Niall's Weblog

Just listened to Chet Baker’s Boston 1954 for the first time today. This album is particularly interesting in that it is a re-issue of a number of radio broadcasts, as opposed to a live album or studio album.
The performance has several “intermission” tracks where the radio announcer talks about the upcoming performances from other [...]

Fundamental to Jazz guitar playing are chords. You need to know lots and lots of chords to be able to play chord-based solos, or to accompany, well. This can be quite daunting, given the number of chords and variations. An easy way to break down learning these chords is to simplify into [...]

Jazz is a very challenging form of music to play – many musicians have described it as a life-long quest in which you never stop learning. I found it not only challenging to play from a technical point of view, necessitating excellent sweep picking techniques, but also from a music theory perspective. It [...]