Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar: A Modern How-to-Play Jazz and Hot Guitar, Book 1 (Ashley Publications)

I'm returning to jazz guitar study after nearly 20 years away. When I was learning, in a college focused on jazz, this was standard fare. I learned on this book. The first part of the book is focused on chord study. There are tons of great jazz chords and basic, simple, progressions to learn and apply those chords. The reader is learning how to substitute jazz chords in a very simple and repetitive way. The second part of the book is focused on scales, various runs and riffs and soloing.There is no tablature, and I think that is best. It is in every guitarists best interest to learn how to read music. it's very easy and will only help the studying guitarist advance in the long run.This is not an appropriate book for a complete beginner. As a guitarist who had been playing for over 10 years, but with no jazz experience, this book was challenging. 20 years later, with a rusty music degree, it's keeping me on my toes. Not impossible, and a great motivator. I'm feeling great about reinforcing my core knowledge and technique as well as refreshing forgotten ones.If you complete this and the 2nd Baker book, you're well on your way to being able to hold your own in a jazz setting, provided you're also listening to jazz and playing along to records and with other musicians.I feel this would be a great folllow-up to the Berklee Modern Method for Guitar books.

Mickey Baker's method is renowned and recommended by many. But the book is spartan and throws you in the deep end right at lesson one with a finger crunching page of 26 chords, some of them rather difficult to say the least.But you don't need to learn them all at once, and the exercises in the following lessons space things out, thankfully. Five or six of them will get you through the next several pages of the book.There isn't much in the way of theory in the book, and you can (and should and must) get that elsewhere. The book is practical. You want to play jazz? Mickey shows you how. He doesn't take prisoners, he throws you right into it, and then leads you through it. There are 52 lessons which Mickey seems to have intended for a one-year class, but for most of us a year won't be enough time.This is a book that you'll want to use only if you're serious, and honestly, I like that approach. If you're not serious, watch a couple of videos and strum a little. But learning musicianship takes work. You get out of this book what you put into it.It's certainly not for beginners. I'd say the starting point is more like lower intermediate. You need to be able to read music, understand chord diagrams, and play some of the easier literature.A good book for someone who really wants to learn and is willing to do what it takes. Four stars overall.

Almost every pro guitarist, and a lot of amateur ones, know the Mickey Baker books. A number of jazzers and rockers started out with them- Pete Townsend has said that he learned his chords from Mickey. This was the only specifically jazz oriented guitar method available back in the 50s when Mickey wrote it, and it's been in print pretty much continuously since then. That by itself should should tell you a lot. A lot of guitarists looking for a good jazz self-study course have looked at this book, and wondered if there was really much to be learned from few simple chord exercises and a few dozen riffs. Sure, there were a lot of good chords to be learned from it, but beyond that...?Actually, there is a tremendous amount of information to be found in this book, but only if you follow Mickey's directions. He doesn't give you a lot of why- just "do this until you have it down." But if you do that, you'll find yourself internalizing a lot of important rules and skills that other teachers spell out. Those hokey sounding chord progressions that Mickey wants you to memorize and transpose to other keys are actually teaching you all the standard jazz substitutions. Mickey does spell out some of these rules in the second half of the book, but if you've done your homework you'll find that it's much easier to apply these rules to soloing if you've actually internalized them than if he had just told you that you could use a Lydian or Aeolian sub for a dominant chord in a 12 bar blues.The second half of this book is all about learning to solo, and a lot of non-readers have looked at it, and been put off by the lack of tab. But you don't need reading skills beyond that absolute minimum to use this book. Mickey has provided all the fingerings below the staff for each exercise. It may be a little unfamiliar at first, but by the time you finish this book- and it'll take a year to really do it right- you'll find that you have some pretty good reading skills, too.Even though it was written back in the 1950s, the riffs and chords Mickey teaches sound just as hip today. Some guitarists will quibble with some of Mickey's choices, or his chord names, but it's more a matter of opinion than a fault in the book. For example, a lot of contemporary guitarists would play something like Bm7-Bb7-Am7... rather than Mickey's straight descending m7ths (Bm7-Bbm7-Am7..) today, but that's something the student will learn just by listening to guitarists today.In short, if you have some basic guitar skills- you know a few dozen chords, and you can strum along- and you're confused by all the different jazz guitar books out there- this is the one you should start with. If you follow his directions, practice every exercise until you've memorized it, and written out and practiced all the transpositions, too, by the time you finish the book you'll be able to comp and put together a simple solo over most any jazz tune.[n.b.- this edition is the original book as printed in the 1950s. There's another edition with a blue cover that was edited and re-typeset in the 70s, but that edition contained a number of errors that were introduced in the editing. This is the one you want.]

On the plus side, the book was inexpensive and does teach some jazz chords and runs. No tab is given but in many cases string number and fret number are printed under the staves. Most of the time I couldn't fully understand the vague written instructions so I would say it is not really a self instruction method. A CD or digital download with backing tracks and recordings of the exercises would good a long way toward making it a viable self instruction method. I gave up using it after a couple of months partly because the exercises were confusing and difficult and didn't sound like the kind of jazz I wanted to learn. Nevertheless I feel I learned a little and that there would be some value to working all the way through the book. Part of what this book teaches is chord substitutions (based on some awkward chords) but the discussion required to understand and apply them isn't in the book.

Good old fashioned guitar book this. No DVD, no Youtube, just chord diagrams , music scores and the reader providing the rest of the experience. The book isn't for guitar beginners as it assumes a level of knowledge such as 6th and 5th string root notes. Some of the chord shapes look a bit arcane compared to the modern equivalent barre grips, but do the job. In summary a good book but you need to put in the time to practice each lesson until you can play the examples proficiently. Don't buy this if you want quick results, but please buy it if you really want to learn the basics of jazz guitar style. Alternatively this is a good book to learn different chord grips from. Too much reliance is placed on Barre chord grips these days, so having different voicing options is great.

I had this book when I was in my 20's and it was hard work, unfortunately the book vanished and I forgot about it, I have now been playing Rock, Blues and many other styles and not thinking of jazz but still used some of the chords I remembered from this book, having it again it is now easy for me to understand, it is like meeting an old friend, my playing will get a new boost as I can use this information in all the styles I play now and add real jazz feel to my music, I recommend this book to all intermediate and advanced players. Dave

Supposed to be book one, but it would appear you need to be awesome on guitar already before being able to complete exercise one. On the shelf for now but I may have a another look at it once I get a bit better.

Written in sheet music, with no tabs.So now I got a decision to make - buy another book with tabs or learn to sight read from sheet music..Lessons are clear in what they are trying to achieve.

Great classic book, many of today's guitarists learned from this book ,i.e. Robben ford, I bought books 1 and 2 forThe full teachings.