Easy Soloing for Jazz Guitar
John Dempsey
Sub-titled "Fun Lessons for Beginning Improvisers", this book bears the imprint of "Approved Curriculum" from the National Guitar Workshop. It seemed like an ideal book to use with students who wanted to play jazz but had never improvised. Dempsey is a seasoned player, teacher, and author, so I expected that the book would be good. And it is, BUT there are some caveats that you will need to keep in mind if you use it.
The general approach is to learn to improvise using a single scale type, adding a new scale in each section. The scales taught are: minor pentatonic, blues scale, major pentatonic, major scale, then modes of the major scale. Arpeggios are introduced next, then the harmonic minor scale, ending with the combining of scales and arpeggios with other improvising concepts.
Within each section, the scale under study is used over increasingly complex chord progressions. For example, the minor pentatonic is used over a single chord, then a two-chord vamp, a blues progression, and a minor blues progression. Clearly, the idea is to gain experience and confidence playing over chord changes without hitting wrong notes. The examples are in a variety of keys, with blues progressions in F, C minor, G, Bb minor, and C for the pentatonic scales.
Some concepts are accompanied by written-out examples (in both notation and TAB), while the longer examples have a written melody for the first chorus, with the student improvising the next two choruses (along with the accompanying CD). With the latter, you get to see how Dempsey plays over the chord changes, and then are supposed to take off from there. He gives the learner advice to change a few notes or some of the timing in his solo to make up your own. I like this idea in theory, but in practice I have found some significant problems.
First, the student has to get into the spirit of each solo, and while I like most of them some students seem to find them uninteresting, which undercuts an entire lesson. Others may just want to imitate Dempsey's own solo, or stick so close to it as to avoid any personal contributions. In particular, I find that younger students often have problems with the timing of anticipations and other materials are required to get the rhythmic concepts across. Real beginners may have more luck just learning the timing by ear.
Of course, this is not a complete guitar method, so teaching rhythm is not really its purpose. Nor is learning the entire fretboard. Instead, Dempsey relies on scale fingering diagrams which the student memorizes. I realize that a lot of teachers teach this way, but it does run counter to my own method of knowing the note you are currently playing. Still, if you are a rocker or blues player who has learned the "box method" of playing, this will extend the boxes and feel quite natural to you.
My final complaint is that much of the really important material is placed in grey boxes labelled "Practice Suggestions". These include excellent advice to practice exercises in all keys, to transform ideas into your own versions, and to experiment with fingerings. The problem is that only the best students will do this, and they would usually do it anyway. I prefer the Aebersold method of actually giving exercises in alll 12 keys to ensure that the student learns this important skill. Show don't tell!
Those are my complaints, but let's not lose sight of what is very good in this book. All of the important scales (for the beginner) are there, as are many of the most important progressions. There is very good advice for creating and varying motives, which is often omitted from beginning books. There is a short discussion of target tones, which I think could be expanded and presented earlier, as well as a nice section on approach tones (and combining the two).
So who should use this book? If you have a hard time coming up with a musical idea, this book can help you. Take Dempsey's ideas and use his techniques to vary them. It does work, and will lead you to creating your own ideas quite quickly. Also, students who are convinced (for whatever reason) that they cannot improvise will find this a mild introduction, and may be improvising before they realize it. Rock and blues players looking to cross over into jazz will find this a painless way to do just that. Anyone who has tried another method and become discouraged will find this method both encouraging and effective.
Just as it takes time to find the right teacher, you may need to work with several improvisation methods before you find the one that really clicks with you. And as with teachers, you will learn different things from each one. You would be hard pressed to get such a quality lesson with ANY teacher for the price of this book, so I say consider it an inexpensive lesson with Tom Dempsey and buy the book if it sounds at all interesting.
NOTE: Amazon has the best price I could find for it. Amazon.com allows you to look inside the book to see the Table of Contents as well as excerpts. (Inexplicably, Amazon.ca does not have this feature!)
Buy it in the USA here:
CANADIANS can buy it here: