Why Did Your Guitar Turn Into Furniture? How to Make Jazz Guitar Fun Again
If your guitar has been sitting in a corner for years like a piece of furniture, you can get back to playing — the way back is to stop learning jazz guitar as a pile of scale boxes and start hearing it again. Plenty of serious hobbyists don't quit because they lack talent; they quit because the way they were taught left them stuck. At VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, Junewon Choi has spent years building online jazz guitar lessons for exactly those players, and a recent live stream reminded him why.
Why Do So Many Guitarists Quit Jazz?
Junewon didn't start out as a full-time performer. He had a corporate career in the United States after Berklee and came back to Korea during the pandemic with the plan of releasing an album and performing. What changed his mind was hearing from people who took guitar seriously — not just as a pastime, but as something they worked at — and who kept hitting the same wall: improvisation and the fretboard. Many were trapped inside scale blocks. Some gave up. Others decided to "just keep it fun" and stopped growing.
What Was Missing From How Jazz Guitar Was Taught?
Almost nobody was teaching what he'd actually been taught himself. There were plenty of excellent guitarists coming out of the same schools, but very few explaining how the fretboard really works as a system for improvisation. The result was a gap: serious hobbyists were left to figure it out alone, and the instrument ended up unplayed. It was the wrong kind of problem for a talented person to solve by themselves.
Why Do Hobbyists Deserve the Same Care as Professionals?
The people who play for love are the heart of the whole music community. If their enthusiasm is neglected, the wider scene shrinks with it. That's the reasoning behind starting a channel: not because Junewon was the loudest voice in jazz, but because he could do something about a problem he saw. Starting small was enough. The point was to give players a reason to pick the guitar back up.
What Is the Best Feedback a Teacher Can Get?
Over time, reviews came in with a common theme, and it wasn't "I learned more theory." It was:
"The guitar is fun again."
"I picked it up after years of letting it gather dust."
"I can't wait to see what comes next."
That's the feedback that matters most, because it means someone who stopped playing is playing again. It's also a reminder that the aim of learning Wes Montgomery's language, or understanding a standard, isn't to pass a test — it's to enjoy the music.
How Do You Restart Without Starting Over?
You don't need to throw away what you know. You need a clear next step and a way to measure it. If you're wondering where to begin, Building Blocks is the entry point built for exactly this moment. If you've ever wondered whether it's okay to be a hobbyist, It's Okay to Be a Hobbyist speaks directly to that, and Why Does a Jazz Guitar Teacher With No University Post Still Livestream Every Sunday Night? tells the other half of the story.
The simplest way to begin is to see where you honestly stand: the Scorecard takes about five minutes and tells you where to start this week. Then pick up the guitar and play something you love.
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