Q: I understand that jazz was your initial passion?

PURER FORM OF COMMUNICATION

When I started playing guitar, I immediately got into jazz after being exposed to it by my first teacher, David Rowan. I'll never forget my first few guitar lessons. The first lesson, he showed me how to make every chord there is in four different places! The system he showed me, using four note chords--tetra-chords, he called them--really distills chord construction to its elements beautifully. I seem to remember him or someone else saying that it, and the rest of the methodology I was taught, came from one of the legendary Sandole brothers, Dennis or Adolph, I think their names were. I've seen other teachers give very similar lessons, so there is some central source of the type of instruction I received.

Somewhere in the first few lessons, David Rowan played me the Pat Martino record "Consciousness”, which really spun my head around. At the time I thought Frank Zappa, Steve Howe, and Jeff Beck were about as good as you could get, and then... please. Pat's lines, tone, attack, time, and overall effect made rock music sound trite to me. To me, Pat's jazz playing was, and still is, a purer form of communication than pop or rock because there are no words, and Pat's virtuosity makes anything seem possible. It's sort of like the difference between spoken words and body language. Body language doesn't lie, and everybody understands it! We also listened to George Benson's "Breezin'", which was a hit at the time and has a ton of incredible playing on it. I wanted to play like those guys.

Anyway, the point is that in studying jazz, and eating it up, I became a pretty competent player, compared to most of the guys I knew, anyway. Whatever music I happen to be playing, the understanding that I gained pursuing jazz music is with me, helping me find my way.

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