The Changes - Sid Jacobs: Guide Tones for Jazz chords, Lines and Comping for Guitar

Sid Jacobs

Jan 2011 · Mel Bay Publications

About this ebook

The Changes: Guide Tones for Jazz Chords, Lines, and Comping is offered for beginning to advanced players as a way to visualize guide tones on the fretboard. From these shapes lines can be created for soloing and voicings can be built for comping and chord melody. Most importantly, the changes of the progression being played can be heard with only a few notes. The simple approach is always best; guide tones are easy to play and are how the ear identifies a chord progression. Embellishing guide tones is what improvising musicians from baroque to bebop to beyond have been doing to make the changes. Online audio download includes all exercises.

About the author

Sid Jacobs grew up in Miami, Florida and began guitar lessons at the age of seven. As a teenager he became serious about jazz playing and would study and practice by day and sneak into the jazz clubs at night. When the Jacobs moved to Nevada he obtained a position as guitar instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This made him, at eighteen, the youngest faculty member in the school's music department. While living in Nevada, Sid found work in the hotel pit orchestras, and as touring accompanist to a number of celebrity singers and jazz artists.

 

After moving to Los Angeles he developed the curriculum for the Jazz Guitar class at Ml/GIT and the Dick Grove School. In 1991 the CD "Its not Goodnight" was released featuring his original compositions and improvisations.

 

Through his involvement in education, his personal associations with jazz notables, and his own discipline, Sid continues to gain recognition

as an influential educator, composer, and performing artist. In reviewing a live performance, Los Angeles Times jazz critic Don Heckman characterized him in this way " ... a highly articulate improviser. .. " Never at a loss for a new phrase his improvisations seemed to unfold with the ever­ changing fascination of a set of Bach variations.

 

Sid currently divides his time among his pursuits as GIT instructor, musical equipment manufacturer's consultant, performance and recording artist, and jazz clinician.