Tools for Every Guitarist:

Introduction to

Jazz Guitar

Let me ask you a few things… 

Have you always been curious about jazz guitar… but assumed it was too complicated, too boring, or required reading sheet music?

Do you wish you could use chords beyond the basic ones, but don't even know where to start?

Are you tired of the “learn every mode in every key before you can play a song” gatekeeping and just want someone to show you how to play some cool chords and some classic jazz style songs?

Have you ever stared at an Ebmaj9#11 chord diagram and felt your soul briefly leave your body?

Do you want a simple, friendly way to dip into jazz without abandoning your indie/folk/rock/metal/experimental music roots?

Do you want to feel confident playing with trained jazz musicians — even if you've never played jazz before in your life?

Did you like the movie Whiplash?

Jazz guitar seems… impenetrable, right?

I’m not going to lie to you: I have a love/hate relationship with jazz.

As a teenager I spent a couple years playing exclusively ’90s rock. That was my entire world. But then I discovered a community of jazz players in my area who seemed to play circles around every rock musician I knew. They knew more chords than I thought existed. They had every song memorized. And what stood out most to teenage Stuart was how fast they played.

And to make matters worse… they were good at other styles too.

So not only was I inspired to play like them, I wanted to become them. The whole vibe. So I kind of… devoted my life to it for a while. I learned to read music, bought an upright bass, joined a jazz combo and the school jazz band, spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on jazz records (CDs, actually...), went to jazz clubs and jam sessions almost every week, built a whole network of jazz musicians across the San Francisco Bay Area, and even moved to New York for a semester to study jazz.

At one point, I was almost making a “livable” wage playing jazz (for a 20-year-old living rent-free with his parents).

But there was a problem: I never really understood jazz. I didn’t enjoy it. I was pretty miserable. I wanted so badly to be great at it, but it was complicated, there was pressure, there was competition, and I constantly felt like I was fighting the music.

So I backed off and started playing rock again. And three things happened:

1. I actually enjoyed myself. Playing music I naturally connected with felt like breathing again.

2. I realized how much I learned from jazz, even without loving the experience—how music works, harmony, hearing things by ear, and playing with other musicians.

3. Once the weight was gone… I actually started to enjoy jazz.

That was a long story, and it sort of sounded like I was trying to talk you out of this course, but here’s the point:

I want to share the benefits of playing and studying jazz without all the nerve shattering Whiplash stuff.

(None of my teachers were actually like the black-t-shirt J.J. Jameson instructor, but some of them were a little scary, and I was just a tiny, innocent, frightened 19-year-old boy.)

This course gives you the good parts of jazz—the parts that make you better at every style you play—without the pressure, confusion, or emotional trauma.