Overthinking is a big problem with jazz guitar students. And it’s totally understandable. Jazz is a complicated style, and there’s lots to learn, right?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Sure, there are things you need to learn. There are terms, chord shapes, scale patterns, and all kinds of theoretical stuff. But most of the time what you really need is to get out of your head and get your fingers moving.
Let’s take an example from my own recent project – one that I fell into the classic overthinking loop. And how I got out of it.
The Jazz Bass Lines Workshop
This week I’ve been putting together a workshop for my students about walking bass lines for jazz guitar. It’s something I’ve done for years. Starting back in college, a lot of times the only way to find someone to jam with was by playing duets.
Since my buddy Tim was a trombone player, we had to take turns walking bass lines if we were going to play together. We ended up getting pretty good at it – and started playing gigs together as a duo.
Later on, my wife and I started playing a regular weekly gig as a duo at this little beer bar in Spokane, WA. Being able to walk a bass line came in really handy. And what ended up happening was I developed a really natural sense of how baseline work.
A Natural Learning Process
I learned bass lines from both listening to a ton of jazz – and by playing a lot of bass lines. Sure I learned a few basic moves – but mostly it was trial and error. I wasn’t overthinking – just playing jazz guitar bass lines.
I would be walking bass lines for hours a week – while someone else was playing their solos.
(And when it was my turn to solo they’d walk bass lines for me, if they were nice about it)
Sometimes I’d work chords into the bass line like Joe Pass or Jimmy Bruno. But sometimes I’d just walk the bass line by itself – it just depended on what the music needed at that moment.
So bass lines are a natural part of my playing – and I decided to share it with my students. But as I started thinking about putting this workshop together, I ran into some tricky spots.
See, I’ve never actually taught bass lines to more than one or two people. Ever.
And I definitely haven’t taught it in a class situation. I was always just giving one person a few pointers and letting them figure it out on their own. So I had a lot of work to do if I was going to present this in an organized way.
Overthinking is Tempting in Jazz Guitar
I spent a lot of time thinking through it. Trying to find just the perfect way to present this material. (This is the fast track to overthinking your jazz guitar playing, by the way)
You know – do I teach bass lines exactly how I learned them in the first place? (Isolated “grips” for each chord – kind of like an arpeggio)
Or do I follow more of my current teaching philosophy – relating everything back to the 5 major and 5 minor scale patterns?
I spent hours thinking and trying to come up with the perfect way to teach bass lines from the ground up. And I talked about it with my wife too – bouncing ideas back and forth to try and come up with the best way to teach the material.
Eventually, You Have to Do Something
But eventually, the rubber had to hit the road. I had to sit down. I needed to create the graphics for my lesson material. And I had to make sure everything looked good, felt good, and was easy to play.
It should be simple, right? I mean – I do this all the time.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t that easy to get right. You see, the way I actually play bass lines and the way that I had put it together in my head didn’t quite match up.
Theory vs Practical Skills
As I worked through the presentation, I ended up going through several versions of the finger patterns to get it right. And it had all been so obvious to me in my head.
But some of the “obvious” patterns just didn’t flow right when I actually put them on the page. Another thing that ended up happening was the pictures I had in my head didn’t even really match up really with what was under my fingers.
My theory knowledge and practical skills weren’t lining up.
You Always Learn More by Doing Something
But by actually working through the project and putting my ideas to work in the real world – not in my head – I came up with a much more solid idea of what playing bass lines on jazz guitar should look like.
I was able to create a systematic approach to the way I actually play bass lines in real life. An approach that my students would be able to use right away in their own playing.
If I had only written down what was in my head, I would’ve ended up giving my students a jumbled and disorganized presentation. And worse – a presentation that didn’t actually reflect the way that I do things on guitar.
But I was able to clean up my thoughts on bass lines through the process of actually doing the work. By actually figuring out how I approach things – and not just giving the theoretically correct answers.
The Overthinking Loop in Jazz Guitar
What’s funny is I got caught up in the same loop that I see students and enthusiasts of jazz guitar get caught up in all the time.
In fact, I spend a lot of my time in private lessons trying to get people out of these loops. And here I was – stuck in that overthinking loop myself.
With something like jazz guitar, it’s so easy to get stuck in your head. To think about something really hard. To try and figure out the perfect way to do it before you get started practicing.
After all, you want to make the most of your practice time, right? You don’t have time to try a bunch of different things and see if they work or not.
But the truth is anything you come up with in your head is just a trick.
It might work…
…but it might really not work.
And you’ll never know without playing it.
There’s Only One Way to Figure it Out
The only way to figure out your jazz guitar playing is to get your fingers on the fretboard and to play through it.
By going through this more active approach to learning jazz guitar, you’re gonna learn a lot more.
Sure, you’re going to run into things that are a little bit frustrating. You’ll try stuff that doesn’t quite work the way it’s supposed to.
There will be things you have to wrap your fingers around for a while before you understand them.
But that’s just the thing. This is the only real way you will actually figure anything out.
The Practice is the Progress
At the end of the day, if you figured out how to actually play one thing and make it work on your fretboard, you’ll have made far more progress than if you had thought through 100s of scenarios and tried to come up with a perfect answer inside your head.
It’s fun to think about different approaches. This scale system or that one? Should I be sweep picking or alternate picking? What if I tried this other chord system?
And that’s great – it’s a part of it. But don’t forget that eventually, the rubber has to hit the road. And that’s where you’re going to make the most progress – and learn the most.
It’s so tempting to start overthinking your jazz guitar playing. But if you can ignore that urge and start working through your material instead – you’ll learn a lot more.
A Challenge for You
The challenge for you is this:
Think of just one thing that you keep trying to figure out the perfect solution for in your jazz guitar playing.
It could be anything you’re struggling with. Anything that’s eating up a lot of your thinking time. And that you just haven’t really worked on yet.
Take that thing and get it out of your head and onto the fretboard. Or write it out in scale or chord diagrams. Just do something with it. And start chipping away – figure out how to make your fingers solve that problem.
What are you going to start playing with today? Let me know in the comments!