Listening
Apart from books, your most important source of information as a musician is recordings. If you are serious about your chord study, listen to albums which feature piano or keyboard players as well as those featuring guitarists.
All music is an extension of what has come before it, so you need to be aware of the development of keyboard playing throughout the history of music. Studying Classical music will give you a solid grounding which can be used in any style of music. For more recent styles such as Jazz, Blues and Rock, it is essential to listen to a wide variety of players, some of whom are listed here.
There is a lot of crossover between styles which come under the headings of Rock, Jazz, Blues, R&B and Funk. There are many great players in these styles, but the following list is a good start.
Blues Guitar: Robert Johnson, Son House, T-Bone Walker, Robert Junior Lockwood, B.B. King, Magic Sam, Gatemouth Brown, Hollywood Fats, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ronnie Earl, Duke Robillard and Robben Ford.
Blues Piano: Otis Spann, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree, Dr John, James Booker, and Professor Longhair.
Soul/Gospel: Cornell Dupree, Booker T and the MG’s (featuring Steve Cropper on Guitar) Mildred Falls (with Mahalia Jackson - "Live at Newport 1958"), Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Richard Tee.
Funk: The Meters (featuring Leo Nocentelli on guitar), James Brown (lots of Funk guitar here), Parliament/Funkadelic, Nile Rogers, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Prince.
Rock/Pop/Metal: Lynyrd Skynyrd, ACDC, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Steely Dan, Black Sabbath, Metallica. All these bands feature great rhythm guitar playing.
Jazz: Guitar: Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass, Barney Kessell, Herb Ellis, Kenny Burrell, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Emily Remler, Bruce Forman, Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, John Scofield and Bill Frisell.
Jazz: Piano: Jelly Roll Morton, Lil Hardin (with Louis Armstrong) Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock (Jazz as well as Funk), Jimmy Smith (Hammond Organ), Keith Jarrett, Joe Zawinul (with Weather Report), Mike Nock, John Medeski, Jacky Terrason, and Brad Mehldau.
As well as this, it is valuable to listen to albums featuring great singers such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald or Mel Torme and pay careful attention to what the accompanying musicians are playing. The art of accompaniment is a lifelong study.
Transcribing
When you are listening to albums, try to sing along with the solos and rhythm parts, and visualize the fingerings and techniques you would use to achieve the sounds you are hearing. Write down anything you really like, or anything you can’t immediately transfer from your ear to the fretboard. This is called transcribing.
All the great players have done lots of it. Transcribing helps you to understand and absorb the music and before long, it starts to come out in your own playing. It is also valuable to play along with albums, sometimes imitating what you are hearing and other times improvising. This is great ear training and is lots of fun.
