A Plan to Actually Fix The Music Industry – No, Really… I’m well aware what a grandiose claim that is but I want to get people’s attention to actually read this, if only to try to shoot holes in it, but I’ll start by giving some legitimacy to my having an understanding of the way this industry currently functions. I will tell you that besides being their first Outstanding Guitarist of the Year as a student, and then an instructor at Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, I have a sizable catalog of compositions / recordings that are licensed for broadcast use around the world that generates royal ..read more

If you’re like a lot of people going into this holiday season, you might be looking for some new music to listen to are tired of the same old tunes, but also are worried that maybe the music you choose might not be “Doug Perkins / JGS Approved” with a “High Enough Holiday Hipness Quotient”. Well, fear no more, because here’s your “High Enough Holiday Hipness Quotient Song Shopping List For 2023”. All of the following are from my personal iTunes holiday playlists, and that means that you can be sure that it will please the all Daddio-s and the Dudette’s in your musical entertaining needs. Since ..read more

The Origins of the Jazz Guitar Society site: I happened to run across these two MP3s from when my partner John Pin was one of my (Doug Perkins) private students when I taught at Musician’s Institute in Hollywood in the mid 1980s where I am illustrating some ways to go outside in a blues. If I remember right, I was playing a custom built for me Strat into whatever terrible amps that they used to put into the teaching rooms back then, which was just a few years into the schools long history. John did some internet searches for me in the early 2000s and we emailed and talked on the phone and even ..read more

I’m currently doing an eBook for a publisher intended for people that know how to play guitar but now want to learn how to play jazz on it. One of my little advice “sidebars” in the book is about jam sessions, so I decided I would write something for JGS on the same subject. Whether you’d played at jam sessions all of your life or have just always felt you should start doing so, I think you might find something useful to think about in what I’m about to say – I’ve played LOTS from when I was an early teenager both successfully and EMBARRASSINGLY, and I can tell you that you can learn a lot fro ..read more

The Origins of the Jazz Guitar Society site: I happened to run across these two MP3s from when my partner John Pin was one of my (Doug Perkins) private students when I taught at Musician’s Institute in Hollywood in the mid 1980s where I am illustrating some ways to go outside in a blues. If I remember right, I was playing a custom built for me Strat into whatever terrible amps that they used to put into the teaching rooms back then, which was just a few years into the schools long history. John did some internet searches for me in the early 2000s and we emailed and talked on the phone and even ..read more

I’m currently doing an eBook for a publisher intended for people that know how to play guitar but now want to learn how to play jazz on it. One of my little advice “sidebars” in the book is about jam sessions, so I decided I would right something for JGS on the same subject. Whether you’d played at jam sessions all of your life or have just always felt you should start doing so, I think you might find something useful to think about in what I’m about to say – I’ve played LOTS from when I was an early teenager both successfully and EMBARRASSINGLY, and I can tell you that you can learn a lot fro ..read more

My Tribute To Jeff Beck (Jan 11, 2023) (This is the tribute I (Doug Perkins) did on Facebook the day after Jeff Beck died (Jan. 10, 2023), I have included all the links I put in the comments so others could see the very wide range of music this man was able to cover in his 78 years on the planet – DP) Well, I’m not one to do something when I know full well all the rest of the world is going to do it too, but I can’t let the passing of the unique genius guitarist that was Jeff Beck go by without paying my own respects on his huge body of musical work. I know lots of people think that I am exclu ..read more

Previously, I did a blog here that had to do with fixing guitar technique problems by slowing down practice to the point that you could see movement ergonomic (or: the science of efficiency of motion) problems for insight as to how to change them. The major point was the idea that only when playing slowly could you not only see problems but also override the old ways that you had learned to do things. The brain doesnâ€t know the difference between what you “meant to do” and what you actually DID, and as such, our minds require a large number or repetitions in the “new correct” way to d ..read more

This last couple of weeks I have been doing a theatre gig with a singer / actor / guitarist / pianist doing a show of some music from retro music legends of the past, and as I was driving to the gig I was sort of reflecting on the musical road I have traveled, and what I have learned in getting to where I am today. Even though a lot of people think of me as primarily a modern jazz & fusion guitarist, I am also known for being able to play, read and hear my way through a lot of music styles; and so consequently have done a LOT of “non-jazz” work, which has really helped with the bills o ..read more

I know I keep addressing the inner intellectual and emotional aspects of being a musician in blogs, but thatâ€s just because I find it to be so common an issue in both in my own teaching and talking to other musicians both on the gig, and just as friends. I see people in jazz social media groups discussing (well, many times I would define it as “arguing”) about some icon musician they love and talking about how that person could play anything they heard in their heads or had perfect pitch, or practiced thousands of types of scale sequences, that they could invert and transpose by any inter ..read more