Video Review: Christmas Tunes Vol. II & The Beatles by Sid Jacobs

This class could be called ‘The Artistry of Solo Guitar Playing’ and it would perfectly describe what Sid Jacobs covers in the video. A brilliant follow-up to Sid’s 8 Christmas Tunes Improvised by Sid master class, this video continues to examine melody, counterpoint and harmony using Christmas songs and even music from The Beatles.

What I usually find in jazz guitar lesson videos are discussion of almost ‘public domain’ type ideas like the same chord voicings and the same single note vocabulary. For this video, there is none of that generic stuff. This is all very unique and amazing material distilled through Sid’s years of experience. It basically gave me the same excited and positive feeling I had when I watched his first video on Christmas Tunes.

There’re tons of good stuff here and my gut feeling is that many people will be studying this video closely for years to come. In addition to the wealth of contrapuntal and harmonic vocabulary covered, Sid also shares a cool intervallic fourth single note line and even some beautiful lines that cascade into voicings.

If you have the other Sid Jacobs video, you MUST get this one as well. This is basically one long class that if studied and mastered would give you strong holiday season repertoire for many seasons. In addition to that, you’ll get to understand fretboard harmony and musical voiceleading via Sid’s artistic lens.

Sid Jacobs is a real artist that we are definitely privileged to be able to study with. So, if melody-chord (as Sid puts it) is your thing, this is the video for you. This 97-minute video is going to give you hours of insights as you transcribe the beautiful arrangements. I strongly recommend this for intermediate and advanced jazz guitar students.

Pros: Amazing arrangements, great audio and video quality, this is a master level study of the elements of music (harmony, counterpoint, melody) as applied to solo guitar playing.
Cons: No notated examples.
TLDR: If you have the previous Sid Jacobs video, this will work together to help you develop your understanding of the guitar. Recommended to intermediate and advanced students!