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There's a discussion on one of the jazz guitar forums using E natural on an Fm7 chord in cantalope island.

I had posted this clip.

At the beginning of my solo I play C F G Ab G E and sustain the E natural.

A guitarist on this forum posted that the E natural was a sour note.

I posted that it we considered melodic minor to be a sour note we'd have to go all the way back to 1933 harmony.

He replied, "Straight minor or m6 is one thing; that's an Fm7 in Cantaloupe."...

I replied that martino and pass and others have been using this sound over min7 chords for over 80 years. But it points out one of the shortcomings of online forums. Somewhere along the line, this guitarist was told that you can only play over the exact chord in the rhythm section and that anything else is wrong. 

And he's not the only jazz forum member who posts things like that. I've heard from dozens of folks in the last couple months saying you can't superimpose chords that aren't being played by the rhythm section.

And one poster said on the same forum, (talking about my clip) 

“If he leaned on the maj. 7th over an m7 chord for a few beats as he did over the vamp, don't think many would say it worked.”

Just curious who's teaching these methodologies?

And why do people who are student level players have such strong opinions that they feel the need to pontificate about what is right or wrong about someone's solo?

And why do people feel like it's ok to make negative comments about someone else's playing in a public forum?

This is one reason that I do not allow criticism or negative comments in my forum, https://www.facebook.com/groups/modernjazzguitar .

Too many times, i've seen student level players put down others - when it's actually the student who needs to do more work…

just wanted to warn you guys. 

The scammers are now coming after musicians directly.

Last week a "film producer" contacted me and asked me to overdub rhythm and chords for a 1.5min video he was producing.

We discussed pricing and I agreed to do it for $300 and would give up 2 re-dos if there was something he didn’t like.

He asked me if I could accept an electronic check and asked me the name of my bank, which immediately got my hackles up. I told him I could accept venmo, paypal or zelle but he replied, 

“I would have used it if it was an option, but our business checking account doesn’t support 3rd party payments. Besides the company account has to reflect the payment for the project.”.

So I told him he could send me an image of the check which I would deposit using my mobile app.

Today I received a check for – NOT $300 – but $3000, followed up by an email which said this,

“Hi Jack, I had my assistant forward you the check, so I didn’t double check it before she sent it over. I’m only just seeing it now. 

Apparently my assistant requested a check of $3000 instead of $300 to my manager, and now he processed a check for that amount. I tried to cancel the check, but our account manager said we won’t be able to use the account for 90 days if I cancel the check, and I really won’t want that to happen because I have to pay my employees for the month.

Can you just deposit the check and find a way to send the balance back to my manager?

I’m so so sorry for the inconvenience. My sincere apologies. 🙏”.

Fortunately, I had not spent a lot of time on this project.

Just wanted to let you guys know to beware.

I posted this video on thegearpage(dot)net. It caused a lot of churn, chest beating, and claims that the chord substitution theory I teach is invalid. (See my article on Dodecaphonics). In the gearpage thread, one poster claimed over and over again that the chord substitutions were invalid and another poster hijacked the thread and kept attempting to change the whole point of my dominant 7 chord substitution method with his preference of using min7 chords over a Maj7 chord.

I don't mind a meaningful conversation but on guitar forums, there is so much chest beating and thread hijacking that it really gets discouraging.

I wanted to write a little bit about mental health issues among artists/musicians. As someone who's been honest and up front about my own mental health issues, I just wanted to get some things off my chest and start a dialog.

During a recent struggle with mental health and just prior to my spinal surgery in May 2023, I was prescribed a number of anti-depressants and sadly, most had really bad side effects - not the least of which was extreme insomnia. So I eventually ditched them because I wanted to go into the surgery - well rested. 

People often say that artists and musicians need to have thick skin. I'm sorry but WHAT??? Artists are, “who they are”, because of their sensitivities, their heart, their expression. So we're supposed to just turn that off autoMAGICALLY when someone says horrible things about our art, our playing, our personal life?

Once, on a well known guitar forum, someone started a hate-thread about me. People jumped in to add fuel to the fire saying stuff like,

• he thinks he's so great
• you can tell he's an @sshole by the look on his face in his videos
• he's not really a jazz player
• he just plays fusion, not jazz
• he just plays a lot of notes
• people who compliment him are just being nice
• he's an {insert derogatory comment}
• he's ruining his kid's career by posting videos of his guitar playing

Amazingly, this went on for a week and it was 10+ pages long. There were some folks who jumped in and defended me… But many friends and supporters stayed silent. A funny part of internet bullying is that people are hesitant to jump into the fray because they don't want to be attacked. 

Eventually, enough people wrote in to the moderator - that he deleted the thread. But this went on for 7 days straight and even though I tried not to look, I periodically checked to see if anyone was coming to my defense.

I probably slept about 2 hours a night during this period and of course, my mental health was horrible during this time. 

And I wish this were the only case. I've been doxxed, had calls with death threats, had stalkers sending derogatory emails from throwaway accounts, been subject to deep fakes of my face on porn and other bullying - some too horrifying to publicly post about.

So when people advise artists to just “get a thicker skin”, i push back. Instead of getting a thicker skin, I want bullying to be out in the open and called out for what it is.

Because the truth is, people with mental health issues have taken their own lives when confronted with internet bullying. 

Why then would an artist be expected to shrug it off and develop thick skin???

I hear Iverson's voice in my head whenever I feel like talking about practice. I'm 66 years old and have been playing for over 50 years. I'm a few months away from retiring from my day gig. I still try to practice 3-4 hours a day. 3 feels like a minimum for me to improve slightly. That extra hour makes a big difference to me in terms of learning new material and learning to improve and add to my repertoire…

We all have responsibilities and as we get older, we end up having more commitments instead of less. Sometimes, it feels selfish or self-indulgent to continue to voraciously try to improve but I view it as a long game.

I plan to keep working hard and improving until I can no longer play the instrument.

And closely related is practicing vs. entertaining yourself. When I was at the University of Miami, I was wandering the practice hall in the jazz department and a few guys were sneakily listening in on a trombone player who was awful. Struggling to play his major scales. Stan Samole wandered by and yelled at the kids to get away from the practice room door and said something like, “The guy is in there doing what he is supposed to do. He's working on stuff that he CAN'T play so he can get better. If you're practicing and you sound great, it's because you're entertaining yourself and not practicing!”.

I NEVER FORGOT THAT LESSON!

Barney Kessel told me once in a lesson that there are only 2 reasons to open the guitar case. You are either trying to learn something or you are making money.

I differ from that viewpoint in that I believe it's important to entertain yourself as long as that is not ALL that you do. Entertaining yourself keeps you grounded and gives you a sense of satisfaction that all the hard work and dedication you are putting in has paid off.

It doesn't matter if I am playing for an audience or not. I am competing with myself and am still striving to get better. 

have you guys heard Dave Creamer? Back in the late '70s, Bob Roetker and I shared some cassette lessons with Dave. 

Dave was one of the most amazing players in history. His mastery of 4ths and 5ths exceeded any other guitarist including Diorio, Holdsworth, etc. He could execute them in an extremely legato fashion with no overdrive and it sounded as clean as most people playing major scales. 

I never found a representative recording up until today. I believe this album with John Abercrombie and Dave Creamer was recorded around 1981/1982. 
 

Thanks to Ron Benbasset for turning me onto this recording.

Your Eyes (feat. Will Dithrich) - YouTube

The Maj7#5 chord works great over altered chords. For example, play the (Ab)Maj7#5 over the 3rd of an E7Alt to outline all the juice notes of the chord (particularly The #5, #9)

Here are a couple diagrams. 

first one is the AbMaj7#5 hexatonic 

Second one is the same scale but with Analysis over E so you can see the alterations

Lately, I've posted a lot of fusion videos on my IG, youtube, tiktok, threads, facebook.

It seems that the engagement is approximately 10-15x higher than an old guy playing clean, archtop guitar. (as opposed to an old guy playing fusion guitar)

I find this interesting because the interwebs regularly belittle fusion and I often read about how it has a smaller fan base than staight ahead jazz…

One of the things I've always struggled with is that I love jazz, fusion, rock, blues, bluegrass - equally.

I listen to Coltrane, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Allan Holdsworth, Joe Pass, Albert Lee, John Mayer, Jimi Hendrix - And I love them all.

I've often thought that if I had just concentrated on one thing I'd have been much better. 

Alas, growing up, I was likely to hear Ray Charles, Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Jimi Hendrix - IN THE SAME DAY, played by my parents who had really diverse tastes.

My dad used to jam with me playing Jimi tunes. Like a good father, he never tried to tell me that I shouldn't listen to jimi and that I should be listening to Wes or 'Trane instead.

He was a great dad and my parents helped forge my love of ALL music. Not just jazz.

So…I'm going to continue to post fusiony clips and jazz clips, as I feel motivated. I do not want to be pigeon-holed into a single style…

Love you guys!

I had the most amazing conversation last night with a former student of mine. He's a physician and had studied with me at Ellsworth Studios in Bethesda, MD - Around 1979.

He randomly saw one of my videos on instagram. The algorithm put one of my videos in his feed and when he saw it, he immediately wondered if this was his teacher from all those years ago?

We spoke for over 2.5 hours. He told me that my teaching and influence, changed his life, changed the way he thought about music, about learning - and about people influencing the course of his life.

He was really into the rock/pop music of the time and wanted me to show him how to play rock - but I wanted him to work on fundamentals until he gained a basic understanding of the rudiments.

He reminded me that at some point, I would go through the lesson rudiments with him and when he demonstrated he had grasped the previous week's lesson material, I spent the rest of the lesson teaching him some of the rock music he wanted to learn. He reminded me that I transcribed some of the music off a cassette player he brought in.

Based on his interests and my thoughts on how I might help develop them further, I wrote a list of 4 albums that I wanted him to ask his parents to get.

These were the 4 albums.

Jeff Beck - Blow by Blow 
Jean Luc Ponty - Enigmatic Ocean (with Allan Holdsworth)
Tony Williams Lifetime - Believe It (with Allan Holdsworth)
Pat Metheny - Bright Size Life

He had wondered for almost 5 decades, why I had recommended these 4 albums and whether I had recommended these albums to all of my students.

I DID NOT!...

Based on my interactions with him, I was trying to nuance him into expanding his horizons - going from more rock oriented (but complex) Blow by Blow all the way to Jazz (Pat Metheny)

He was simultaneously studying drums while he took lessons with me - which he eventually decided to focus on. He continued to play through undergrad, graduate and doctorate, and in fact, hosted a jazz radio show in college. He continues to play drums recreationally today and is a voracious listener of all things jazz.

In addition to being a huge jazz fan, he is a personal friends with many of the "who's who" of jazz. The jazz experience is integral to who he is as a person.

He still regularly attends jazz shows and it's not unusual for him attend shows of his favorite players, sitting right next to the stage, for multiple nights of "2-shows-a-night" on both coasts.

He let me know several times, that I was one of 3 or 4 mentors who absolutely changed his life and that he still frequently tells the story about his "teacher at Ellsworth and that list of 4 albums"...

I'm humbled to have had this level of influence, and that someone would reach out to me, almost 50 years later - to let me know how I influenced them.

Such is the power of teaching and mentoring.

I go back and forth on this issue. If I'm playing a lot of acoustic guitar, the notes jump out more when you use nails. However, I have very thin and brittle nails and they are always painful to maintain. (note, this picture is not of my nails, lol)

On electric, it's not as important. Several times folks have said to me that they use nails and even acrylic nails because they want the tone to even when they go from the pick to the fingers. To me, that whole argument is one I could care less about!

I don't want things to sound the same, or symetrical or even. 

If I wanted symetrical, I would never play jazz or R&B where the 8th notes are anything other than asymetrical. In fact, when I play with hybrid picking, I rather enjoy the sound and feel of the bare fingers snapping the strings. I try to incorporate elements of chickin' pickin' into my jazz playing and the asymmetry is as beautiful to me as a singer's breathing. (Note that Barbara Streisand once fired an engineer for eliminating the breath sounds out of one of her tracks).

For me, the imperfections are the beauty of the music that I love so much and I welcome them.

Here's a recent lesson I did utilizing hybrid picking.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J4ZopQ6y-84