Can you guess the song? People ask me if I change my style when I play bebop, swing or gypsy jazz. My approach for all these styles change although for swing music I generally prefer playing double bass and not really solo but at any rate, the entire way of thinking is different for me. The phrasing, the vocabulary, the chords, the sound; the technique and all that. The thing with older styles of jazz is that you can't use a music school approach. You have to immerse yourself in the whole music through recordings. Furthermore "swing" is actually a vague term as there is a difference between even early Louis Armstrong and late Louis Armstrong. Even though he more or less stayed in the same style as a musician throughout his life, his rhythm sections changed quite a lot over the decades and it affects certain approaches too. Most people nowadays tend to use a more "modern" approach than how people played in the 20s/30s. Besides Louis Armstrong, there was Lester Young and Count Basie who were from the same era but had quite a different approach. This solo that I sang (poorly) is in the early 1930s style of Louis Armstrong/Sidney Bechet. #swingmusic #swingtaiwan #swingmusician #neworleansjazz #gypsyjazz #jazzmanouche #louisarmstrong #sidneybechet #fatswaller #tradjazz #vintagejazz #吉他 #ジャズギター #ジャズ ＃ジプシージャズ

Meet my lost brother from Tokyo. @masaaki.saito He plays the harmonica, I play bass. Here’s a tune called Eternal Triangle. #jazz #bebop #harmonica #bass #jam

A series of ideas over the B section of Clifford Brown's Jordu. It's a challenging chord progression as there isn't a lot of room for "creative" improvisation. Like Giant Steps, it's a good idea to prepare a number of ideas in advance. As you practice a number of them, it will hopefully give you ideas for actual improvisation. That said, the slower the tempo, the easier it is to improvise over it. Furthermore, as I always mention, it's not always the most important thing to perfectly nail every chord, even Clifford Brown in his improvisation sometimes missed one or two chords. As long as you know where you are and where you're going, it will be fine. But this is typically a chord progression for showing off your prepared patterns! This is an excerpt from my @soundslice_music course on developing bebop lines on the guitar in an organic way, the way the bebop players of the old days themselves developed their lines. It's not about chord scales/modes as is commonly taught in music schools. It is about understanding how to decorate chords and about understanding a concept that I call harmonic direction. You can find the link to the course in my bio. #jazzimprovisation #bebopguitar #jazzguitar #jazzguitarist #jazzlicks #jazzguitarlicks #ジャズ #ジャズギター