Blog - Jazz Guitar Lessons
Welcome to the blog of jazz-guitar-licks.com
This blog covers different topics 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 Licks and Transcriptions
Teacher Spotlight - Jazz Guitar Lessons
Cheat Sheets, Methods, Posters, eBooks
The content is regularly updated so don't hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter to receive the latest posts.
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Triads On Guitar - Close And Open Positions - Lesson With Tabs & Shapes
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-10-08
- 8 comments
Triads are one of the first harmonic tools to study. They are very useful for comping and chordal enrichment. Learning close and open triad voicings increase your harmonic knowledge and at the same time help you discover your fretboard.
In this lesson you will see the main triad chord shapes including root positions and inversions. You will also find some ideas on how to use triads over a II V I sequence, in order to create interesting melodic movement in your comping.
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What Are Dominant Seventh Chords ?
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-29
- 0 comments
Dominant seventh chords are the most important features in music, you can find them in many styles of music, especially in blues and, of course, in jazz. In this lesson, you will see how to construct drop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 & 4 dominant seventh chords, what is their harmonic function and how to play them on guitar.
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Tetrad Chords Infographic - Drop 2, Drop 3 and Drop 2-4 Voicings
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-24
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
This guitar infographic enables to learn in a fun way the five main most important chord types found in music thru three kinds of voicings : Drop 2, Drop 3 and Drop 2-4.
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Jazz up Your Blues - Guitar Lesson
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-22
- In Guest Posts
- 0 comments
One of the most daunting shifts for any guitarist can be entering the world of jazz guitar. We’ve all read essential jazz guitar books, tutorials and watched videos by those in the know and it’s a vast world full of new theoretical and practical concepts.
Most guitar players get into playing through rock/blues and find jazz later on their ability spectrum. If you understand blues, you can start to make some small changes which will add a jazz dynamic to your playing. In this lesson we will cover some of those small changes you can integrate into your playing today. -
Drop 2 & 4 Chords - Advanced Guitar Voicings
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-14
- 0 comments
What Are Drop 2-4 Chords?
Drop 2 and 4 chords are created by dropping down an octave the second and fourth note of a seventh chord in close position. They can be very important tools for composition and arrangement. This lesson with diagrams provides useful explanations on how to build and play drop 2 & 4 chords on guitar.
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Tetrad Chords / Seventh Chords - Music Theory with Guitar Shapes
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-11
- 2 comments
What's a Tetrad ?
A basic chord is built with three notes this is what we call "triad chords" or "triads". Tetrad chords aka "four note-chords" or "seventh chords" are simply chords containing four notes, “tetra“ is a Greek root meaning four. Tetrads can be seen as triads with an additional note which can be a major seventh (7) or a minor seventh (b7).
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Arpeggio Practice - Seventh Chords - 4 Essential Exercises
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-09-09
- 2 comments
Arpeggios are essential musical tools that allow you to build pure and beautiful lines while highlighting the harmony. When playing over chord changes, using arpeggios is the most efficient way to connect these chords together.
This lesson provides four exercises with tabs, standard notation and diagrams that will help improve your guitar skills and your theoretical knowledge.
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Modes of the Major Scale and Related Chords - Guitar Infographic
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-07-24
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
This infographic provide guitar shapes that will help you to make the link between the seven modes of the major scale and their related drop 2 and drop 3 chords.
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List and Comparison of Music Scales
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-06-25
- 0 comments
Here is a list of the main musical scales and modes.
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49 Licks of Legendary Jazz Musicians for Guitar - Lessons in PDF with TABS and analysis
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-06-04
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
49 Essential Jazz Guitar Licks With Tabs and Analysis
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Practicing jazz guitar licks is a very important aspect of jazz learning. Particularly when these licks are transcribed from improvisations of the greatest jazz musicians of all times (Cannonball Adderley, Barney Kessel, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Christian, Emily Remler, George Benson, Grant Green, Herb Ellis, Jim Hall, Jimmy Raney, Joe Pass, John Scofield, Kenny Burrell, Charlie Parker, Mike Stern and Wes Montgomery) who helped forge the history of jazz music.
This eBook available for download in a PDF format contains 49 effective jazz guitar phrases and patterns with TABS and notation applied to common jazz chord progressions . These patterns both for guitar teachers and students cover different styles from swing to blues, to hard-bop to bebop.
These essential jazz lines arranged for jazz guitarists from beginner to advanced come with easy-to-understand explanations of one of the greatest players improvisational techniques.
Learning these jazz transcriptions make it possible to understand the approach of the great names of jazz to different chord progressions found in many standards as turnarounds, minor and major II-V-I, blues progressions, modal playing.
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Target Tones and Enclosures - 58 Guitar Patterns
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-05-20
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 6 comments
This guitar lesson is about a very important concept used by many jazz improvisers named "Target notes" or "target tones" or "approach notes". It has to do with targeting chord tones by scale or chromatically.
This technique opens the door to another essential type of targeting called "Enclosures" used to surround a chord tone both diatonically and chromatically from above and below.
Understanding and applying "Targeting" will help you solos sound more jazzy and allow you to expand your harmonic knowledge.
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Dominant 7 Chord Altered Extensions - Guitar Infographic
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-05-01
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
Dominant 7 Chord Altered Extensions - Guitar Infographic
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Drop 2 Guitar Chord Shapes - Infographic
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-04-29
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
This infographic with guitar freatboard diagrams show how to play all five types of drop 2 chords on the first set of strings (E, B, G and D strings).
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Harmonized Major Scale For Guitarists With Shapes
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-04-27
- In Infographics
- 0 comments
This infographic with three neck diagrams is a useful reminder for beginner guitarists and composers. It shows how to build a drop 2 seventh chord from each note of the major scale.
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Voice Leading For Guitar - Basic Chords - 5 Easy Exercises
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-04-24
- In Chords / Voicings
- 0 comments
What is Voice Leading in Music?
"Voice leading" is a term that refers to the smooth progression of each voice of a chord. This technique consist to move individually one or several voices up or down by a step from one chord to the next.
Voice leading is very used by composers and improvisers in order to connect chords instead of bouncing them around.
The aim of this lesson is to connect or voice-lead basic four-note chords of the same types by moving only one voice. This technique is very fun and should help you learn some of the most important chords used in jazz guitar.
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GuitarSim - App & Smartphone Accessory For Guitarists
- By jazz-guitar-licks
- On 2018-04-19
- In Music Gear Reviews - Buyer's Guides
- 0 comments
GuitarSim is the smartphone accessory that turns your phone into a mini digital guitar with tons of features. It’s not just your average guitar; Guitarsim leverages your phone to give you a powerful and portable gadget to jam with, and its foldable so you can throw it into your bag without hassle.