by Dr. Matthew Warnock.

The Jazz Guitar Experience: Your Practical Guide to the Landmark Styles of Jazz is an informative and entertaining method book that takes the reader on a historical walk through the history of the jazz guitar from the 1920s to the 1980s. Presented by the National Guitar Workshop, and published by Alfred, the book is written by the highly respected guitar pedagogue Tom Dempsey. Dempsey, who teaches at the NGW each summer, breaks down many of the most significant harmonic and melodic developments in jazz over this time period and explains, in an easy to understand manner, how they can be applied to the guitar. He covers such topics as approach notes, swing feel, Freddie Green style chords and rhythm, shell voicings, quartal harmony and clustered voicings. Each musical concept is fully explained in the well written text that accompanies each musical example and the abundance and clarity of these examples provides a treasure trove of information for any jazz guitarist.

Each of the different decades, from the '20s to the '80s, is organized by the significant movements and genres of jazz that occurred during the time frame. The stylistic developments include swing, gypsy, bebop, hard-bop, post-bop, modal, cool, soul, fusion and modern jazz. Dempsey does an excellent job of covering every genre and style of jazz that was prominent during the 20th century, as well as providing written examples of chords, lines, comping and solos in the style of significant players from many of these genres. There are musical examples written in the style of Eddie Lang, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Larry Coryell, John Scofield and several other historically significant guitarists. By writing musical examples (melodic, harmonic and rhythmic) in the style of these legendary players, Dempsey provides a point of reference for the reader as they begin to work through each exercise in the different genres. This provides readers who are new to a certain genre the opportunity to go and listen to a recording or two of the players being referenced in a particular chapter. This will help them get the sound of that player, and style, in their ears, making it easier to work through the material presented in the book.

The musical examples presented in each chapter of the book are written in both standard musical notation and guitar tablature. Dempsey also includes left-hand fingerings for every single-line example, which will be a welcome visual aid for those readers who may not be familiar with how certain scales, arpeggios and ornamentations are normally fingered within a particular genre. There is also a visual guide to the fingerings in the back of the book for those who are not familiar with the left-hand numbering system for each finger. By including the tablature with each example, Dempsey is able to provide very specific chord and single-line fingerings for the reader, which will cut out a lot of guess work while working through these exercises. The standard notation is also a helpful resource as it provides the rhythmic values of each note and chord, something that is not found in the tablature. Together, along with the left-hand fingerings, Dempsey has covered all the notational bases and ensured that players of any reading level will be able to quickly dive in and begin learning the material without having to spend time figuring out how to decipher each example.

Along with the detailed written examples, Dempsey has also included a CD of 70 audio examples to accompany the book. Each example is played by Dempsey on guitar, Pete Sweeney on drums and Tim Ferguson on bass, with the exception of one example that features just Sweeney playing a comparison of swing and bebop time feels. When the examples are short, Dempsey will often repeat them in order to give the reader a chance to fix any mistakes they may have made the first time around. Also, each example is played at a moderate tempo allowing the listener to hear how these three musicians interpret the rhythm, articulation and phrasing of each written example. The CD will definitely come in handy for readers who are unfamiliar with a certain style and do not have recordings of the players mentioned in the book to which to refer. Dempsey and his trio masterfully interpret each genre and style presented in the book with the utmost attention paid to historical accuracy in each example.

The Jazz Guitar Experience is a well researched and carefully presented outline of the guitar's role in jazz during most of the past century. While it would be almost impossible to present a highly detailed analysis of all of these styles in a single volume, Dempsey should be commended for his effort to present the highlights of such a diverse number of players and genres in under 50 pages. By choosing specific important harmonic and melodic developments from each era, Dempsey has presented a chronological guide to the jazz guitar that any guitarist, at any level of ability, can learn from and enjoy.

Links:
Tom Dempsey
National Guitar Workshop
The Jazz Guitar Experience (Book & CD) on Amazon.com