Posts by jazz-guitar-licks

If you've spent any time learning guitar scales, you've probably encountered both the Major scale and the Lydian scale. At first glance, they seem almost identical—and in fact, they differ by only a single note. Yet that one note creates a dramatically different musical mood.

Understanding this relationship is one of the fastest ways to expand your improvisation skills and add new colors to your playing.

Most traditional harmony is taught through tertian harmony — the construction of chords by stacking thirds. Major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads all emerge from this principle.

This exercise proposes a different viewpoint: instead of building chords upward in thirds, we construct them through stacked diatonic sixths.

At first glance, the resulting structures seem unusual. Yet when the notes are reordered into close position, they reveal the same familiar triads found in conventional harmony.

The value of the exercise therefore lies not in inventing new chords, but in developing a different intervallic awareness of the same harmonic material.

Music is built from patterns, and one of the most fascinating kinds of patterns is symmetry.

A symmetrical scale is a scale whose notes follow a repeating and balanced interval structure.

Unlike major and minor scales, symmetrical scales often sound mysterious, dreamy, tense, or futuristic because they do not strongly point to one “home” note.

In this lesson, we will explore what symmetrical scales are, how they work, and why musicians use them.

The Dorian mode is one of the most widely used scales in jazz, blues, funk, and rock guitar.

Its minor sound combined with a major 6th gives it a smooth and melodic character that works perfectly over minor chords.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how the Dorian mode is built and how to use it in your solos.

In this lesson, we explore Drop 2 and Drop 3 voicings for major 7 chords—two essential tools for creating richer, more professional-sounding harmony on the guitar.

A new mini lesson has been added to the Jazz Guitar Licks website: Take the “A” Train – Jazz Guitar Solo Study (ML 13).

Extended Major 7 chords add color, depth, and sophistication to your guitar playing. In this article, we’ll explore 12 extended Major 7 guitar chords that go beyond the basic shapes, introducing richer harmonies through added tones like the 9th and 13th.

In this lesson, we’ll explore 4 Levels of 2–5–1–6 Jazz Guitar Chords.

Whether you're a developing player building your jazz foundation or an intermediate guitarist looking to expand your chord vocabulary, these four levels will give you a structured path to stronger, more musical comping.

This lesson comes with a PDF (Give What You Want).

Barry Harris explained that the fully diminished seventh chord sits at the center of the system.

By making simple chromatic adjustments to its notes, it naturally resolves into dominant, minor 6, or major 6 chords.

Here is a structured guitar lesson focused on harmonized major scale arpeggios and chords in the key of C.

It is designed for intermediate students but can be adapted up or down depending on technique and theory background.

This lesson focuses on understanding and applying the four chord tones of a dominant 7 chord (1–3–5–♭7) as arpeggios embedded within the Mixolydian mode.

Guest Post by Dennis Winge

Most musicians learn chords as fixed units: a major triad is three notes, a seventh chord is four, an extended chord might be six or seven.

We tend to think of them as solid vertical structures, like blocks in a building. But here’s the secret: every extended chord is really a constellation of smaller chords.

Rhythm changes are a cornerstone of the jazz repertoire, offering a compact yet harmonically rich framework for study and improvisation.

In this study, we focus on the A section, examining practical chord approaches that incorporate inversions and common substitutions.

The aim is to clarify the underlying harmony while expanding your comping vocabulary in a musical, idiomatic way.

Discover the New “Harmonized Scales for Guitar” PDF

A comprehensive PDF method for guitar players designed to bring clarity, structure, and practical power to your approach to scales and chords. 

All Jazz-Guitar-Licks.com PDF Lessons Are Now Available on Fourthwall!

If you’re a guitarist passionate about jazz, improvisation, and expanding your musical vocabulary, we have great news for you! All the PDF methods, exercises, and learning materials from Jazz-Guitar-Licks.com are now officially available on Fourthwall.

In this lesson we explore three five-note blues patterns in B♭7 built from the tones 1 – ♭3 – 3 – 5 – ♭7.

The aim being to repeat the same pattern replacing the ♭7 with the 6 the second time.

These patterns capture the classic blues sound while giving you clear, repeatable shapes across the neck.

PDF (pay what you want) transcription with Tab / Notation available on GUMROAD.