Reviews

Worldwide Students Speak

4955 reviews
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Entrada Archtop Guitar
Scott Tarulli
Berklee Professor Reviews Lefty Entrada

See Attached Video Review by Scott Tarulli of Boston, MA

Judge.me YouTube video placeholder
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Vol. 4 - Ticket To Improv
gerald mckinnon
volume four

Super excellent

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The Jazz Lines
Jack Marchewka
Just getting started

Worked though the first two lessons of the Jazz Lines book (more to go), but it opened a door for me. I’ve come to understand there is a difference between theory and harmony. This is about learning harmony. If you want to play jazz learn harmony.

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Vol. 4 Wave
Mike Sanders - Las Vegas, NV
One of Conti's Best Solo Lessons

All of the Robert Conti DVDs are top-notch, but this one takes the cake. He takes what some consider to be a harmonically complex tune and breaks it done into the simplest of terms. From here, the viewer is taken through the lesson a few measures at a time, with each concept explained in detail and with care. Once you have the lesson under your hands, you not only have an impressive solo but an increased vocabulary of lines to use on other songs and a better understanding of how to approve improvisation over any song. Great fun and well worth the effort. If you are new to improvisation, I recommend learning from a few of Conti’s “Ticket to Improv” DVDs first as you will internalize the lesson much faster and have a greater understanding of the concepts presented.

Preferred Gauge Strings

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Preferred Gauge Strings
Jack Marchewka
My choice of strings

For my Entradas. These strings came with my Entradas so I’m sticking with them. Live the wound 3rd string. Great tone and playability!

Chord Melody at Its Best!

This is a great DVD to start building your chord melody repertoire. Mr. Conti walks you thru the classic “Since I Fell for You” and provides you with several ways to approach the tune using a series of different chordal harmonic arrangements. Besides learning to play the song several different ways, Mr. Conti is at the ready with his famous “Off the Sheet” tips. These are items that not part of the regular lesson plan, but are sure to help take your chord melody playing to an even higher level. Of the Chord Melody arrangements, this is my personal favorite, but after finishing the DVD, I purchased ALL the other Chord Melody DVDs as I was so inspired to learn more.

Vol. 3 – Ticket To Improv

$19.95

Subject Lesson Songs:

  • 12 Bar Blues
  • All Blues
  • Watermelon Man
  • Bonus Jam over a Conti original, “The Rummy!”

Or

Streaming Video Options (Info About Streaming Video)

Description

The time-tested and acknowledged pathway to become a skilled improvisor is to play your instrument at every jam session or other opportunity that becomes available. That’s exactly how the early greats learned their craft, simply by playing jazz, not wasting time talking about modes, scales or unimportant activities that prevented them from actually playing their instruments. As seen in 25 prior DVDs, the core success of the Robert Conti approach is his ability to teach the jazz language (improv) at the street level, where it actually began.

If you’re an entry level jazz guitarist such as a blues or rock player trying to make the crossover to jazz, Ticket To Improv will take you on one of most exciting and productive musical events of your life. Very soon, you will be impressing your friends with your new playing skills.

As in each of his learning products, once again, Conti delivers another “Motherlode!” How? By teaching you exactly how to start playing an arsenal of lines over the chord progressions to three “must know” tunes that are played in every real life jam session. More importantly, after you learn the first three tunes, he will also teach you how to quickly begin reshaping those lines for usage in other tunes.

Volume 3 Subject Lesson Songs:

  • 12 Bar Blues
  • All Blues
  • Watermelon Man
  • Bonus Jam over a Conti original, “The Rummy!”

Ticket To Improv, Volume 3 Includes:

  • Printable PDF of lesson solos in notation & tablature
  • MIDI files of single note solos & rhythm sections

DVD Running Time: 4 Hours

Customer Reviews

Based on 19 reviews
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Peter Withers
Ticket to Improv

Working thru vol. 1 project 1, page 1 of the TTI series. Very practical, pragmatic approach. Mr. Conti is a good teacher, talks plainly about what you need and what you don’t. I do have some theory background but its easy to see that working thru the mechanics of the material is more beneficial to playing than boatloads theory. Doing comes first, understanding later. Great material so far and looking forward to exploring more. (Lusting after an Entrada as well, have to see if I’ve been good this year and tell Mrs Santa.)

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Wayne D Holt
Get down to business and avoid unproductive theorizing

Great material! It's balanced between enough explanatory text to make sense of what you're being asked to do, and simple, direct guidance on how to pull off the cool tension tones that add the zest to jazz changes.

Robert could have made the materials more voluminous by going into endless fluff and extraneous observations. Instead, he opted to give players the meat of jazz thinking in as little as a few sentences in each of the sections.

If you plan on teaching jazz at the college level, by all means stick with the Modes-Go-Round of abstract, difficult to assimilate materials. If you want to be able to get up on a bandstand with a Real Book and not embarrass yourself in front of serious players, get this and do your woodshedding. You will be surprised at what once seemed utterly incomprehensible makes simple, logical sense...and that you can begin to use right away.

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Raymond Lindsley - New York, NY
Gets you playing very jazzy solos from day one

I posted elsewhere that I tried learning jazz guitar about 12 years ago, but gave up due to lack of time. I got several of the Conti DVDs, but barely got started. Now that I am retired with plenty of time, I plan to get started again with the Conti DVDs. What I like about them is it gets you playing very jazzy sounding solos from day one. For me that is very important to keep my interest and motivation to keep going.

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Arthur Wolford - Westerville, OH
Grateful you do what you do

For lack of a better word, Robert, you're awesome, thank you, I've been looking for material like this for a long time. I knew there had to be a different way, and this is it! As I am not getting any younger, in short, I am grateful you do what you do. Would like to meet you sometime. Best Wishes, Art

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Jerry Martin - Florence, OR
Conti is my guiding light

I would like to once again tell you that Bob Conti is my guiding light, through the murky waters of guitar instruction out here, what a wonderful person to be so open and offer to us mere mortals out here in guitar land his talents! I listen to Jazz every day and of all the players and all the courses out there Bob is the best PERIOD! I am still not advanced enough for much of the material and still in the improv #3 but as soon as #4 comes out I will be on it. I hope to someday get to Vegas so I can see Bob in person..

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Alan Wells - Tennessee, USA
chord melodies...best out there

I have the TTI Volumes 1, 2, and 3.. The chord melodies that Mr Conti offers (free might I add), IMHO are the best out there. They're easy to understand, and they are always hip.. If there is a better way to get this quality of teaching, I've yet to find it.. Thanx for all you do!

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Julian Wilson - United Kingdom
All Sorts Of Doors Will Open

Wow! - This stuff is getting better all the time! I can't believe how the barriers are falling - It's like Bob said: "All sorts of doors will open, and all sorts of lights will start to go on" - They are! My right hand fingers are pretty much automatic now, and my performance passable on almost 3 songs. Even the open 6th string Em9 chord at the 7th fret is finally getting tamed as well. It was hard to play that clean at a reasonably fast speed when you're passing through a sequence and combining a finger roll at the same time! lol Still, as with all this stuff, you know EXACTLY what you SHOULD be playing, so the obstacles are only physical and not mental. One particular 'light that's turned on' is that there is absolutely no need to be stressed with any of this - (Yeah Bob I finally GOT that one! lol) When I follow what Bob says on the DVD's "everything else DOES take care of itself" - I know, I've proved it myself. Sorry for hogging the testimonials board, but this stuff is so good I can't keep it to myself. Jules. Awe inspiring tuition from a man at the top of his game.Jules.

Streaming Video Option

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black friday sale Details

Take advantage of this great opportunity to save big on the most effective jazz guitar learning resources on the planet – as verified by nearly 5000 reviews.

Through November 30, 2023, use coupon code BFCM23 at checkout (be sure to click the apply button!) to save 30% on all learning resources, both shipped and streaming. Please note that Conti Guitars are not included in this sale event, but we still have a couple of the heavily discounted Entrada prototypes available!