf. It's a long video, starting with biographies and then going more into theory and guitar stuff. One book that I didn't talk about is my own, Fundamentals of Guitar, which can be found online at Amazon or Mel Bay.

This video is open to free members. I address two member questions from previous posts, one about picking on three adjacent strings, and one on the Bach Chorales. I'll do some series videos on Bach at some point (a big project), but this answer can get people started. The chorale I discuss is attached. There are also a few gig announcements in the video, tomorrow at the Stone, NYC, and upcoming co...

Another long video, welcoming new members and getting a little deeper into bebop language on the guitar, in celebration of Bud Powell's 100th Birthday this Friday. I go through the intro and the head, showing my fingerings and talking a bit about how the notes relate to the harmony. The full video of me playing the solo can be found on youtube.

Here we go into one of the classic rudiments: Flams. These are not easy, so don't get discouraged. They're also not that necessary, but in my opinion they give you another cool tool for the kit. I demonstrate the attached exercises, and also talk about an instance of one of the patterns as it appears on this track with drummer Dan Weiss, who is doing the same pattern with his feet. The pattern sta...

Today's picking technique has to do with making a very quick double stroke leading into another string, what drummers call a ruff or drag. I give some examples of how I use it, and have attached a page from the book with more exercises.

Here we extend the exercises of symmetrical picking into triples, and all of the cool stuff you can do by combining twos and threes (all other numbers can be made from these). A worksheet with some additional ideas is attached.

Singles and Doubles together allow us to make paradiddles, one of the most common and fundamental drum patterns. I think this one is really fun to practice and very useful for buildng technique. I go through the exercise that's on the attached sheet. Here we get into double and triple paradiddles, and I demonstrate one of my favorite exercises, which is in Fundamentals of Guitar. The written exerc...

Following up on the last video, here's a thing on double strokes. Also an interesting observation on "Boogie Stop Shuffle" and "Mr. P.C.," two minor blues tunes with a bunch of doubled notes in the melodies, almost the exact same tempo, recorded a week apart in May of 1959. PDF attached for the exercise.

Here I give an introduction to Symmetrical Picking, something that I developed while writing "Fundamentals of Guitar" about ten years ago. I outline how the strings could be thought of as left and right hand drum stickings, and show an exercise for string skipping. See attachment for a written version.

This is the beginning of a new series on articulation with the pick. It's one of my favorite subjects, and I've put a lot of thought into developing exercises that get results, regardless of the style of music you play. This is an introductory video, where I talk about various ways of holding the pick and then give a couple of basic accenting exercises.

Here's a fairly long video showing my approach to the melody of a classic, "Donna Lee." This video is open to free members. Please share and tell friends about the site if you dig it.

Here I take a look at a passage from a Grant Green solo brought up by a member. This leads to some discussion about the Melodic Minor scale, and how it's often used in a jazz context.

This videos jumps off of the questions from the last episode. I talk about "Stardust," "Embraceable You," "Night and Day," phrases by Charlie Parker, and then demonstrate some exercises and ideas.

This is a response video to a couple of questions from the last post, which was pretty complicated. The main thing is looking at options of how to think about pathways, which can boggle the mind pretty quickly. I give some of my shortcuts and tricks.

By introducing mi6 chords, we've now doubled the number of dominants available at any given time. I get into this idea here, with a very short explanation that ties into the diminished thing we started this series with.

Turning from major to minor, I do a very brief history and explanation of the major/minor duality, and then get into the cadence Fmi6 --> C. Feel free to ask quesitons, as this one goes a bit into the weeds.

This is a continuation of the traffic circle idea, and the beginning of a pathways concept. We are now getting to the juicy part where we connect one traffic circle to another. I demonstrate and talk about why this approach can lead to a more functionalresult than a bunch of scales and altered dominants. I will refer to the attached page for this and subsequent videos.

Here the traffic circle idea explodes into an infinite pathway concept. I reference a 1945 recording by Don Byas and Slam Stewart that can be found here . Go to 1:48 to hear the thing I'm talking about. Also, attached to this post is a page from my book that diagrams out the pathways. I've only talked so far about the top half of this diagram (not the minor stuff). This one thing could be practice...

In the last video we looked at four ways to get to a place. Now we look at, for any particular place, four ways to get out of it. For example, if you are in C (major or minor), you can make that into a C7 to then prepare to go somewhere. You have (in this traffic circle model) four directions: F, Ab, B, or D. These could be major or minor key centers. So in the exercise I just go to a key center,...

Moving back to application, I explain here how the four dominants that we made from the diminished create four "altered dominant" sounds. Specifically: Bb7 -> C = G7b9#9 -> C Db7 -> C = G7b9#11 -> C E7 -> C = G13b9 -> C and of course G7 -> C = G7 -> C So, instead of thinking of four varieties of altered "G7" chords, we are thinking of approaching the destination from four d...

Back to warmup exercises, here's one looking at the diminished 7th morphing into the four dominant 7th chords that are related to it.

Here's a video to address a member question of application of the stuff from the previous post, using examples on a minor blues and "All the Things You Are."

This will be a series of videos on a single topic that I find extremely useful, which is the use of diminished structures. We start out with thinking about the places where one diminished 7th structure could go, and then turning that into an exercise.

Still using the Chromatic Scale, and then demonstrating with improvising on a blues. Seeing how many levels of dynamics we can get with the pick, playing with the amp turned up to 10.

A couple more quick practice ideas for the chromatic scale, a great way to get your fingers and picking hand going.