Jazz Guitar Beginners - Take the A Train


Published on 26 January 2016
For more information from the source site of this video please visit: http://secretguitarteacher.com/youtube/beginner/jazz/SVSGWQNBhhE/115625015-jazz-guitar-beginners-take-the-a-train.php This is a sample of a lesson from the Secret Guitar Teacher site (see link above). This lesson comes from the Beginners Jazz Course. This course is designed for guitar beginners who would prefer to learn Jazz right from the start instead of taking the more commonly trodden path of playing blues or rock guitar for a few years first. So this lesson assumes no prior knowledge or experience of playing the guitar. Here’s the abridged transcript: In 1939 Duke Ellington offered Billy Strayhorn a job writing tunes for his band. And, along with some travel money, he gave him instructions to get to Ellington’s New York house by subway. The impulsively creative Jazz composer immediately turned the first line of those instructions into a tune that was fast to become a great Jazz classic. In this lesson we’ll deal with the easiest part - the chord sequence…Which you can see has two parts - we call them part A section and B section. Let’s take a look at the A section…The first chord is a C Major 7th. The little triangle between the C and the 7 is often used to distinguish the chord C MAJOR seventh from the chord C7. Here’s the chord diagram for the Cmaj7th I suggest using for this song: We want a strong offbeat rhythm for this song. So I suggest starting with thumb on the first beat then fingers and thumb on the ‘and’ beat like this. Ok. After two bars of C Maj 7th we change to D dominant seventh. Notice that the root note of the chord - the D note is at fret 5 and that you hold that note down with your third finger as the rest of the chord shape trails back from there. We then switch to the Dmin7th using this shape. Practice switching from the D7 first by anchoring your first finger on the note where your third finger was then add the 2nd and 3rd fingers at the same fret taking care to miss the 5th and third strings finally add the pinky at fret 6 on the B string. The next change, to G7 comes quicker as the Dm7 only lasts one bar This brings us back to the Cmaj 7th to complete the A section. OK, that’s a good point to consolidate what we have covered so far so here’s the whole A section played in slow motion with separated thumb and fingers on the right hand. This section is repeated, so second time through we’ll give you the plucking hand view… And here it is at more or less full speed with my right hand playing just the off beats…OK, once you have been over that enough times to feel ready to move on, we’ll take a look at the B section. Just one new chord shape to learn here.This is the F Major seventh with the first finger playing the root note at the first fret on the bottom E string. This is held for four whole bars… then we’re back into the little sequence from the A section with two bars of D7..one of Dm7 and one of G7 . Here’s the whole chorus played slowly. And here it is at more or less full speed. To help you practice the comping part I have made one of my fronting tracks at half speed. This is a track with me playing lead guitar, but with the rhythm guitar part suppressed so that you can replace it. If you are watching this lesson on the Secret Guitar Teacher website then you can access two versions of that fronting track from the toolbox to the right of the screen. One version, called the ‘complete’ track still has the rhythm guitar on it - you can use that to play along with me, particularly if you have any problems with timing your chord changes. But once you have got the hang of the changes I suggest switching to the fronting track where the rhythm guitar is all down to you. OK that’s pretty much it for this lesson - I’ll play out with a demo of me playing against the fronting track, then I’ll leave the track running for a couple of choruses for anyone who wants to have a go at that right now… In the next lesson we’ll take a look at playing the melody to this tune. So I look forward to seeing you then.