John Pizzarelli's Jazz Instincts

Creative Instincts for Jazz Guitarists

"A virtuoso guitarist, an expressive/authentic vocalist with tremendous intervallic control, John Pizzarelli has that elusive Sinatra quality of making every listener feel like he’s making music just for you.”

John has established himself as a prime contemporary interpreter of the Great American Songbook and beyond. He has recorded 23 albums and appeared as a session musician or vocalist for Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Natalie Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Rickie Lee Jones, Dave Van Ronk, Buddy DeFranco, and his father Bucky Pizzarelli.

We’re thrilled to welcome John to the family with his first TrueFire masterclass, Jazz Instincts! You will likewise be delighted as you play and practice your way through John’s highly enlightening, hands-on Jazz Instinct curriculum.

”Jazz provides boundless freedom to express ourselves spontaneously and creatively. We start our learning journey by developing a vocabulary of scales, arpeggios, chord voicings, rhythm, and technique. Still, when we perform and interact with other musicians, our creative instincts govern what we play in the moment.

In this masterclass, we’ll work on your technique, and expand your vocabulary by examining 1-6-2-5 progressions, jazz swing feels, walking bass, chordal soloing, single note playing, comping, reharmonization, and a lot more. We’ll practice and play together over each of the tracks, which is how we start developing your artistic instincts.”

John’s comprehensive curriculum includes 17 ear-opening master lesson sets. | Basic Chord Structures for a 1-6-2-5 Progression | Essential Walking Chords Patterns | More Walking Bass Lines | More Active Walking Bass Approach | Walking Chords to Spice Up Changes | Comping with Upper Voicings | Guitar Heroes and Key Influences | Building Efficiency in Rhythm Comping | Rhythm Comping Applied |How To Approach Jazz Intros | Scat Singing & Playing | Single Note Playing | Developing Swing Feel | Reharmonization & Chords | Applications for Reharmonization | The “I’ll Remember April” Story | and Tone & Gear Talk.

John shows you how to apply all key concepts and techniques in a musical context via ten soloing and comping performance studies using backing tracks of commonly encountered jazz progressions and feels.

Each study includes an overview, a comping performance, a soloing performance, and detailed breakdowns. You’ll play and practice with John until you feel comfortable tackling the backing tracks independently.

You’ll have TrueFire’s interactive learning tools to customize your workspace and learn at your own pace.

The performances are tabbed, notated, and synced to the video lessons with controls for looping, slow motion, fretboard animation, and other tools designed to accelerate your progress.

You’ll also get the tab and standard notation files to print out, downloadable Guitar Pro files, and backing tracks to practice and record with.

Grab your guitar, and let’s dig in with John Pizzarelli!