1) Absolute jazz "monsters" who can play countless chord voicings for any given chord/note combo, improvise incredible lines in the "spaces", add walking bass, and improvise chorus-long solos comprised of melody chords and...
2) Those struggling to play anything musical in terms of phrasing a jazz chord solo.
On the forums, the consensus seems to be that, in order to get past the chord-per-note strumming tedium you should learn to "fill in the spaces" with improv, learn more voicings, reharmonize the tune, and learn to play walking bass lines.
For those just learning to play chord-melody this makes the prospect of playing a decent, unaccompanied chord-melody a very long-term prospect, especially if you're talking about being able to improvise a chord melody on-the-fly from a chart or by ear. Also, tunes that are often recommended for beginning improvisers, generally aren't great chord melody tunes. For what it's worth, I think there's a lot more that can be done in the way that our basic chord solo is phrased before moving on to more advanced embellishments of harmonic or melodic content.
If I were learning jazz as a pianist, for example, I would probably learn to comp with the left hand and play the melody with my right. The early emphasis would be on phrasing far above considerations for playing more complex extensions, walking bass lines, or chord substitutions. What makes a melody sound like jazz apart from the harmony anyway? It's not only improv. I could play a folk melody (without harmony) in a way that sounds jazzy.
What makes it sound jazzy apart from the harmony. It's phrasing. Phrasing is essential to making a tune sound like jazz. It doesn't matter how complex the chord voicings are if the phrasing of the melody falls flat. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing (because your killing the phrasing to fit in the chords you want).
For example, is it really acceptable as a musician and an artist "chop" every 8th note preceding a chord change, just because it's difficult to make the position shifts? What technical devices can I use to get the phrasing I want? I personally think that this emphasis on phrasing and articulation is what's largely missing in discussions of playing jazz guitar chord-melody, and that's what I'll be talking about.
For example, is it really acceptable as a musician and an artist "chop" every 8th note preceding a chord change, just because it's difficult to make the position shifts? What technical devices can I use to get the phrasing I want? I personally think that this emphasis on phrasing and articulation is what's largely missing in discussions of playing jazz guitar chord-melody, and that's what I'll be talking about.
I'm not a pro and I can't improvise like one. I don't know hundreds of chord voicings, and I'm not a monster jazz player in any respect. But I also don't believe that you have to be one to phrase a nice chord solo with a few simple voicings. That's the real focus of this blog. It'll be more of a log of my own personal experiences in the process of learning than lessons from an expert. I hope it may be of benefit to others as well. I'm a fellow learner just sharing my perspective on some of these things.
My next post will be on fingering considerations. This is where the pianists and the classically trained guitarists really have us beat. I think that, as beginning jazz chord-melody players, we can get a lot more "bang for our buck" by beginning with some of these fingering considerations before spending many more hours learning hundreds more chords.
