I wrote The Versatile Jazz Guitarist out of frustration. I was teaching jazz guitar, and simply could not find a single book that covered all the bases thoroughly and in the way I thought they should be presented. As a result, I had each student buy one sight reading book and one theory book and I gradually developed my own printed materials – scales studies, chord charts, and so on.
I was also frustrated by the dearth of audio materials available for practice. What I needed was, first of all, lots of examples. What does a seven sharp 9 chord sound like? What does a Lydian Augmented scale sound like over a major seven sharp 5 chord? I need a bass-and drums background track to practice blues comping – where do I find that?
If my students had a couple hundred dollars to spend, they could get everything they needed by buying a whole lot of books and CDs. Not a very practical solution!
After a couple of years, the solution became obvious: do it yourself! The Versatile Jazz Guitarist is the result.
Richard
