Blog - Lessons
Welcome to the blog of jazz-guitar-licks.com,
This blog covers different subjects and contains several useful lessons both for beginners, intermediates and advanced jazz guitar players.
Whether you're looking for tips on playing jazz guitar, this blog surely has the information you crave and will help you expand your music knowledge and technical skills.
You will find here tutorials grouped into several distinct categories (Jazz Guitar Lessons, Licks and Transcriptions, Scales and Arpeggios, Chords, Jazz Standards, Music Theory, Guitar Practice Tips, Guitar Gear Reviews, Music Production, Music Reviews, Uncategorized, Guest Posts) as shown in the menu on the right.
The content is regularly updated. If you're new here, it's a great place to start learning jazz guitar. Don't hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter to receive the latest posts in your mailbox.
If you want to see me talk on a specific topic or if you want to submit articles, let me know using the contact form.
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17 Scale Choices For Improvising on Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 09/14/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
What Scale to Choose for Improvising?
One of the most common question a beginner asks when he wants to start improvising on guitar is what scale to choose. However, there is a lot of scale and a lot of chord, it is easy to get lost. That's why it is important to make the relation between them, trying to understand what is the appropriate scale that fit the chord and vice versa.
This guitar lesson provides the seventeen most important scales with shapes and formulas to know for improvising over the most used chord types in jazz music (major, minor, dominant and diminished).
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36 Ways of Playing a Dominant 7 Chord on Guitar - Beginner to Advanced
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/30/2019
- 0 comments
Dominant 7 chords are one of the most important chords to know, they can be found in many styles of music as blues, funk, pop and of course in jazz music. In this lesson we will see how dominant 7 chords are built and how to play them on guitar using 36 different voicings and shapes. -
15 Easy Jazz Guitar Chords For Beginners - Infographic
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/28/2019
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
This guitar infographic provides 15 easy jazz chords for beginners.
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Harmonization of the Melodic Minor Scale - Chord Shapes and Theory
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/26/2019
- 0 comments
In this lesson we will see how to harmonize the melodic minor scale in thirds with seventh chords. In other words we will see how to build seventh chords by stacking thirds from each degree of the melodic minor scale.
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What Scale to Play Over 7b9 Chord
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/12/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
Dominant 7 flat ninth chords (7b9) are generally related to the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale known as Phrygian dominant scale, which makes it the most obvious choice for improvising over 7b9. However, we will see in this article that there are many other options. -
5 Easy Jazz Blues Arpeggio Studies For Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/26/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
This lesson contains five free guitar studies for beginners that outline the use of arpeggios over a Bb jazz blues progression. There are different kinds of jazz blues progressions. The one that is used in this eBook is built with a secondary dominant (VI7), a passing diminished (#IVdim7) and a turnaround (I7, VI7, iim7, V7).
Bb7
Eb7
Bb7
%
I7
IV7
I7
I7
Eb7
Edim7
Bb7
G7(b9)
IV7
#IVdim7
I7
VI7
Cm7
F7
Bb7 G7 (b9)
Cm7 F7
iim7
V7
I7 VI7
iim7 V7
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Jazz Guitar Methods - eBooks & Printable PDF with Tabs, Standard Notation & Audio Files
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/25/2019
- In Guitar Cheat Sheets, Methods & Books
- 0 comments
This page lists the eBooks available for download on the website. All theses methods are in PDF format, so they can be printed and viewed on all types of media systems (tablets, smartphones and computers). -
Joe Pass Blues - Transcription with Video and Analysis
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/07/2019
- 0 comments
Joe's blues is a 12-bar blues taken from one of the many Joe Pass methods named "Joe Pass on Guitar". This lesson covers the first 24 bars of the original lesson. If you listen to the audio file provided with the book you can hear that there are a lot of mistakes in the transcription. That's why I have decided to transcribe those lines directly from what I heard. -
How to Practice Pentatonic Scales On Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/01/2019
- 0 comments
What are Pentatonic Scales?Pentatonic scales are scales with five notes per octave. They are frequently used in music all over the world. The word "pentatonic" comes from the Greek word "pente" meaning five and "tonic" meaning tone.
Talk of "the" pentatonic scale generally make reference to the major pentatonic scale and its relative minor. It's a mistake, indeed there are many types of pentatonic scales (Egyptian, Ritusen, Man gong, Altered, Locrian...).
Pentatonic scales are considered earlier than heptatonic scales (seven-note scales) and can be divided into two categories :
- Containing semitones (hemitonic)
- Without semitones (anhemitonic)
The purpose of this post is to propose some tips and ideas for practicing and develop pentatonic scales.
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12 Types of Major Scales - Guitar Lesson With Diagrams
- By Stef Ramin
- On 04/16/2019
- 2 comments
When we think about major scales, the first that comes to mind is the Ionian mode, best know as THE major scale. However, there are several other types of major scales (Ionian #5, Lydian augmented #2, Ionian b6) which deserve a little more attention. Here they are listed with guitar shapes and formulas. -
II V7 Bebop Patterns - David Baker - Analysis and Scale Diagrams
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/21/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
This blog article is related to the video tutorial published on JGL YouTube channel. It contains 10 II V7 jazz bebop guitar patterns with analysis and scale shapes. These lines come from the first chapter of David Baker's book "How To Play Bebop Vol.2 - Learning the bebop language". They correspond to the first ten exercises of the section named "The Use of The II V7 Progression in Bebop".You 'll find in this lesson a quick analysis of each pattern with scale diagrams (Dorian, Dorian bebop, Mixolydian, dominant bebop, Mixolydian b13, altered, mixo-blues and half-whole diminished).
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What's a Dominant 7 Arpeggio - How to Play it on Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/05/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
What Are Dominant 7 Arpeggios?
Dominant 7 arpeggios are built with root (1), major third (3), perfect fifth (5) and minor seventh (b7). They are basically used to play over dominant 7 chords.
Dominant 7 Arpeggio 1 3 5 b7 G7 G B D F -
Solar - Miles Davis - Guitar Chord Melody Lesson and Analysis
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/04/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
"Solar" is a jazz standard written by Miles Davis in the key of C minor with four tonal centers that are : C minor, F major, Eb major and Db major. Solar contains essential chord progressions as major and minor II V I. This lesson provides a short harmonic analysis and a chord melody arrangement for guitar with tab, standard notation, chord shapes and audio file.
