Jazz guitar music is so versatile that it incorporates a myriad of musical styles. The most popular are the swing that has further subgroups, jazz-fusion guitar music, and then some Latin variations as well. The most outstanding feature of jazz guitar music is the fact that in the course of the entire song, you will find a section of it devoted to a player who performs a solo, usually an improvisation.

Understanding Jazz Guitar Music
There are certain things specific to jazz guitar music that we must be familiar with. Now, a jazz player can obviously read sheet music through a “fakebook”. This fakebook or the lead sheet, as it is called, has a compilation of brief melodies where you will find the chord symbols over the melody line. It is this melody and the symbols that direct the jazz player. In the conventional sense, the jazz player will not strictly adhere to the notes. When the melody or the ‘head’ is played the first time around, some players in the group will play their own melody even as the others follow the changes in the chord!! In other words, they improvise. When the last solo gets over, the head or melody is repeated at the end of the song.

The whole process is very interesting and you will almost always find a jazz musician capable of playing compatibly with any other group.

The most important thing about jazz guitar music is that the musicians are totally relaxed and obviously enjoying themselves playing. As mentioned earlier, the swing style is the most common form and serves as a background to various techniques called ‘rhythms’ and ‘ornaments’.

The ‘Swing’
When jazz musicians talk about swinging, it implies playing the eighth note in triplets – and not as evenly segregated groups. Rather they are played as the first and third notes. With the rhythm of the swing as the background, if you listen carefully, you will hear three beats to each beat quite distinctly. This three-beat triplet is something you won’t see in the jazz fakebook. In its place, the eighth notes are indicated, and the player understands them as triplets if the style is swing.

lOften, jazz guitar music is confused with the blues. Jazz music is much more subtle. Modern jazz guitar music focuses mainly around the guitar strings, the player, lots of improvisation and creativity. The 60’s saw the rise of great jazz guitar players like Wes Montgomery who introduced bop guitar. Subsequently, there were more jazz guitar experts who based their own styles on the traditional jazz guitar music. Keeping with the times, we now have jazz combining swing and even rock and the blues. Jazz guitar music is constantly evolving into new forms, thanks to different jazz guitarists. Rather than just base their improvisations on guitar chords, they like to experiment with a whole lot more.

As an example, we have Derek Bailey whose music was nothing but improvisation and therein lay his genius. The important thing about jazz music is that it can blend any kind of music with it and sound smooth. An example is John McLaughlin whose jazz guitar music was mingled with Spanish flamenco and Indian music.