by Dr. Matthew Warnock.

Sid Jacobs is one of the most well respected and revered guitarists and educators on the modern music scene. During a career that has spanned more than three decades, Sid has made his mark in just about every corner of the jazz guitar spectrum. As an educator he has taught at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the University of Southern California, the Dick Grove School of Music and the Musician's Institute, where he remains on faculty today. During this time, Sid has nurtured and mentored some of the finest up and coming jazz guitarists in the country. His devotion to teaching has not only allowed him to teach at these prestigious institutions, but has made him a highly sought after private teacher and clinician as well.

Apart from his work as a guitar pedagogue, he has also authored a number of highly regarded instruction books and DVDs. Among his numerous publications is his critically acclaimed book of Bill Evans arrangements for guitar, which is considered required reading by many guitar teachers and guitar schools around the world. While he draws upon his years of teaching experience when in the classroom or private studio, Sid also brings with him the lessons he's learned from decades of stage experience performing with some of the top jazz musicians in the world. During his illustrious performing career Sid has performed with jazz greats Brad Mehldau, Larry Goldings, Javon Jackson, Eddie Harris and many more. Aside from his output as a live performer, Sid has also released several CDs that have become favorites of fans and critics alike.

Matthew Warnock: Unlike most guitar teachers who start their careers by either teaching at a local music store or giving a few lessons to friends in their neighborhood, you pretty much began teaching right at the university level. Can you talk a bit about your early teaching experiences and how they led to your appointment at the University of Nevada Las Vegas?

Sid Jacobs: Well, I did teach a handful of lessons for a few weeks at a local music store in Miami when I was in high school, but that didn't last very long. There were also a few kids in my area that I would show chords and scales to in order to make some pocket change, but I never really taught much before I moved to Las Vegas.

Matt: So how did you make the leap from teaching a handful of local lessons in Miami to being on faculty at a major University? Did you know anyone at UNLV that brought you on board, or did you send in an application for a position? How did it all come to be?

Sid: It started when I was in Miami. I used to go hear Joe Diorio play all the time, and I was studying with a teacher named Vincent Bredice, who had been Joe's teacher when he was younger. Both of them were influential in my decision to become serious about music. I was practicing all the time and pushing myself to grow musically. When I moved to Las Vegas I wanted to apply to UNLV as a music student, so I could continue my musical training. I went to the school to meet the Dean. I must have caught him on a bad day, or he might have thought I was just another long-haired hippie freak. I told him I wanted to check out the guitar department, and his dismissive response was basically, "We have too many guitar students, get out of here." This pissed me off, and in a knee-jerk reaction, I said, "Well, if you have too many students then you must need another teacher." This threw him off guard.

Matt: I bet.

Sid:I told him I could get recommendations from Joe Diorio and Vincent Bredice, but he said that recommendations didn’t matter, what I needed to do was play for his guitar professor, and then they would make a decision after that. At the time I was playing a lot of classical guitar, and as luck would have it I played a few Bach pieces that this professor was also working on, and we ended up hitting it off right from the start. After the audition we went back to the Dean's office who asked their teacher about the audition. The professor replied, "Hire him, he plays better than I do." [Laughs]

That's how I ended up teaching there when I was 18 years old, and even though I wasn't studying at the school, I was still trying to further my musical education on my own. I was lucky enough to be playing gigs around town and working with experienced musicians that I could learn from. I would also seek out composers and arrangers and learn from them as well. Sometimes I would do copy work and I learned about orchestration from reading the scores I was copying. All of these experiences, teaching, playing and writing, came together to form my musical education.

Matt: Can you talk a bit about how you were developing your teaching style at this young age? Were you basing your lesson plans and material around what you learned from Joe Diorio and other teachers, or did you try and develop your own distinct approach to teaching?

Sid: I feel a teacher has to go with the flow of the lesson and meet the student at their level. If someone is at an early stage in their understanding then we might focus on the fundamentals. If someone is more advanced we can dig into something more challenging. My approach has always been to find common ground and see the direction someone wants to go. What is important to get across is that there are certain fundamentals of music that are universal. How these apply though can differ between students, depending on what they want to learn and what style of music they ultimately want to play. I remember the first thing that was pointed out to me, as a little boy taking music lessons, was the difference between a major and minor chord, namely the third. Sometimes this is taken for granted and the teacher moves on to scales and more advanced harmonic concepts; meanwhile a student may not fully grasp, or hear, the difference between a major and minor third.

Later on down the road this will keep you from being able to play changes. If chords are either major or minor depending on the third and chord progressions are a series of major or minor chords, then it follows that a chord progression is basically a series of major or minor thirds. So asking a student to solo over a progression using scales or other complex material is too difficult if they don't have a firm handle on the third of each chord. But a simple task, like just playing the third of each chord on the downbeat of the bar, is very do-able, and encourages good voice-leading, even in beginners.

That is a good example of a fundamental skill, and I would encourage this ability in students even before they begin with scales, or other more advanced harmonic concepts. I think when people start to improvise they want to sound good playing over chord changes, and for me starting simple is more productive than introducing modes and other complex material. A lot of people, even those with a lot of natural talent, walk away from the guitar and music because they think they need to be a human calculator to create a solo or play certain styles of music. They may not be built that way. A good teacher breaks down complex ideas so the student not only understands them, but can use them to make decent sounding music right away.

Matt: Do you teach these fundamental concepts only on the guitar, or do you have your students sing each exercise and do listening work alongside their guitar playing?

Sid: It is a combination of everything you mentioned. Music theory tries to explain what occurs naturally and if you can hear something and then explain it with theory, then it can be helpful. But, if you learn something from a theoretical standpoint and then try and play it, without being able to hear the concept or idea, then it will never work and will always end up sounding forced and unnatural. You don't have to understand something intellectually if you can hear it, you can still sound good by relying on your ears, and the theory can come afterwards, if at all.

Matt: Do you do a lot of transcribing with your jazz students or do you do ear training exercises with them?

Sid: I think transcribing can be its own ear training exercise, and one of the best ones available.

Matt: Exactly.

Sid: I may not even recommend a student transcribe a whole solo all at once, they may be able to get what they need from the solo by transcribing a few ideas, phrases and melody lines. If there is something you hear in someone's playing that you just can't live without, than take it. Always steal from the best.

Matt: I agree. I am curious if you have any favorite transcriptions that you recommend for your jazz students who may be new to transcribing solos?

Sid: Well, chances are, if they're jazz guitarists, they've heard of Wes Montgomery, so I would recommend him or Jim Hall. They are both very lyrical players, and their lines are very singable. One thing I recommend is that you sing along with a solo even before you write it out or learn to play it along with the CD. In order to absorb a solo, you have to listen to it many, many times, which is a great way to learn a musical concept.

I also recommend taking songs or solos you are learning and building your own "top 40" playlist on your Mp3 player, so you can listen to these tunes over and over again as you learn them. Hopefully you are not only learning the songs, but are finding enjoyment in listening to these great recordings. Listening to music shouldn't be a chore, if it is, then something is wrong and needs to be addressed in your musical direction before it becomes a bigger problem. It's like love, if it hurts than you're doing it wrong, unless you’re into that kind of thing. [Laughs]

Matt: Right! After leaving UNLV you moved to Los Angeles and began teaching at the Guitar Institute, which is now a part of the Musicians Institute. How did that position come about? Did you know someone on the faculty there that brought you in, or was it similar to UNLV where you walked in and played for them and they offered you the gig?

Sid: I knew Joe Diorio back in Miami. He was one of the guys that founded GIT when he moved to L.A. I had been on the road at the time touring with different groups, and when I decided to settle in L.A., MI was expanding and was moving into a new building. Joe gave me a great recommendation and I've now been there over twenty years.

Matt: You have also helped to develop the jazz guitar curriculum at MI over the years. Could you talk about what courses you have developed and continue to teach today?

Sid: Well there's Jazz Guitar Improvisation I and II, with each being a ten week course. The first class deals with bebop and playing on changes and the second part deals with triad pairs, symmetrical scales, and chromatic harmony, the more modern vocabulary in the language of jazz and improvised music. There is a jazz guitar ensemble, which is primarily a reading and interpretation class. The class deals with mostly five part arrangements, with one or two students on each part, and we have a few charts that we work through during the course of the quarter.

The other class I have is Jazz Listening. This course came about because I noticed that a lot of students would come in to ensemble classes wanting to play a Charlie Parker or John Coltrane tune without ever having heard the recording. They had heard "of" these players, but never really listened to their music. I developed this course to help provide a venue for these students to listen and be exposed to these important players.

Matt: Since most people today know MI and GIT from their rock and pop curriculum, could you talk about how the jazz guitar area fits in to this paradigm?

Sid: GIT was originally started by a group of jazz guitarists. Howard Roberts used to travel around and do week-long seminars all over the country. He would rent a ballroom in a local hotel and do intensive jazz guitar workshops which ended up becoming very popular. After a while he decided he didn't want to travel so much. He took a chance and started GIT in L.A., a one- year guitar intensive program that evolved from the week long seminars he had been giving.

He then went and rounded up three other guitarists, Joe Diorio, Ron Eschete and Don Mock, to be the nucleus of the program. At the time the program was full of very-dedicated and highly skilled students. Between these four great players the students had just about all styles of jazz covered from Swing and Bebop to Fusion and Modern jazz, which gave them a very comprehensive guitar education.

Since there were only four teachers at the time, the school was very small and so the audition process to get in was highly competitive. But, like anything else that becomes popular, the numbers began to grow and they eventually had to expand to accommodate the large number of applications they were receiving. As they grew in numbers they also began to expand their course offerings to include classes in blues, country, rock and metal, but jazz was still a part of the core offerings of the school. Over time these other styles have continued to grow and jazz is still a part of the curriculum, it's just not the main focus of the school anymore.

Matt: Could you give some advice to people who are interested in auditioning to MI as to how they would prepare themselves for the audition in order to come into the program at or near the top of their class?

Sid: Well, first of all, no one needs to worry about simply getting into the school, as MI has a place for everybody and everybody is welcome to study there. But, what MI offers the more advanced students are the "Open Counseling" sessions. This is where students can go in and hang out with top guitar players who teach at MI, as well as guest artists, pick their brains, play tunes with them, or ask any questions they want about music and guitar.

Students who don't have the basics together have to attend their core classes while the Open Counseling sessions are taking place, and they could miss a lot of opportunities to play while they are working on material that could have been learned before they came into the program. What I always recommend to anyone who is planning on going to MI, or any music school for that matter, is to get the fundamentals behind them as quickly as possible. That way they can take full advantage of the talented faculty and the advanced courses unique to their school. The fundamentals are fairly easy to learn, and they can be learned anywhere, even on the internet. It's always better to work through these concepts before going to a music school in order to ensure that you are receiving the most out of your educational dollar.

Matt: When you talk about the fundamentals of music, do you include a basic repertoire in that category of learning as well as theory and ear training?

Sid: Absolutely. Everyone needs to have at least a handful of tunes, in the style of music they want to play, ready to go at any time. There needs to be some sort of common ground when you sit down with someone to play for the first time, or else you'll just end up staring at each other and not making music. Learning songs and tunes is the best way to allow you to jam with the more advanced players and teachers, which can be a great learning experience in and of itself.

Also, make sure that you know all of the notes, all over the neck. If you don't know the notes on the neck than you're a guitar owner, and if you can't count while you’re playing, you’re a fan. This is fundamental regardless of the style of music.

Matt: Switching gears a little bit, one of the things you have become known for is your affinity for Bill Evans' music. How did you become involved with Bill Evans on the guitar? Guys like Lenny Breau, Ted Greene and Ed Bickert have all been highly influenced by Bill's playing, but you have been able to dig deep and really develop a full understanding of his music. How did this come about?

Sid: All of those guys you mentioned, Lenny in particular, had all come before me and were a big influence on my playing style. I had seen Bill play live before I heard Lenny play and so I was enamored with everything about him by the time I started to explore Lenny's music. His playing, his harmony, his sensitivity were all very appealing to me. A big part of music, for me, is introspection, and I could see that Bill was digging deep inside when he played.

I thought, if I can't imitate his harmony on the guitar than at least I'm going to work on being able to play with that level of introspection in my music. At first, his harmony seemed unapproachable to me. I didn't really know how he was able to voice-lead so well; my harmony at the time was wrapped up in chord "grips." That's where I was harmonically when I discovered Bill's playing. A lot of guitarists use a grip mentality in their approach to harmony because it's easy, but there is usually very little, if any, attention to voice-leading when you use grips to play chords.

At the time I figured improving was just a matter of learning more grips. I would write out tons of chords in those boxes, you know, “grips in grids”, and I learned all of these chords all over the guitar. Outside chords, inside chords, stretchy chords, and each chord had a fingering and a function. Then one day, not long before he died, I went to Donte's to see Lenny play the guitar night there. I figured that Donte's was a famous club and since Lenny was playing it would be packed. I called and made reservations and went down to catch the show. I thought the room would be filled with guitarists and celebrities, but that wasn’t the case. I was surprised that, outside of one quiet table of two adoring guitar fans, my wife and I were the only ones in attendance. I couldn't believe it. Not being from Los Angeles I was unaware of the town’s famous apathy.

I was able to talk to Lenny that night and I arranged to get together with him and went to his apartment the next day for a lesson. It was a dive; it was the same apartment featured in the documentary when they discuss his murder, and I couldn't believe that the great Lenny Breau was living like this. At one point during the session I asked him about his chord voicings. I didn’t recognize any of his chords, and what he said was simple and profound. He said, “Oh man, all I’m doing is playing a melody with thirds and sevenths.” All he was doing was playing a melody note and then adding thirds and sevenths below that melody line.

At first I thought it was going to be hard, like a math problem. I thought that I had to adjust the way I learned chords, but I later realized I was able to just take just one note, the root, out of my “shell” voicings and there it was. So Lenny opened the door for me that helped me get a better idea of Bill Evans approach to harmony. I began to recognize rootless voicings more clearly. Hearing Lenny play showed me that it could be done on the guitar.

Matt: Did Lenny's approach help you arrange Bill's tunes on the guitar?

Sid: In order to study Bill’s harmony, I bought a few books of his transcriptions. I wrote out the music on one staff, and then I would take out the notes that I couldn't play. That was basically my approach to the guitar arrangements of Bill's music. The difficulty was deciding which notes to take out. If the chord had six or seven notes and I couldn't grab them all on the guitar, I had to figure out which ones should stay and which ones should go. Doing this really helped me get a better understanding of Bill's playing because I was constantly looking for the "key" notes in his solos, chords and melodies, which gave me a better sense of how he constructed his ideas.

The thing that stood out to me was that all of these guys, Bill, Lenny, Ted, etc., were focused on the melody line. If they had a chord melody arrangement going, then the melody line was always paramount and the harmony was there to complement the melody. This is not often the case in the chord melodies of a lot of guitarists who rely on grips in their playing. My view is that the melody is always the most important thing, and a counter-melody is next. After that, the thirds and sevenths may need to be in there, and if there are any fingers left over, then the root can be included, but usually it's not necessary for the arrangement to work.

This "rootless" voicing approach is something that is a characteristic of Bill's playing, and it's the reason that some of the fake books get his chord changes wrong. For example, the first chord of "Blue in Green" is often written as a Bbmaj7(b5) chord, but it's actually a Gm13 chord that is often voiced without the root.

Matt: Aside from the Bill Evans book you have also released a number of instruction books, and recently an instructional DVD. What do you have in the works right now for your next book or DVD project?

Sid: Right now I am working on a book that deals with counterpoint on the guitar. I’ve always been fascinated by counterpoint and its application to the guitar and so I am trying to bring some of those ideas together.

Matt: Were you exposed to contrapuntal guitar playing through the music of Jimmy Wyble, or did you come across it on your own over the years?

Sid: Jimmy's been a great source of inspiration for me over the years, as well as J.S. Bach, who wasn't a guitarist, but his music really fits well on the instrument. When I was playing a lot of classical music, I could play some of the repertoire but I had little idea harmonically what I was playing. Now I am revisiting a lot of these great pieces, like the Lute Suites, and, with a more enlightened view of the fingerboard and harmony, I am able to take some ideas out of the music that I can use in my improvising.

I can't get past a bar or two of a Bach piece before something jumps out, like a great sounding cadence or contrapuntal line. It is like walking on a beach full of diamonds and all I have to do is reach down and pick one up. If you are looking for great 2-5 cadences check out any Bach fugue, they're full of them. I'm working on getting these ideas into my ears and under my fingers so they can work their way into my playing.

Matt: It's always funny how many people tend to label Bach's music as "old school," but the level of sophistication and the depth of the material is astounding. And all of these ideas can be translated onto the guitar and into a modern context, which can be very beneficial to any player.

Sid: Absolutely, and another thing about Bach's music is it's technically challenging. It’s good for your technique. If you're playing tonal music, he's the Grandfather; he started it all. I keep the Omnibook, a volume of Charlie Parker solos, and the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin next to each other on my bookshelf. If I'm hanging out with another guitarist and the conversation turns to playing on changes, I might ask them to open to any page of either book and notice how many bars have a third on the downbeat approached by a seventh in the bar before. Sometimes there's chromatic embellishment, but that's the basis of this music, it's all there in Bach and Bird. Guide tones are so important; you can't hear the chord changes without them. The third tells you if the chord is major or minor; and the seventh says "keep it movin'." Sevenths are like the cop on the corner, "Nothing to see here, keep it movin'." [Laughs]

Matt: Just to wrap up, I was wondering if you had any advice for younger players who are just beginning to teach guitar lessons or any music lesson for that matter.

Sid: The best advice I can give, and this truth goes for any musician, is that you need to have material to play. It doesn't matter what style of music you want to play, you have to have songs in order to do gigs and to communicate with other musicians. Nobody is going to care if you know all your modes and scales if you can't play any tunes, but if you can play a few tunes, at least you can jam with other people and become a functioning musician.

Begin with ten minutes of material, then expand to twenty, and eventually you will have an hour. All the scales and concepts you are learning can apply to this material, so they become interchangeable. As a teacher it's good to ask a student, "What do you want to play?" Then you can get a better idea of the material you should be working on and you can develop your technique and conception from there.

Matt: Great advice.

Sid: Sometimes we can become sidetracked with academics, overly concerned with modes and patterns and stuff, and we forget that the reason we do this is to make music and play with other people. The hardest thing about being a musician is finding the balance between playing and thinking, music theory and music truth.

Matt: On that note we'll wrap things up. Thanks for taking the time today to share this great information with us.

Sid: No problem, my pleasure. Now it’s time to play.

Links:
Sid Jacobs
Musicians Institute
Sid Jacobs on Guitarinstructor.com
Jazz Photographer Bob Barry
The Bill Evans Guitar Book
Mel Bay's Complete Book Jazz Guitar: Lines & Phrases
Modern Jazz Concepts for Guitar: Innovative Improvisation Techniques
Sid Jacobs: Jazz Guitar Improvisation