Jazz Combustion

Jazz guitar is a cruel mistress. After spending years learning and adding all of the genre's theories and techniques to your arsenal, you're still left with the challenge of putting it all together into a cohesive statement when it's time to step up and solo or comp behind a vocalist or soloist. Jazz Combustion offers up a fresh and insightful approach for comping and improvising innovative solos.

By using real world examples, Jazz Combustion breaks down higher improvisational concepts such as chord voice selection, chordal movement, target tones, chord substitution, motifs, pacing, scat vocal techniques and outside playing, all while retaining the vibe of the prevailing tune's melody and harmonic structure.

Swedish jazz guitar phenom Andreas Oberg shows you how to effectively tie these and other key concepts into your playing while guiding you to develop your own voice. Oberg has performed with and earned the accolades of such guitar luminaries as Les Paul, Toots Thielemans, Bireli Lagrene, Larry Coryell and Frank Vignola and many others.

"The goal of this course is to illustrate the way that I look at jazz improvisation and comping. I have selected five different chord progressions and styles that are very common within the jazz repertoire (fast bebop, jazz blues, funk, ballad and jazz waltz). I'll first perform over that progression and then break it down for you, revealing the ideas and concepts behind the performance."

Andreas has showcased his unique ability to go from cool, smooth phrases to an incendiary barrage of well chosen notes and back again through countless TV and radio appearances as well as regular features in international guitar publications. Andreas also demonstrates his unique talent for presenting techniques and concepts, often considered daunting, in a laid-back, easy-to-comprehend manner.

Using familiar progressions as a foundation, Jazz Combustion takes the viewer through such higher rhythmic concepts of jazz improvisation as selecting of appropriate chord voicings when comping; using chromatic, ascending and descending chordal movement to direct the tune's feel; and choosing chord voicings that share common target tones to lend cohesiveness to complex progressions.

Jazz Combustion also delves into such advanced soloing techniques as incorporating rhythmic and melodic motifs as a foundation for improvisation, the use of pacing to give your solos an evocative edge, singing along with your improvisations to encourage thoughtful note choices as well as the effective use of chromatic passing tones to link complex harmonic ideas smoothly. Even while incorporating these higher improvisational concepts, the focus of Jazz Combustion remains on the tune, with Andreas showing us how the right note selection can retain the progression's outline during even the most outside solo excursions.

Jazz Combustion is an indispensable resource for taking your improvisational skills to the next level, not only for jazz guitarists, but guitarists from any discipline where improvisation is the name of the game.