You don't have to invent your own voice on jazz guitar — you already have one. The real work is choosing a direction and going deep enough in it that your voice has room to come out. Pick the players and the style you want to sound like, learn what they actually played, and treat everything outside that direction as optional. That is the message Junewon Choi closes many of his live streams with on VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, and it shapes how our online jazz guitar lessons are built: stay original by being specific, not by trying everything.
Doesn't Copying the Masters Erase Your Own Voice?
There is a story often told about Picasso. Someone asked how he found his own style, and he answered that everyone already has one: draw a circle, and no two people's circles are the same. Originality is already inside you. In music, that means you can transcribe Wes Montgomery note for note and still sound like yourself, because your time feel, your touch and your choices leak through every phrase. Copying is not the enemy of a personal sound. Copying without a direction is. If you learn a little of everything, nothing goes deep enough to become yours. For more on this, read You'll Sound Like Yourself Anyway: Why Copying the Masters Won't Erase Your Voice.
What Does "Choosing a Direction" Actually Look Like?
When Junewon started jazz guitar, he made one decision: he would go all in on swing and traditional, straight-ahead jazz. In that world, the guitarist who has done almost everything is George Benson — Junewon jokingly calls him the final boss. Wes Montgomery came before him and set the language; Benson took it as far as it could go. So the plan became clear: study the Wes and Benson style, and measure every new idea against it. That doesn't mean other styles are wrong. It means you know which questions are yours to answer.
Why Would a Teacher Skip a Beautiful Voicing?
A student once asked about a Cmaj7 drop 2 inversion on the middle four strings — the one where the major 7th flips into a minor 2nd and hides between the other notes. It is a gorgeous sound: a dissonant interval tucked inside the voicing, protected by the notes above and below it. And Junewon has never once used it. Not because it's bad, but because Wes and Benson never played it. Contemporary jazz guitarists love that kind of modern voicing, and if that is your direction, learn it well. But you don't need every voicing to be a jazz guitarist. You need the ones your direction actually uses, played deeply. Knowing what to leave out is part of having a voice.
Is There Room for You If a Style Already Has a "Final Boss"?
Yes, and that's the encouraging part. Benson didn't just play his style — he started a lineage. Younger players like Cecil Alexander and Dan Wilson follow that sound, and between them and Benson's generation there are layers and layers of guitarists who each sound like themselves. Pat Martino is a reminder of how personal this road is: after brain surgery left him with severe memory loss, he had to relearn how he played the guitar, and he still became one of the most distinctive voices in jazz. A shared tradition doesn't flatten people. It gives them something to stand on. For more on how sound is passed down, see Your Sound Is Inherited: A Weekend Reflection on Lineage in Jazz Guitar.
How Do You Start This Weekend?
Name your direction. One sentence: the style and the two or three players you want to sound like.
Pick one recording from that direction and listen to it every day this week.
Transcribe one phrase by ear before you look anything up.
Make a "not now" list — voicings, scales and styles you'll leave for later.
Swing anyway. A missed swing still teaches you what a real swing is; you only learn by stepping up to the plate.
If Wes Montgomery is part of your direction, Wes' Insight breaks down his fretboard logic in lesson form.
What Is the Real Goal?
Not to sound like everyone, and not to sound like no one. The goal is to sound like yourself inside a language you love. Choose the language, learn it from the people who speak it best, and let your circle be your circle. If you're not sure where to begin musically, Essential: Building Blocks is the free entry point to the VoiceLid Jazz Guitar method.
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