Learn

Jazz Guitar

Your roadmap for learning to play JAZZ GUITAR with passion.

  • improvise your own solos

  • create your own jam tracks

  • analyze jazz standards

  • expand your chord vocabulary

It´s never too late to start improvising.

Anyone who has been playing an instrument for some years can start improvising. I really like to read music and i remember as a kid ( i started with playing the recorder) i always wondered. how the notes are going to sound once i played them. And i was fascinated how melodies could come to life like this.

But later, when i was around 13 i lost my interest in music for a while. And it i only came back when i started jamming and improvising with some friends ( and this time on the guitar ). And then there was no stopping me anymore and i needed to become a musician.

So maybe you feel the same way too.

Maybe you used to play a lot and then somehow lost the motivation to continue.

OR you just didn´t know how to continue and get better.

You spend so many hours watching Youtube videos about Jazz Guitar to get a starting point but stuff just didn´t add up.

But this voice in your head just won´t stop :

But every time you even think about starting to play jazz guitar (or working on your existing skills) you end up overwhelmed and stuck.

When you compare your guitar playing to your favorite guitarists on YouTube… your improvisation and chord skills come up short

You’re determined to start with what you already know - figure it out by yourself, if you only would find the right YouTube video.

But you're still struggling to figure out the right scales for each chord, how to play an accompaniment for yourself and record it on your looper, or just to play a meaningful solo.

You know learning to play jazz guitar takes time. But no matter how hard you try nothing comes out how you heard it in your head. 🧠

And there's no way your going to get a lesson with a teacher or join a work- shop before your improvisation are going to be much better.

(the mere thought of it let's your heart race).

your spending hours:

figuring out which strings, picks and amps your favorite guitarist uses:

or how you could maintain a practice routine that will never be interrupted:

or how to just finally relax, get into a state of flow and everything is all off a sudden going to work out by magic:

Here´s the thing:

Even with a new guitar and better skills you still will feel uncomfortable improvising with actual people in the room. (sorry)

I started my guitar journey as an auto-didact. but when i got into jazz i quickly realized that i need to find a privat teacher.

After decades of lessons and asking fellow jazz musicians many,many questions i feel like i have my sh*t together.

But i think there is always more to learn - so I try to concentrate on the processand not on the product and be open-minded.

No matter how many tutorials you watch or albums you listen to, it never seems to make a difference.

You’re surfing YouTube videos like it’s an Olympic sport, trying to piece together all the conflicting information

Yet you don’t feel any closer to knowing where to start or how to improve without feeling overwhelmed.

You can’t seem to get yourself to play with other people ( who just might feel the same way but you don´t believe that).

And you wonder if you are wasting your time and if you shouldn´t just give up.

Do you know the feeling ?

Believe it or not that´s how i still feel very often. And i am still on the journey of figuring out how to enjoy the process and NOT to compare myself with others. Be it online or in the real world...

🌲

Hi ! I am Tina Jäckel a Jazz guitar player from Berlin.

I am a full-time YouTuber and musician and love teaching guitar - and i buy way too many books ( just an insignficant side-note to show how smart i am ).

I started playing the guitar when I was sixteen and I became obsessed with improvisation. I wanted to become a musician really bad. Nobody in my family really was on the same track and it seemed to be a very absurd dream. I really didn´t know a lot about how i could make my dream come true

I studied jazz guitar in Würzburg ( a small city in Germany), Amsterdam and Paris. And i took a lot of lessons ( Peter O’ Mara, Peter Bernstein, Jesse van Ruller) and went to a lot of jazz workshops and unnumerable jazz concerts and jazz sessions. I practiced every day for many years and i just wanted to be “ the best” jazz guitar player. Or maybe the “best female jazz guitar player” since there are not so many and i maybe thought that would be more achievable.

Before i got accepted to study jazz i went to a well-known jazz session every sunday evening for one year. I always played one song : “ All the things you are “ .

And i think i played one chorus maybe two, but for sure not more.

Sometimes i played a solo that made me really happy and so i was happy for some days. Other times i burnt and crashed and i got so frustrated that i wanted to sell my guitar.

All of me self-worth and mood really depended on my last solo and the validation that I got from the audience or fellow musicians.

The Jazz Community can be a tough place and in the end the only thing that truly counts is how you play and perform on stage. And that didn´t go to my liking many years.

But somehow i always continued to make music and never gave up.

…and over the years of being a jazz musician and also by being confronted by the harsh reality that there is really not a lot of money in this profession. I realized that the true benefit of making music and also of improvising in front of an audience does not lie in applause and money…

…but in making MUSIC.

And so that´s basically what i want to give you in this course :

the joy of making music !

and i think the best way is to just play! and what would be better than just to learn a couple of songs to get started.

Then you´ll ne already on your way to making music !

Welcome to: 🎸

LEARN JAZZ GUITAR

Your roadmap for learning to play JAZZ GUITAR with passion.

  • improvise your own solos

  • create your own jam tracks

  • analyze jazz standards

  • expand your chord vocabulary

I created this course for anyone who wants to improvise and just make music.

This course doesn´t leave you on your own with 60 GB of TAB´s, Chord Shapes and Scale Patterns.

Instead, you’ll get an inside look into how I work on improvisation, how i understand chord families and how that helps me determinate which scale to use -basically everything I wish I’d known as a new jazz guitar player.

By the end you’ll be able to:

Analyze chord progressions

and get the big picture - Jazz standards don´t feature a bunch of unrelated chords-

there is a way how you can understand the relationships between chords

it´s called functional harmony !

and it will help you soo much to memorize tunes and also transpose tunes

( god forbid 🥶 )

You learn to play 10 Tunes

You learn to play an accompaniment for every song. And we are also going to have a close look at the melody. Where should we play it on the fretboard and how can we memorize it.

i think that is the first step for making music.

play song and improvise.

it doesn´t have to be fance, it jsut needs to work.

practice improvising

sometimes when people improvise it seems like they are inventing the greatest solos out of thin air.

the reality couldn´t be further from the truth. i ´ll help you get an arsenal of ideas that will sound good in solos.

Also if i want to introduce “ restrictions”.

this concept is really helpful if you are in a rut and if you feel like you are playing the same ideas over and over again. :)

Take a peek into the course…

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET THE MINUTE YOU JOIN LEARN JAZZ GUITAR:

Your 10 week PLAN

Each lesson contains the melody ( TAB’s and music notation) and an written out accompaniment of the chords. And of course there is always going to be an analysis of the chords, too.

Lesson 1 :

start improvising with :

Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock)

  • use simple triads and the pentatonic for improvisation

  • record a grooving accompaniment

  • learn a cool Herbie Hancock chord

  • learn a scale pattern and how to apply it

Lesson 2 :

get into the theory of jazz chords with :

Summertime -> George Gershwin

  • understand secondary dominants

  • start using restrictions in your improvisation

  • take inspiration from a Chet baker solo

Lesson 3 :

start to play the changes with:

Mac The Knife -> Kurt Weill

  • learn to use guide tones

  • play a simple chord melody arrangment

Lesson 4 :

learn your first bebop lick with :

Take the A Trane -> Duke Ellington

  • learn a bebop line

  • learn good fingerings

  • use it in your improvisation

Lesson 5 :

Play some chords in between your lines with:

Autumn Leaves -> Joseph Kosma

  • introducing shell voicings with an extra note on the b string

  • a chord melody arrangment

  • improvise and play some chords in between

Lesson 6 :

understand how important the melody is with :

Blue Bossa -> Kenny Dorham

  • learn to play a Bossa Nova Rhythm

  • play some beautiful chords with a pedal tone

  • introducing the harmonic minor scale and its triads

Lesson 7 :

Learn how jazz musicians like to disguise harmony with:

Song for my father -> Horace Silver

  • introducing the mixolydian scale

  • learn to practice in scales in a technical way

  • play a simple but grooving accompaniment

Lesson 8 :

get hip using the tritone substitution with:

Fly me to the moon -> Bart Howards

  • understand the tritone substitution

  • re-harmonize “ fly me to the moon” using the tritone substitution

  • practice improvisation using restrictions

Lesson 9 :

Learn about voice- leading with:

Tune Up -> Miles Davis

  • voice lead 251 progressions in major

  • learn to write your guide- tone line

  • learn to play rootless voicings

Lesson 10 :

de-mystify the diminished chord with:

Doxy - Sonny Rollins

  • play the charlston rhythm

  • learn a bluesy lick

  • understand the diminished chord

  • learn the Django Reinhardt diminished arpeggio

“I learned so much! This course got me out of my comfort zone. I never recorded my own backing tracks and solos prior to this. I now understand secondary dominants, tritone substitution, analyzing tunes, and much more.. Having the weekly structure was great for learning and repetition, and the group lessons were engaging and fun. The pdfs were also a helpful complement to the videos for covering topics more in depth. 

Tina is a phenomenal teacher, and is able to break down complex topics into something everyone can understand and master. Most of all, she really cares about her students and it shows.

Can’t recommend this course enough!!”

  • Dorian, Chicago, USA

“I really can't praise Tina's zoom course highly enough.  She achieves the perfect balance between theory, exploration of jazz standards, technical tips and practical study exercises.  Most importantly: she encourages her students to find and develop their own improvisational ideas rather than relying only on licks.

Highly recommended!”

  • Martin, Glasgow, Scotland

Here´s what my students say and play ❤️