In this episode of the FretDojo.com Podcast, lets dive deep into a topic that’s critical in your development as a jazz guitarist:



The importance of jazz vocabulary – and how to go about learning it!



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What made Joe Pass such an incredible jazz guitarist?



Sure, he had great swing, a tasteful sense of how to shape a solo, and could play any hundreds of jazz standards at the drop of a hat.



But for me, there’s one thing that stands out in particular when it comes to Joe Pass.



It was his complete command – and sheer amount of –  jazz vocabulary that he had at his disposal.



Which is the topic of today’s post, and why mastering vocabulary should be priority #1 when it comes to practicing jazz guitar.



Why Learning Vocabulary is So Important



Learning jazz without learning enough vocabulary is like learning a foreign language without learning many words.



The result:



You won’t be able to ‘speak’ jazz. Your musical conversation will be the equivalent of ‘Tarzan speak’.



Taking this analogy further – improvising is like having a conversation with the harmony of a jazz standard.



And if you don’t know to ‘say’ the right thing at the right time, you won’t leave a good impression!



To ‘converse’ with the harmony effectively, you need to not only know enough jazz ‘words’ and ‘sentences’ (more on this in a moment), but you also know how to use them in ways which clearly communicate your ideas.



Different Types of Jazz Vocabulary



The word ‘vocabulary’ is a pretty broad term when it comes to jazz. There are several types of vocabulary, such as:




Pitch Vocabulary – such as melodic patterns and phrases



Rhythm Vocabulary – different subdivisions of rhythms, rhythmic motives, familiarity with starting phrases on different points of the bar



Articulation Vocabulary – I.e. the way you play the notes on the guitar, such as slides, accents, staccato, and vibrato



Chordal Vocabulary – knowledge of different chord qualities and voicings.




I would also class substitutions as vocabulary as well, I.e. knowing how to apply melodic phrases in harmonic contexts different to the phrases original chord progression. But that’s another huge topic…



Anyway, a competent jazz improviser will have a large ‘stock’ of knowledge to draw from in all of these areas, that they then combine spontaneously in a solo.



If you feel like a ‘deer in the headlights’ when it’s time to take a solo, it’s likely you don’t have a large enough ‘stock’ of vocabulary – OR perhaps you do have enough vocabulary but are not familiar with it enough for it to be useful for spontaneous improvisation, as I’ll detail below…



Common Mistakes When Learning Jazz Vocabulary



Mistake #1 – Skimming rather than Diving Deep



Here’s the thing:



You don’t need to learn a lot of jazz vocabulary to be a competent jazz guitarist.



It’s far better to dive deep on just a few elements that really appeal to you.



One teacher told me once that ‘Just keep learning loads of transcriptions and vocabulary, and then see what sticks to your playing’.



But, I now don’t agree with this – it’s not an efficient learning approach, to ‘throw a heap of stuff at the wall and see what sticks’.



You are much better of selecting a piece of vocabulary that you like, and then really working on incorporating it deeply in your playing, so it firmly becomes part of your language.



Mistake #2 – Attempting to increase vocabulary just by learning full transcriptions of solos



Although learning to play a full transcription of another jazz musicians solo is an excellent way to teach you about many aspects of jazz such as overall feel, appreciation of how to structure a solo etc, it won’t directly teach you vocabulary that you can spontaneously incorporate into your own solos, in and of itself.



You need to go further than this with a transcription if the aim is to increase your vocabulary,

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