Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:34 — 48.4MB)
Jens Larsen is a Danish jazz guitarist who has become an internet celebrity for his YouTube lessons. Aside from his incredible jazz guitar chops, he has posted over 700 YouTube videos, has acquired almost 150,000 YouTube subscribers, and recently released two books. Joe McMurray and Aaron Sefchick sit down with Jens to talk about his journey, how to approach jazz as a player and as a teacher, musical gear, online success, practicing, composition, and recording.
Jens has become famous through his YouTube lessons on how to play jazz guitar. In Part 2/2, he says that he originally started posting transcriptions of jazz solos, then began writing blogs for UltimateGuitar.com, and finally started posting videos on YouTube. Recently he released two books, Modern Jazz Guitar Concepts and Advanced Jazz Guitar Concepts.
Aaron asks Jens how he approaches his practice sessions, and Jens provides an in-depth look into his practice routine. He warms up by playing chromatically across the guitar neck in all 12 keys, he practices 7th arpeggio patterns, triads, and open-voiced triads over the entire neck, and he creates simple melodies by ear and transposes them to all 12 keys. Then he practices his triad ideas over the chord changes of jazz tunes. Jens practices with his metronome set on beats 2 and 4, but also experiments playing with the metronome set on unusual beats to spur rhythmic creativity.
Jens tells of some of his most meaningful performances as well as his dream show. He talks about his band (Traeben), how he/they compose songs, and the differences among his three albums.
Finally, Jens gives us a few inside looks at his other hobbies and interests outside of music!
Find out more about Jens Larsen at https://jenslarsen.nl/
YouTube: YouTube.com/c/JensLarsen
Band Website: Traeben.com
Subscribe for more videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/c/FretBuzzThePodcast
Website: http://www.fretbuzzthepodcast.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fret_buzz_podcast/