Hi everyone. Where to start?

Jaxamillian · December 2006

Well I'll give you some histroy on me.

I'm 22, a guitar player and I love music. So much that I decided to try for a double major in university. I had always loved music, but freshman year in college I started playing guitar and loved it, and started realizing just how much I loved listening, playing, etc....

I was enrolled in the composition program here and up until this year was taking a doulbe load as music/psych. It became too much, and after two yearts in music, I dropped it, (more than enough for minor, at least), but i still play guitar as much as I can.

I started with heavy metal, then gradually moved on to other styles, and once I started learning theory, I began to translate my theroy knowledge to the guitar- chord progressions, voice leading, scales, etc.

I still feel though, that I am more "musician" than "guitarist", that is, my knowledge and feel of the fretboard is not where Id' like.

The gypsy jazz style is someting that immediatley struck me- heavy metal is nice, and so is playing beatles tunes, and so is trying to play leads over nice, classical sounding progressions- but with this style, it is virtuosic, melodic, and allows a medium for which you can improvise both melodically and harmonically.

I would liek to learn this style.

And so this long winded post comes to this simple question- where do I start? I want to find a private teacher, but have doubts on whether I will find one of this style where I live (Bellingham, WA, USA). I searched for some jazz teachers earlier, to no avail.

That being said, what are the best books to get?

And albums to listen to? I have best of Django, thats pretty much it.

See ya later dudes.