This book by jazz guitarist Jostein Gulbrandsen is an interesting journey into the sounds you would hear in modern jazz guitar and fusion playing.
The book is divided into 10 chapters:
Chapter 1: Lines over dominant seventh chords
Chapter 2: Lines over minor seventh chords
Chapter 3: Lines over major seventh chords
Chapter 4: Major II-V-I lines
Chapter 5: Minor II-V-I lines
Chapter 6: Solos over jazz standards
Chapter 7: Lines over modern jazz chord progressions
Chapter 8: Motifs
Chapter 9: Comping and voice-leading
Chapter 10: Influential guitarists
The first five chapters resemble the standards jazz guitar licks compilation, with the exception that Jostein explains the concepts behind each written example. This gives us more context to how the line was created. But, it doesn’t follow any particular logic in terms of the concepts for the lines. You’ll see hexatonic (triad pair lines), string skipping lines, symmetrical lines, bebop ideas and other concepts in the lines, so it’s kind of a musical buffet really.
Chapter 6 is interesting for me since it puts the lines and ideas in the context of a solo over five different jazz standards. This is valuable and I’m glad this is in the book. It might even be a good idea to listen to these solos first before checking out the first five chapters.
Going into Chapter 7, we get more examples that have that whole ECM, Wayne Shorter and even more contemporary jazz guitar vibes. This is a cool chapter for sure.
In Chapter 8, Jostein explains the importance of motifs to get out from lick playing. There is also an emphasis of rhythmic motifs which I found interesting as well.
Chapter 9 gives us a break from the melodic heavy aspects of the book with examples of how to comp in these modern styles. It’s kind of cool to have this in the book since this chapter gives us more ideas of how the accompanying parts can work underneath the lines that we have been studying.
Closing the book in Chapter 10, Jostein introduces concepts behind the playing of five iconic guitarists: Frank Gambale, Allan Holdsworth, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and John Scofield. There’s only so much you can cover for each of these players in 8 pages, but Jostein does a fine job giving us an idea of how they shape their unique lines.
Talking about the book as a whole, the accompanying videos are probably one of the most helpful things to navigate this book. It makes a difference to hear Jostein play the examples since there is so much variety covered.
I would recommend going through the entire book while watching the videos & following with the music notation to get a sense of the material. After doing this, you could perhaps zoom into specific sounds and concepts that resonate with you the most.
In conclusion, this book is an interesting document of the vast variety of sounds used by contemporary jazz guitarists. I reckon that if you have been listening to a lot of the guitarists mentioned in the book, the book would make more sense. So much of this stuff requires deep listening in order to see the context of how these sounds work.
Pros: An interesting assortment of lines, harmonic concepts, voicings and ideas to get more of the modern jazz guitar sound into your playing.
Cons: Not really a “method book”, but more of a resource.
TLDR: If you like the modern jazz sound or fusion guitar sound, this book might be a worthwhile addition to your guitar book library.
Get your copy of this book on Amazon here: https://amazon.com/Modern-Jazz-Fusion-Guitar-Examples/dp/1495014088/
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