Jens Larsen Teaches Justin: Jazz Guitar Lesson

I'd take one tune say A train and work on it for 2 months, and take it around all keys

Grant Greens blues, "Greenery" is good to learn

Justin is a Christian mocking fool.

This was incredibly fun to watch and very informative at the same time. Thank you Justin and Jens both!

Excellent Video. I love Jens Larsen's videos... They are a bit on the advanced side of things.. I wished there was an (maybe easy?) video that help with playing all the diatonic arpeggios from more than one position.

Grant Green's albums "Idle Moments" and "Matador" are two of his more jazz focused albums that are worth listening to.

Hi Justin, greetings from Hobart. Another great video that gets more to heart of it all. It was neat hearing you both have such an honest matter of fact discussion. Reminds me of your fantastic Martin Taylor interview. Cheers

I love how justin pretends not knowing some things to solidly ask the questions in our minds. Couple of information was valuable to me:
1- Learn the songs good enough to not worry about the upcoming chord. learning a jazz standard is not learning the melody and chords only. It is an opportunity to apply what you learn in a nice context. Find a standard that you can listen and work on for months without getting bored. ( I am using Song For My Father for this. Second month now and still the chord progression is appraling to me)
2- Keep the memorizable licks to 3 to 8 notes. The longer the line is the less flexible it is.
3- While repeating a motiff, try to develop in each repetition.
4- Hitting the chord tones is nice but not the ultimate goal everytime. Record and listen to your lines. Once you are bored of your lines, you will start searching for ways yo break your cliches in your lines.
5- Keep the lines simple and focus on the rhytmic motiffs. Implement them in different chords starting on different degrees to glue the lines.
6- We all are tired of Autumn Leaves and get mad once it kicks in 😂

I've a slightly different approach, Justin. A Gershwinsong like 'Summertime' is perfect for noodling around melodically and rhythmically. It's slow, so you can go from blues, to slow swing and all the way to rumba (think Santana). Due to how you syncopate the melody, there will be a natural way to play the melody. The way you rhythmically play the melody, additional embroidering notes will come just as natural. Or you can create a melody that counterpoints the melody of the song. Improvising is nothing but composing and with a slow song like 'Summertime', you can play the song in standard time and still have loads of room for playing around and finding different options without running behind. We tend to over-complicate jazz and forget it's all about syncopated melodies. Play everything really, really slow, focus on how to syncopate the melody and listen to what extra notes fits in. You can't expect yourself to write a full-fledged novel, until you've learnt the alphabet and how to put letters in to sentences and then in to little stories.

Very interesting. I’ll never be a jazz player but I really enjoyed hearing the thoughts of two awesome teachers.

Both of you are good in talking and learning an im learning while you talking you two are most of favorite and mine too ..happy teachers day.

Hey jens Larsen ,,grant d here again I told you something that wasn't completely accurate,, I said the banjo was the only string instrument invented in North America,,, there's also the dulcimer......the dulcimer isn't that impressive,,but no less a fun little stringed instrument.... What was really impressive was the fine woods that they are familiar with to make the dulcimer.. there's a whole community in West Virginia or something.that's all they do

So one thing I worked on and sort of made progress with was.... If you remember the record I mentioned ,,foggy mountain banjo from 1961.... So I did a steel string acoustic guitar rendition of the thing and jazz it up some more,,,, came out pretty good of course I'll probably forget the thing....don't Matter, we remember these things sooner or later

You gents are awesome. Cheers

Thanks for this vid! Great to see and hear you both having a wonderful time diving into jazz guitar. One of my favourite styles on the instrument!

At 59, I just began Level 2 with Justin, and so recently bought an electric guitar to go with my two acoustics. Consequently, I've really wanted to at least start to understand jazz guitar, and hopefully be able to play a passable version of it someday.

Finding this talk between Jens and Justin is pure gold! They are both incredibly brilliant guitarists, and yet, they are both such humble guys. Seeing my teacher (Justin) continuing to learn new things (Hello "Nitsuj!!) is incredibly impressive and inspiring.

I am grateful to be alive at a time when we have such easy access to such wonderful people and meaningful information that can help make us better musician! 🙏

Just a philosophical discussion for me but fascinating listening to two great players.

I can relate to so much here !

@justinguitar did you respect your jazz plan ? :)

I’m not sure if I’ve heard it said that the melody of the song will unfold in the chords.. having stock minor major dominant and diminished licks are only there to serve the melody of the song.. using only guide tones in every chord when learning the song is all you need to identify the chord so learn those first visually and that is half the battle .. you’re ear does the rest which is unique to you. I jumped from a blues player to just starting to play jazz and I only worked with Autumn leaves just to learn HOW to learn .. and it works on every tune.

This was great.

Always admire your honesty Justin when you relate your knowledge of music or songs irrespective of the genre. You show that one is never to knowledgable to approach another musician for explanation and clarity in regards to anothers expert knowledge. Even Lars eludes to the fact that his knowledge expands as he continues his adventure with jazz and more recently in a video he explains revisting his approach to practising arpeggios. Kudos from Astraya 🙏🙏

Referring to Bright and grey,,,, one of the brightest ,most soothing, elusive (evading) guitar instrumentals I've ever heard

I found this really useful. I am going through my of the issues Justin raises but from a lower base skill level!

Thank you guys! This is one of the very best interviews, not just about music, but it could have been about any subject, because the questions that were asked and the problems that were attempted to be solved, is exactly what a beginner / intermediate jazz guitarist like myself would need to ask Jens! I have subscribe to both of your channels nine or 10 months ago. Again thank you both so much.

Fabulous Justin and Jens. This session probably speaks to the hesitance/fear/panic felt by most of us essentially blues players trying to deal with Jazz lines.

The main question for me remains, how can I fake my lack of intelligence....🙃🙃🙃

It's great to see 2 G.O.A.T.S 🐐🐐 in action 🔥

blending things with chromatism helps me alot. i think nailing the changes in a way that you dont hear it to much. like instead of playing a phrase on the 2, one on the 5… i try to make full sentences that covers both and keep going with the progression. i try to hide the changes in a way by blending with enclosures and chromatism. to me, it helps alot on my vocabulary. its like if i play the changes but i try to hide it

The questions were so good justin , thank you.
I really liked the part about learning small idoms as building blocks!

Bring him back plzz

I think out of all the music styles jazz is the black sheep ,the Picasso of the music world. A lot of jazz player keep to blocks that are safe, sometimes not being scared of going outside those blocks and even making mistake or slipping into odd notes of different styles is how you develop.

Justin asks great questions and used excellent follow up questions, but Jens doesn't give us enough concrete answers. He is answering too generally. For me, anyway.

Late to the party here, not sure how I missed this. The whole time you were talking about running changes well versus mechanically, I was thinking about the difference between hacking out chords all in one inversion, versus voice leading. One sounds abrupt and jarring and the other smooth and professional. Right after that you talked about feeling like you get stuck gravitating to certain positions for certain chords which kind of underscores my previous idea about disconnected vs smooth. Not saying I’m any good at jazz (I’m not) but just an observation that I wanted to share.

Thanks guys, I get more insight from conversations like this than from structured lessons.

This was very cool and very helpful. I'll listen to it a couple more times, but I took a couple things from it on first pass. One, don't worry too much. Two, we all have the same issues.

after 10 mins we get to hear what justin says..... bad video!!!

Both really cool guys! Thnx for all your lessons! ❤🙏

"Thinky-land" love it! This was good to watch. I am working on developing from a self generated motif and building from there and things are starting to click a little.

How great is this! The two YT guitarists I follow the most got together for a video. Looking forward to watching!

If you can't sing it from your heart don't bother trying to play it. Don't know who said that but it makes sense.

Jens is a true gentleman and an amazing teacher.

Great interview Justin

I've followed the two of you for a few years, but somehow I just stumbled onto this. What a session. To listen to you talk at a professional level with each other was a real eye (and ear) opener. Great stuff. You're both are truly gifted teachers. Online instruction at its best.

"the most important person to listen to..is yourself" So True !! That's what we as players (myself included) often forget and in doing so deprive ourselves of lots of opportunities to sound good. Being too preoccupied with the next chord change, scales to use or whatever we think of we simply forget to listen to what we've just played. And throw away what might be a perfectly good idea/ line and replace it with the next idea instead of using the material we just played. Could be a shape, a specific interval, a rhythm, anything we just played can be used to base our next phrase on. Paul Desmond was a master at this game.. connecting every next phrase very logically to the next by using elements from the previous phrase..

Thank you

How have I not seen this?

Excellent conversation. I have all the problems Justine has, except for the fact I am so much worse 😂. The problem with jazz is that, before beong able to actually say something meaningful, you need to study and focus on standards a lot... it's not everyone's cup of tea, especially if you are not a full time musician and have little time.