Guitar and Vocals

Paul Bollenback teaches jazz guitar accompaniment and solo performance in this intimate masterclass recorded live at the IAJE Conference, with vocalist Chris McNulty joining for duo demonstrations. Drawing on his work with Gary Thomas and McNulty, Paul shares the skills a working sideman needs to fit in with whatever is happening at the moment — including being handed a solo guitar set on no notice.

What's covered

• The Joe Pass approach to solo guitar: always keep something going — chords, walking bass lines, or single-note passages — with no gaps
• Spontaneous, on-the-fly playing versus fully worked-out arrangements (in the manner of Gene Bertoncini or Russell Malone)
• Maintaining rock-solid time while playing unaccompanied, and common timing pitfalls
• Polyrhythmic devices for turnarounds, including dotted-quarter triplets and 5/16 displacements
• Metronome exercises for locking in your swing feel across quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, and sixteenths
• Accompanying a vocalist in a duo setting

Demonstrations include a solo chord melody on Duke Ellington's In a Sentimental Mood, played entirely on the fly. This class suits players who want to strengthen their solo guitar skills and develop real-world flexibility instead of relying on memorized arrangements.