Is BIAB suitable for learning Jazz guitar?

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I'm struggling to learn to play Jazz guitar - the books are really expensive, so I'm wondering if there's any way to use BIAB (much cheaper than a buying half a dozen books) to help. Is there any way to combine the guitar chords and melody of any jazz standard into one playable solo jazz guitar part that I could learn from?

If not, is there any other PG music product that may help?
ps I cant read music so I need tab!!

Ravi

Hi Ravi

Does not matter what instrument you are learning BIAB is a great assist as it covers all aspects of playing and reading music,the thing here is time how much time you can spend in learning when i started it was 14 hours every sat and sunday and as much as i could for the rest of the week,i had to listern to records but with BIAB you have every thing to hand, you can hear, you can see, you can slow down, its how much you want to learn,one basic guitar book and BIAB you can`t beat it

regards Dave Hoskins

Hi, Ravi - welcome to the forum

Dave knows what he's talking about. I'm not a jazz guitarist but I can tell you there are more than a million things you can learn with BIAB for just about any musician.

I agree - one book (I would recommend something from the 'Progressive...' series of self-tutor books with CD) and BIAB and you are set for life

Thanks guys!
What I really wanted to know is if I could somehow combine the guitar & melody tracks - I know that I can do them separately but is there any way to get BIAB to do it - to be honest, I dont know how to play the two together on my guitar and I suspect that I'm not good enough (yet) to do it manually!
Can anyone give me any tips on how to get started to try and do this?
Where do I find these "Progressive" series of books? is that a PG Music product?

Ravi

I am not at home (I'm on holiday) so I can't give you a direct link but they are available via any good music store or Amazon. Just Google 'Progressive Guitar' and follow the path to Amazon

By 'guitar & melody' tracks, I presume you mean something like fingerpicking guitar rather than jazz. Yes, there are plenty of fingerpicking guitar tracks to study, with tab. Tab means you don't need to be able to read music (though it is a good exercise to learn to do so - BIAB even has a programme to help you to learn how to do that). Tab shiows you what frets on your guitar fingerboard to be able to play the same. You can slow down the playback to 25% in BIAB or even print out the charts for yourself.

Go for it - you won't regret it. Besides the folks on the forum are here to help when you get stuck (or to provide support and friendship when needed)

Also, be patient. No disrespect but learn to walk before you run

Good luck

PG has Essential Jazz Guitar Vol 1 - 2 They are video guitar lessons.Go to the store.

Quote:

Thanks guys!
What I really wanted to know is if I could somehow combine the guitar & melody tracks - I know that I can do them separately but is there any way to get BIAB to do it - to be honest, I dont know how to play the two together on my guitar and I suspect that I'm not good enough (yet) to do it manually!

Hi Ravi,

Band in a Box has the Guitar Chord Soloist feature.

All you need is the MIDI Melody line plus the chords to create a Guitar Jazz Chord Solo part with one button push. And it can be done in a small variety of different styles, too.

These can then be saved, viewed as TAB plus notation and also on the BIAB Guitar Fretboard view. You can also use Step function to go through this one beat at a time, highlighting the finger positions as you learn.

So the answer to your question is, YES!

--Mac

I believe you are referring to Chord-Melody playing (think Joe Pass). Check out my friends over at :

http://www.chordmelody.com/

BIAB used to have a great application call "The Jazz Guitarist". Is was excellent but has disappeared over the years. Rumor has it that there were ultimately copy right problems. I used to have a copy but it was lost over the conversions from computer to computer. The Essential Jazz Guitar may pick up where Jazz Guitarist left off, but I don't know, having not seen this newer application.

This is truely a special art. Combining both the melody and harmony and rythyms all into a solo performance seems to be somthing only granted to the gifted performer. But it is certainly an excellent goal. Good luck.

"Jazz Guitarist" was not a BIAB program, as it was not inside of BIAB.

It was a separate program offered by pgmusic.

There are still jazz guitar study programs offered by pgmusic, they are topnotch and I highly recommend them.

Matter of fact, I think an aspiring jazz guitar player should get both BIAB --AND-- at least the first Jazz Guitar multimedia lesson offering from PGMusic and use them side-by-side.

--Mac

Wow!
Thanks guys. So much good information to take in! I'll check out the Essential Jazz lessons right now and take a look. It's great to know that BIAB will do what I want - I have heard about the Chord Soloist feature but for some reason I thought it meant that BIAB would create solos over chords and just didn't look into it any more!

Many thanks
Ravi

BIAB can create solos over chords, if you want. It can also create the chords to solo over! A never ending fountain of creativity for you to explore...

No matter what type of guitar music you're intrested in, when you are trying to learn to play, it's best to use songs you are familiar with. BB lends itself to this type of learning. You find yourself a music book that has the songs you like. Enter the cords and tempo of the song into BB. Use a sequence music program like Music Time Deluxe(have to import midi into BB melody option) to manually enter the lead lines of your song or enter them directly from BB piano notation option, select any of BB's jazz styles that meet your preferences, open up the guitar tableture option in BB, press play, and watch and learn. Simple as that.

Welcome Ravi,

I can´t go enough describing about what has BIAB made for me as guitarist, in fact helping to improve my playing and improvisational concepts. Just the fact of be able to select a style, a tempo and my own chord progression turn BIAB in a powerful learning/practicing tool. Now, with Soloist, multi jazz focused styles, Real Drums, Real Tracks, plus the inmense available library of songs among which are several Real Books and jazz standards, the possibilities become infinite! . The ways I use BIAB are diverse, sometimes I just load the demos bundled with BIAB and start to practice/improvising over. Other time I load a jazz standard and change its tempo and even key for improve my harmonic sense. Other I try to learn phrases or even complete chorus of BIAB generated solos. Also I load a song just with bass and drums for construct, learn and practice songs with chord melody or convert a jazz standard melody with the chord progression feature. BIAB can be a great reference by record my guitar playing audio over a song or jam chord sequence and after I listen myself with criticize sense. One of the most rewarding ways of use BIAB is as compositional resource, it help me to render to reality many of my ideas and even I record my guitar audio in real time, turning BIAB in an amazing song sketchbook.
I have some video examples of my musical work where Band in a Box has been helpful in diverse ways:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLHoFoRudOM&fmt=18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7BaLgnwpFk&feature=related&fmt=18

Cheers.

Carlos

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http://carlosarellano.com/music

Maestro, (aka Carlos, aka jazzpick)

What a pleasure to see your work again. It has been sometime since you popped in here. Thank you for sharing your gifts and talent. What an inspirational joy.

Dan