Extra-curricular; non bluegrassish

I've been working out of this old jazz guitar book by Mickey Baker, "Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, Volume 1". It gets very hard very fast. Basically, there are a few lessons that introduce how to finger some jazzy chords (maj7, maj6, min7, min6, and the 13b5b9 that I think sounds pretty terrible). Then you're right into Joe Pass style chord solos, which are a bear!

But, yeah, I've been wanting to branch out some more for a while now. This book has no tab, so hopefully it'll make me get better at sight-reading. I'm pretty bad at that.

Mickey doesn't do much explaining about the chords--what makes a chord major or minor, what the extensions mean, when you can substitute which chords for another. He kinda just shows you how to finger it, then says "play this".

Joe Carr's "Western Swing Guitar Styles" is way better at that. It's really quite good at systematically breaking down where you can do different substitutions (but it's not comprehensive--I believe it doesn't cover tritone subs at all). Great book.

Anyhow, here's hoping the Mickey Baker book teaches me some cool stuff. I'm already learning some new fingerings, which is cool. And I learned that 13b5b9 chord, which sounds terrible. It seems like he kind of uses it as a tension-adding diminished type chord.