on counter-intuitve concepts / on transcribing

on the process of mastering jazz guitar you're gonna notice that many of the stuff you have to practice isn't exactly what came to your mind at first. it's counter-intuitive.
One example for this is that in order to gain speed at picking what you're gonna have to do a lot of the time is playing slowly. isn't that interesting?
i had always thought that in order for me to play fast i would have to practice fast.
i had no idea how wrong i was. when at first someone explained to me that i'd have to practice slow movements i thought: "what the heck are you talking about? doesn't sound logical to me."

but you'll see for yourself, the closer you get to mastery the more often counter-intuitive concepts are going to show up.

alright with that in mind let's look at a counter-intuitive concept.
how do you master the art of jazz improvisation on the guitar?

Clark Terry - one of the few mentors of Miles Davis has a saying.
Clark says, if you want to learn how to play, use IAI.

IAI is short for:

Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate.

1)
Imitate the true masters of jazz guitar FIRST.
Listen to Wes Montgomery. or Charlie Christian. or any great master that appeals to you. Do not transcribe entire solos. this is unlikely to help you.
Instead build a vocabulary for improvisation by transcribing your favourite passages of their solos and asking yourself:
how can i use his phrase?
over what kind of progressions can i use this?
what scale does this derive from?
more information on these questions will be shared in another article.

Try imitating your idol as closely as you can. and do not pick more than one player in the beginning. focus on just one jazz guitarist. otherwise you're going to be overwhelmed.

2)
next assimilate. Try to make subtle changes in the phrases you transcribed. try to apply different phrasing.

3)
the third and last step should be to innovate. this happens after a LONG TIME of transcribing and assimilating material, at a point where you've completely internalized the musical ideas of true masters, so that you can now make new musical phrases arise.

If you truly want to master he art of jazz guitar, use this concept.

Why do most people fail, when trying to accomplish such an incredibly hard task as mastering jazz guitar, although they're musical?

the answer is simple.

they want to innovate first.
they learn the whole palette of scales that you can find in literature.
they see a minor7 chord and play dorian, the a dom7#5 chord and play whole-tone. they see a m7b5 chird and play locrian 9.

after several months (or years!) of practice they wonder why they're still not sounding like Wes, Charlie or Jesse Van Ruller.
I mean they play the correct scales over the respective chords, so what's the problem?
if you're reading this, chances are you've been through this.

the answer is the elusive obvious. there's more to wes montgomery's lines than "dorian over minor and superlocrian over dom7#9 chords."
there is chromatic passing tones, there is bebop movements in the lines and most importantly there is sound and phrasing.
that's why you don't sound like Wes and Charlie.

So stop trying to innovate first and start imitating the masters you want to sound like. otherwise you'll waste incredible amounts of time and ultimately fail.
Listen to Clark's advice.

And remember todays masters went through the same procedure. imitating first. innovation in the end:

Pat Martino transcribed Wes Montgomery and Johnny Smith.
Bireli Lagrene transcribed Django Reinhardt.
George Benson transcribed Wes Montgomery and Tal Farlow.
Lage Lund transcribed George Benson.
Pat Metheny transcribed Jim Hall.
Kurt Rosenwinkel transcribed Pat Metheny.

transcribing is no reason for disgrace. you're not going to end up as a duplicate of your paragon of jazz guitar anyway. but it's inevitable to imitate a true master if you want to master the instrument yourself.