jazz guitar

The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz." The guitar has a long history in jazz music, as both an ensemble and solo instrument. These styles were shaped by some of the genre's influential jazz guitarists.

While jazz can be played on any type of guitar, from an acoustic instrument to a solid-bodied electric guitar such as a Fender Stratocaster, the archtop guitar has become known as the prototypical "jazz guitar." Archtop guitars are steel-string acoustic guitars with a big soundbox, arched top, violin-style "F" holes, a "floating bridge" and magnetic or piezoelectric pickups. The earliest guitars used in jazz were acoustic. While acoustic guitars are still sometimes used in jazz, most jazz guitarists since the 1940s have performed on an amplified electric guitar, typically an archtop with a magnetic pickup.

Jazz guitar playing styles include "comping" with jazz chord voicings (and in some cases , walking basslines) and "blowing" (improvising) over jazz chord progressions with jazz-style phrasing and ornaments. When jazz guitarists play chords underneath a song's melody or another musician's solo improvisations, it is called "comping", a portmanteau of "accompanying" and complementing. When jazz guitar players improvise, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression.