Chord Melody

Jazz guitar may refer to either a type of electric guitar or a guitar playing style in jazz, using electric amplification to increase the volume of acoustic guitars.

In the early 1930s, jazz musicians sought to amplify their sound to be heard over loud big bands. When guitarists in big bands switched from acoustic to semi-acoustic guitar and began using amplifiers, it enabled them to play solos. Jazz guitar had an important influence on jazz in the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the earliest guitars used in jazz were acoustic and acoustic guitars are still sometimes used in jazz, most jazz guitarists since the 1940s have performed on an electrically amplified guitar or electric guitar.

Traditionally, jazz electric guitarists use an archtop with a relatively broad hollow sound-box, violin-style f-holes, a " floating bridge", and a magnetic pickup. Solid body guitars, mass-produced since the early 1950s, are also used.

Jazz guitar playing styles include '' comping'' with jazz chord voicings (and in some cases walking bass lines) and ''blowing'' ( improvising) over jazz chord progressions with jazz-style phrasing and ornaments. Comping refers to playing chords underneath a song's melody or another musician's solo improvisations.

History

1900–mid-1930s

The stringed, chord-playing rhythm can be heard in groups which included military band-style instruments such as brass, saxes, clarinets, and drums, such as early jazz groups. As the acoustic guitar became a more popular instrument in the early 20th century, guitar-makers began building louder guitars which would be useful in a wider range of settings. Nick Lucas is regarded as the grandfather of jazz guitar, with two of his guitar compositions recorded in 1922, Picking the Guitar and Teasing the Frets, being the first guitar solos ever recorded. Lucas built the foundations for jazz guitar through his development of various rhythmic, single string, and sweep picking techniques.

The Gibson L5, an acoustic archtop guitar which was first produced in 1923, was an early “jazz”-style guitar which was used by early jazz guitarists such as Eddie Lang. By the 1930s, the guitar began to displace the banjo as the primary chordal rhythm instrument in jazz because the guitar could be used to voice chords of greater harmonic complexity, and it had a somewhat more muted tone that blended well with the upright bass, which, by this time, had almost completely replaced the tuba as the dominant bass instrument in jazz.

Late 1930s-1960s

During the late 1930s and through the 1940s—the heyday of big band jazz and swing music—the guitar was an important rhythm section instrument. Some guitarists, such as Freddie Green of Count Basie's band, developed a guitar-specific style of accompaniment. Few of the big bands, however, featured amplified guitar solos, which were done instead in the small combo context. The most important jazz guitar soloists of this period includedDjango Reinhardt, the Manouche virtuoso; Oscar Moore who was featured with Nat “King” Cole's trio and Charlie Christian of Benny Goodman's band and sextet who was a major influence despite his death early in 1942 at the age of 25. Also noteworthy was Mike Danzi who performed with the Alex Hyde Orchestra in the United States as well as with several jazz orchestras throughout Germany during the 1930s.

It was not until the large-scale emergence of small combo jazz post-WWII that the guitar took off as a versatile instrument which was used both in the rhythm section and as a featured melodic instrument and solo improviser. In the hands of George Barnes, Billy Bauer, Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, and Tal Farlow, who had absorbed the language of bebop, the guitar began to be seen as a “serious” jazz instrument. Improved electric guitars such as Gibson's ES-175 (released in 1949), gave players a larger variety of tonal options. In the 1940s through the 1960s, players such as Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Al Caiola Tony Mottola and Jim Hall laid the foundation of what is now known as "jazz guitar" playing.

1970s

As a result of the ubiquity of the guitar in rock and pop bands during the 1960s, jazz guitarists began to pursue rock-based styles and genres, radically changing the face of jazz guitar and developing the style of "jazz fusion", which broke out of standard jazz idioms and explored rock, funk, and electronic music. As early as 1967, Larry Coryell and his band The Free Spirits recorded Out of Sight and Sound, a groundbreaking album that was one of the earliest examples of rock music being interpreted and played by jazz musicians. More prevalently, Miles Davis featured George Benson as a soloist on the track "Paraphernalia" off of his 1968 album Miles in the Sky, which marked the first example of his long-standing associations with guitarists. Shortly after this, he recruited John McLaughlin to play on In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew, some of the first jazz albums to be called "fusion" and the first serious jazz-rock albums. McLaughlin was a veteran of the British blues scene, and had cut his teeth playing with popular blues and rock groups, such as The Graham Bond Quartet, The Rolling Stones, and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. McLaughlin was an avowed fan of Jimi Hendrix, and utilized phrasing closer to that of blues and funk guitarists than stereotypical bebop phrasing, and even had a track off of Bitches Brew named after him. He also played with the Tony Williams Lifetime for two years, before departing, radically altering his approach, and founding a new band. Davis would continue experimenting with guitar-based music during the 1970s, spearheaded by experimental soloist Pete Cosey, and rhythm guitarists Reggie Lucas

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