The 7th Son

Dude,

As expected, this is a post on my 7^th guitar, the newest addition to the family: The Ibanez AFJ 81.

It has been 2 weeks since that Sunday night when I brought it home. Initially, I didn’t know what to do with it. Looks like a cello, bulky, but yet fragile (maybe I am not used to hollow body).

First one week was spent tuning the axe up, messing around with the truss rod to get the suitable tone (string height secondary). Any attempts to play it like all other guitars of mine yielded no results. Other than some finger exercise and Yamaha lesson type chord picking, there is not much I can do. It felt really different.

Fast forward a week later. Maybe it’s the “getting used to it already” feeling, I started to feel real good about the guitar. Of course, there was that night when I made comparison with the S-65, but that’s another story.

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Dude,

File information said that this post was last modified on 19^th April 2012. So, it’s that long since I left that last paragraph hanging…..(receipt showed that the guitar was purchased on 8^th April 2012).

After your visit some time ago (mid June), I guess by this point you understand what I was trying to tell you for the past 2 months.

There is nothing I can do other than jazz on the AFJ. Sounds a little bit strange but jazz lines naturally flow out from the player’s hand.

The biggest problem lately is that the more I play, the more I realized how much I DON’T know jazz.

So, I guess the AFJ opened up a second chapter in my academic pursue in music.

With blues, I can feel it as if it was the air I breathe (in fact, it seems to be). With rock and metal, I have got good references in you and the ever growing audio visual media…but jazz…..?

I guess I need a little more time than expected on this. Need to brush up on the bebop and swing lines before going into moving into chord study and a try to do some Wes Montgomery type octave/chord melodies.

So dude, I am spending a little bit more time on home tuition with Wes, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny and Charlie Christian. Of course, the on-going tutorials with EJ, EC, Megadeth, Furyon, Randy and Yngwie is continuous.

Nowadays, tutorial means listening to CDs or watching DVDs. For the AFJ, it means finding the correct setting (been messing with the truss rod too much) and looking at printed tutorials in my mountain high guitar mags. Seems to be going nowhere though….

Jazz can be highly academic. Maybe I should explain in a separate post what attracts me so much to it.

Excuse me now. Gotta’ go study melodic minor soloing…..

If you play a scale starting from E to E of the next octave in a C Major signature, you are actually doing E Dorian. I strummed an E chord and did just that… Doesn’t make sense. Haven’t tried with an E5/Em. Could be pioneering jazz-metal then.