Been playing for many years, and only now seriously trying to learn all those fancy jazz chords - and jazz theory, jazz soloing...and all those notes on the fretboard. If anyone else here is in the same boat, what are some of your favorite books and videos?
I picked up the mandolin recently just for fun. Some bluegrass, but mostly appalachian, scottish, english, and irish folk tunes. Played in jazz bands in my youth, some guitar, but mostly bass and keys. All that theory stuff is fine, but playing with others and playing from your soul is important too. Unless you're talking about that modern jazz/fusion kinda stuff. In that case, scales. Lots and lots of scales. Az
I agree that soul and musicality is of utmost importance. I often play along with others. Youtube has all kinds of backing tracks. I don't care for fusion. I like old fashioned ii-V-I Jazz progressions using various chord flavors. I sometimes experiment with three or four melody notes between chords with no concern for scales - I just get a melody in my head and try to play it to see if it sounds good when I hit the next chord. So far so good most of the time.