Customer Reviews

Mel Bay The Complete Johnny Smith Approach to Guitar

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This book encompasses all the fundamentals any guitarist should and must know in order to proceed into the true 'technical' background necessary to play jazz as it was meant to be played. Johnny goes to great lengths to expose the reader to the various chords, scales and arpeggio studies with plenty of examples. This book it an absolute must for any aspiring jazz guitar player but also any established player who wants to keep him or herself at the top of their playing game.

If you really want to become familiar with your guitar, do this. May take more than a year to do.

I was referred to this book by Johnny Chapel years ago and it has become one of my Jazz Guitar Bibles. There is so much knowledge compressed into this tome it's not funny. I had never heard of Johnny Smith before encountering this book. What this book has that a lot of Modern Jazz guitar methods lack is a comprehensive practice strategy. And it starts in the first chapter. It grounds you in practicing chord exercises through cycles and keys in a way that really reinforces the material and starts to fill in "The Big Picture".

The only criticism I have for this volume is the old archaic way of notating fingering for the solo and scale work. Really guys can't we convert that to tab yet? (Under a staff. Use the tab for finger guide. Note reading is still crucial skill you should not skip!) Seems to be a relic from the original publication.

This is an outstanding method which could only be written by Johnny Smith who is without doubt the greatest jazz guitarist of all time.
As a study it is demanding and intellectually challenging and requires serious commitment.
All jazz guitarists should use this seminal work as a basis of understanding their own approach.