"Jazz Guitarist" Software: how is it?

Marvin K C Chun

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Oct 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM10/24/95

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Hello,
Just wanted to know if anyone out there bought "The Jazz
Guitarist" by PG Music Software and if you recommend it or not. From
reading the ad, it *sounds* like it's good...:)

Thanks,
Marv

Thomas F Brown

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Oct 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM10/24/95

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In article <DGy4w...@news.hawaii.edu> mar...@Hawaii.Edu (Marvin K C Chun) wri
tes:

> Just wanted to know if anyone out there bought "The Jazz
>Guitarist" by PG Music Software and if you recommend it or not. From
>reading the ad, it *sounds* like it's good...:)

I think it's very well done. It's of most use to intermediate
jazz guitarists interested in improving their chord melody
playing. The voicings are basic stuff, but good-sounding. It
shows you how far you can take the garden-variety guitar
voicings, which is pretty far.

Joe Pass and Barney Kessel would probably be the closest stylistic
comparisons to the program's arrangements, although it's certainly
not as sophisticated as those masters. The arrangements are a bit
old-fashioned (think Barney Kessel in the 50s), but still useful
ways to approach standards. There's absolutely nothing cutting-edge
about it, musically.

Advanced chordal players will see little that they haven't seen
before, but they will still probably have fun with it. And one can
benefit by watching any good guitarist in action, which is what the
program offers. You can watch the shapes fly by on a little virtual
fingerboard. It runs at any tempo, and you can step through it beat
by beat to catch the tastiest moves. It's like being at a Barney
Kessel concert where you can stop Barney whenever you want him
to show you the lick he just played.

I got it for $40 or so at Fry's, and I've got more than my money's worth
just in entertainment value. Learned a few new tunes too, and copped a
couple of licks. I recommend it to any guitarist interested in jazz chord
soloing on standard tunes. Don't pay list price unless you order it from PG.

Thomas F Brown

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Oct 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM10/25/95

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In article <46k2u0$5...@spock.ctenet.com> bagn...@mail.ctenet.com (Mb) writes:

>It is very good, but it teaches strictly by example. If you don't
>relate to what the player is doing,(all pieces were MIDI recordings of
>a couple of pros) you don't get much from it.

I don't see this as a problem necessarily. If you know your harmony,
you can figure out what he's doing and don't need an explanation.
If you don't know your harmony, you wouldn't understand the explanation
anyway. The program teaches applied harmony by example. One will have
to learn the theory elsewhere.

>It's hard to generalize
>about the ideas in the tunes, to apply them to other tunes.

If you know your harmony it's easy to generalize. Further, since all
the solos are by one player (Oliver Gannon, quite good) and he has
his own little licks as we all do, you can see him lay those licks
in on different tunes. So he's demonstrating by example how to
extract and generalize ideas across tunes.

>Also, the tab prinout is a little buggy with fast passages.

I have also found the virtual fingerboard occasionally bogs down
a little bit running on slow machines. Anything current should
handle it though.

stone

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Oct 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM10/25/95

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"Jazz Guitarist" Software: how is it?
Is this program available for Mac puters?