Jamie Holroyd recently released an E-book entitled “30 Days to Better Jazz Comping”, which he asked me to review. First off, I want to say, I don’t consider myself a jazz guitarist. I’m primarily an alt rock guy. But I have been studying jazz guitar for about a year and a half now. Mostly through the teachings of Jimmy Bruno at his online guitar workshop. It’s been slow going, as I am also working on improving my rock improvisation, as well as starting to learn acoustic fingerstyle and bass guitar too.
Although I often feel that splitting my practice time amongst so many styles may be slowing my progress, I also feel the diversity will eventually make me a better player. And so I’m always on the lookout for different approaches to these various methods. Because I’ve found there are many ways to teach guitar, and it’s often a matter of finding the right teachers viewpoint to help certain lessons “click” for you.
With this eBook, Jamie Holroyd has taken a pretty broad and deep subject – jazz chord comping, and broken it up into 30 bite-size chunks.The lessons start out with the basics, first giving advice on how to practice with tips on using a metronome and how to use the II-V-I progression as a basis for exploring the different lessons. Although he starts with pretty rudimentary stuff, like triads and chord construction, you do have to have the basics of guitar playing down before attempting to use this book. You should be able to easily play basic chords and at least have a clue about music theory.
This book is great for someone who is comfortable playing rock and blues type stuff, but has been intrigued with all those strange jazz chords. Or maybe you find yourself digging some stuff that turns out to be labeled “jazz”, but thought it was way beyond your skills when you first attempted to learn it. (“How the hell do I play a G7b9b13 chord!?!”)
I found the progression of the lessons built logically upon one another. And I was finding myself learning something with almost every lesson, even those that covered stuff I thought I already knew. But though the concept and basic examples of each lesson can be understood within one practice session. Most lesson will require a good deal more time to get to the point where you truly know the material and can apply it. But this is true of any method of learning jazz guitar. Jamie’s, lesson a day approach does help make the whole topic seem a lot less overwhelming, and makes it easy to set your own pace.
Of course this abbreviated approach also means there there isn’t as much depth devoted to some topics as there could be. But I feel Jamie has done a good job of finding a balance, and giving you the essential information to get you pretty far along the jazz comping path.
The eBook also includes 41 audio files, which serve as a way for you to hear some of the example lessons. While I found this a nice addition that many other book-based lessons lack, I felt it could have been done better. The audio sounds like it was simply recorded with a phone or similar. And the examples about rhythm, which are especially helpful to actually hear, seem like they also could have been improved with a metronome, so the rhythms being taught would be clearer.
But over-all these are minor problems, and I found this book a great resource to a difficult subject, that may just be the method that “clicks” for you. The book is $14.99 and available – HERE.
Here’s a list of what you get in the book:
The 30 Days to Better Jazz Guitar Comping Course Package Includes:
•Over 40 Audio Examples to Accompany Etudes and Examples
•More Than 100 Musical Examples in Notation and Tablature
•Printable and Clear PDF Format
•Over 30 In Depth Jazz Guitar Lessons
Lesson Topics Include
•Practicing Jazz Chords
•Triads
•Chord Construction
•Shell Voicings
•Drop 2 Chords
•Drop 3 Chords
•Dominant 7b9 Chords
•Jim Hall Diminished Chords
•4th Voicings
•Quartal Etude
•Close-Position Voicings
•Major II-V-I Comping
•Minor II-V-I Comping
•The Charleston Rhythm
•Chord Synonyms
•Four to A Bar Style Comping
•Chord Soloing
•Chord Licks
•Blues Chord Solo Etude
•Combing Chords and Single Lines
•Solo Guitar Arranging
•Inner String Movements
•Bossa Nova Comping
•Comping with Bass Lines
•Walking Bass Line Etude
•Jazz Guitar Intros
•Jazz Guitar Endings
•Rhythm Changes Comping
•Rhythm Changes Etude
•I-VI-II-V Variations
•Learning Chord Progressions
•Right Hand Jazz Guitar Techniques
•Jazz Guitar Comping Tips
I am looking for a guitar playing courses.This Ebook helps me a lot.