It's been a while since I published a post on my Blog. As a matter of fact, my last post was in december 2020. The reason is simple. It's a lot of work creating interesting posts and the rewards are meagre. It's basically a labor of love with zero return on investment. That is why so many jazz guitar Blogs do not survive in the long run. Same for me. Apart from a waning motivation to write I started playing in two trios again, a Chet Baker Tribute and an Oscar Peterson Tribute Trio. With the latter trio we just published an album on Spotify. For those interested. I have embedded the album p ..read more

A while ago my son in law gave me a Cube 20 to store in my house. I had been reading about the Roland Cubes as budget jazz amps for many years but never taken them seriously. Never even tried one. Big mistake. Obviously, this amp was never intended as a jazz amp so it has some presets that are useless to me (metal stack, metal, distortion, overdrive) and I simply prefer amps without all that rock stuff so I ignored them. But .. after I fumbled around with the Cube 20 for a bit I found the clean setting and there it was, a nice clean useable jazz sound. I had to turn down the highs on the amp ..read more

He plays both the guitar and the violin very well. He has played with countless high profile gypsy jazz artists. He has toured with the Rosenberg trio for 7 years. He blends gypsy and bebop guitar seamlessly. He is a rising star as an online jazz guitar educator. As such he produces very slick videos with catchy titles and in addition teaches at the Rotterdam conservatory. He has invented his own jazz guitar system. He promotes playing rather than studying theory. What a guy! High time to interview my country man Christiaan van Hemert!  Do you perceive yourself primarily as a violini ..read more

  One of the tunes that I always return to is Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring." You could say that I am a bit obsessed with that tune. I remember studying Clifford's solo on the classic take with Max Roach note for note way back in the 90s when I was starting out on jazz. I played the solo over and over and still could not duplicate the dreaded double time bars (17-23) in real time for years ... Such beautiful and sometimes dazzling bebop lines. How on earth did he come up with those on the spot? Clifford is telling a marvellous bebop tale with a beginning and an end. With questions and ..read more

My last entry from august was about the vintage ES 350 that I purchased last winter. I have always been fascinated by this model ever since I heard Tal Farlow's classic trio recordings from the mid 1950s.  We all know that Tal designed his own "Gibson Tal Farlow"signature model in the early 1960s in collaboration with the Gibson company. It was modeled after the ES 350 that he had played until that time.  I have owned a Gibson Tal Farlow for 15 years and always loved it. At the time it was the closest I could get to a vintage Gibson ES 350, a model which was pretty rare in Europe ..read more

Its s been a very long time since I posted something on my Blog. As a matter of fact this is the first post of the year. Not sure why that is, it just happened. So I have some catching up to do. I have had this wonderful Gibson ES 350 for half a year and have not even shared that fact here.                                                                         Ever since I first listened to Tal's 1950s tr ..read more

As you undoubtedly recall, a few days ago I posted a story about a blonde 1960 L5 associated with Wes Montgomery that I played at the owner's house. And indeed, it was the guitar that was undoubtedly featured on at least one album cover of him, I concluded. If Wes owned it or ever recorded with it I was not sure of and I thought that was to remain a mystery. Not so! A French guitarist reacted to my Blog post with an article that had been written about the guitar in a French guitar magazine and it gave some definitive answers as to what the association of Wes with this particular guitar re ..read more

We all know the sunburst "Heart" L5 that Wes used throughout his career. You see that guitar on many pics and in many vids. It's the one you hear on a substantial part of his recorded output and it's the guitar that Wes is mostly associated with. But how about that blonde L5 that is featured on the cover of Wes' classic album "Full House?" And on the cover of "Wes and Friends?" There's actually several photo's of him holding or playing a blonde L5 CES. Last year an internet acquiantance I have known for a few years told me he had purchased a severely damaged 1960 blonde L5 CES that had a c ..read more

Over 15 years ago I studied a Joe Pass Etude from his book "On Guitar." I posted a clip of myself playing along the original video recording of Joe here. It was by no means that easy to play in sync with the master. There were some pretty fast passages. What I learned from that etude especially was the use of altered V7 sounds over I chords, thus creating tension and resolution. But that was a long time ago. Over the years I returned to the etude regularly, sometimes playing entire segments of it over standards. I always wanted to play the whole thing in one take over a standard and look an ..read more

Wow dudes. It's been a while. Lately I have been working on Les Wise's book "Bebop Licks for Guitar." So I'd like to say something about licks. Every once in a while I come across someone that proudly states that he does not like studying or playing "licks" from the jazz greats. Usually the argumentation is that that is not a creative thing to do and that you should rather speak with your own voice. Let me tell why I think that is not correct from an educational point of view. If we liken jazz to a "language" - and a scientific study from 2014 at John Hopkins |University has indeed shown ..read more