GuitarYour Sound Is Inherited: A Weekend Reflection on Lineage in JazZ
Nobody invents their sound from nothing. The way you phrase, the tone you reach for, even the strings on your guitar — it's all inherited from the players and teachers you absorbed, then quietly made your own. That's the quiet truth underneath learning jazz guitar, and it's something Junewon Choi, the Berklee-trained guitarist behind the online jazz guitar lessons at VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, finds himself returning to whenever he picks up a guitar he hasn't played in a while. This weekend, a reflection on where a personal sound actually comes from.
Does originality really come from a lineage?
It almost always does. Trace any distinctive player backward and you'll find teachers and heroes stacked behind them like rings in a tree. Junewon's own line runs clearly: he studied with Richie Hart, who studied directly with George Benson. At Berklee, he sought out and found what he calls a "living Wes Montgomery" — a thumb player he worked alongside for a long time until that vocabulary became second nature.
None of that erased his voice. It built it. You don't lose yourself by studying the masters deeply; you gather the raw material that your own taste eventually shapes. For more on this paradox, read Finding Your Voice in the Shadow of Giants.
Why does the thumb-versus-pick choice say so much?
Because even a technical decision carries a lineage. Junewon played with his thumb for years — pick playing came later, learned in the George Benson style passed down through Richie Hart, who himself moved between pick and thumb before committing to the thumb. Later still, the bright, round attack of a pick traced back to time spent studying with Peter Bernstein.
So the question "thumb or pick?" is never just mechanical. It's a record of who you listened to and who taught you. Your right hand is a kind of autobiography. If you want to go deeper into the thumb logic Wes Montgomery made famous, Wes' Insight breaks down the exact fretboard thinking behind it.
Can a set of strings carry someone else's influence?
Strangely, yes. Open most serious players' cases and the gear tells a story:
A string set chosen because Peter Bernstein uses it.
A George Benson signature model strung with Thomastik-Infeld for that lower-tension feel.
Heavier, vintage-gauge strings on an archtop kept for teaching.
None of this is about brand worship — it's about chasing a sound you first heard somewhere else, then adapting it to your own hands. The gear is downstream of the influence, not the other way around.
What happens when an instrument "pushes back"?
Junewon describes picking up a guitar he hadn't touched in a while and feeling it physically resist him — like the instrument was pushing his hands away. It's a humbling reminder that fluency isn't permanent; it's a relationship you maintain. There's a deeper lesson in it too: don't over-rely on visual information or written notation. Let your eyes learn the fretboard itself, and fight to know the instrument directly rather than through a page. The sound you're chasing lives under your fingers, not on paper.
So how do you actually find your own voice?
You don't search for it directly — you earn it by going deep into the lineage and trusting that your individuality survives the process. Copy your heroes thoroughly. Study your teachers. Chase the tones that move you. What comes out the other side will still, unavoidably, sound like you. As Junewon puts it, you'll sound like yourself anyway — so dive in fearlessly. That idea is explored further in You'll Sound Like Yourself Anyway.
If this resonates and you're wondering where to start building that foundation, Essential: Building Blocks is the entry point at voicelidjazzguitar.com/building-blocks.
About the Author
Junewon Choi is a Berklee-trained jazz guitarist and the founder of VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, an online education platform teaching jazz harmony and improvisation through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA) — a chord-first method built on voice-leading rather than scale boxes.
Wes' Insight — Wes Montgomery's fretboard logic, in lesson form
Fundamental 1: Wes Diagonal System — the FDA from the ground up