Welcome to the New Swing Guitar Blog

Welcome to the new home of Jonathan Stout's Swing Guitar Blog. The original can still be found at www.swingguitar.blogspot.com - and it still contains some great articles, lessons, and gear reviews. But over time, many of the links died and many of the uploads were lost. Also, my understanding and conception of many topics have evolved and matured. Thus, I decided it was time to start over.

Here's the mission statement from the old blog:

"Swing Guitar" covers all of the types of jazz guitar playing and players from the Swing Era (roughly 1935-1945) and later players in the Swing style. The style has several different facets - Rhythm Guitar - Single String Lead Guitar - Chordal Rhythm Solos - etc. Some of the guitar players we'll talk about are Freddie Green, Charlie Christian, Allan Reuss, Django Reinhardt, George Van Eps, Oscar Moore, Carmen Mastren, Eddie Lang, Dick McDounough, Carl Kress, Al Casey, Irving Ashby, Dave Barbour, and numerous others.

Among the stuff I have planned:

1. a PDF fakebook of common swing tunes - both for learning the tunes and for illustrative purposes
2. video and audio examples of a real swing rhythm section playing
3. more examples of Freddie Green-style rhythm guitar chords
4. updated links and reviews of swing guitar-related resources
5. more gear news, reviews and epiphanies
6. more articles about swing-era rhythm and harmony

Welcome or welcome back!