Posts by jazz-guitar-licks

This warm-up exercise for guitar is to repeat a melodic line following the cycle of fourths.

This line is made of two bars containing a major seventh arpeggio (1 - 3 - 5 - 7) and two half-diminished arpeggios (1 - b3 - b5 - b7).

The circle of fifths is the way the 12 musical notes of the chromatic scale are arranged following a sequence of perfect fifths (7 semitones).

It helps visualizing relationships between notes and better understanding diatonic harmony.

This cheat sheet show how the modes of the major scale are built and what is the relation between them.

This handwritten cheat sheet show the main chord formulas. Subscribe to the instagram and facebook pages to get more music theory charts.

This lesson provides a chord study with tab of the Latin jazz tune Armando's rumba by Chick Corea based on the Latin Real Book version in C minor.

Here below you'll find guitar tabs corresponding to the four main parts of the tune (A-B-C-D).

The chords used in this arrangement are mostly seventh chords as min7, maj7, dim7 and dom7 (drop 2, drop 3 and rootless voicings) including basic triads (min, aug) and altered dominant chords (7#9, 7b13).

A new tutorial has been published on Jazz Guitar Licks YouTube channel.

It shows how to play the main triads on guitar using neck diagram shapes.

The triads discussed are : minor, major, diminished, augmented and suspended 2 & 4.

For those who'd like to get the printable PDF version and get more triad voicing shapes (open and close), there is a new method available since a few days, just click on the picture below to get it.

Arpeggios are the backbone of jazz improvisation, they are simple to learn, they allow to easily outline the harmony and create fluid lines.

Arpeggios are very popular in all styles of music (rock, metal, blues, pop), that's why it is very important to learn them.

This guitar lesson provides the most important arpeggio shapes that any beginner jazz guitarist must know, classified this way :

major 7, minor 7, dominant 7, half-diminished, diminished 7, Major 7#5 and minMaj7.

You'll find in this tutorial three kinds of guitar diagrams for each arpeggio type :

one-octave shapes (notes within the space of one octave), two-octave shapes (notes within two octaves) and CAGED shapes.

A brand new video is now available on JGL's YouTube channel. It's about 10 Pat Martino lines taken from the jazz blues tune "Cisco". You can watch / hear the video below and maybe check out the full tutorial in the "solo transcriptions" section of this website. 

Suspended chords are chords derived from triads and tetrads, the third is replaced with a fourth (most of the time) or a second, making them chords that are neither major nor minor.

This lesson with charts, tabs, and diagrams, teaches how these chords are constructed and how to play them on the guitar.

Learning the name of the notes and be able to find them out on the fretboard is very important when you want to explore scales, chords and arpeggios on guitar.

Knowing them on the guitar neck is obviously useful for a better understanding of music theory and sight reading, it will also help you communicate better with other musicians. 

Lesson by George Dafnos

Here are somme ideas inspired by great jazz guitarists as Wes Montgomery ,George Benson on how to superimpose almost all the chord family degrees. This concept helps mapping the arpeggio combinations and listen different coloursounds above root ,subdominant or dominant families. After mastering all these, be sure to try making your own jazz lines and licks.

Satin Doll by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, witten in 1953, is one of the most famous jazz tune. It has been recorded by many jazz musicians as Wes Montgomery, Ella Fitzgerald, Mc Coy Tyner, Oscar Peterson and of course Duke Ellington himself. It has become a classic jazz standard, a must-hear, very popular at jam sessions.

This guitar lesson with chord shapes and scale charts explains how to play easy jazz chords and what basic scales to choose for improvising over Satin Doll.

Check out the latest video from the YouTube channel. This is a chord melody arrangement for guitar of Duke Ellington's jazz standard "Satin Doll".

This free lesson with tabs is intended for intermediate players who want to practice some drop 2, drop 3 voicings, walking bass lines, chords inversions and substitutions over one of the most popular jazz tune.

A new guitar method has been published recently to meet the demand of jazz-guitar-licks.com readers and buyers.

This printable PDF eBook is dedicated to Smooth Jazz Licks in the tradition of George Benson, Pat Metheny, Ronnie Jordan, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour and many more.

It is designed both for teachers and students who want to expand their theoretical knowledge and guitar technique .

Lesson by Steve Down

Here is a transcription for guitar of So What by Miles Davis. This video lesson provides the tab of the main theme and the whole Miles Davis solo. A good introduction to modal playing on guitar thus showing how Miles Davis used the Dorian mode (D Dorian and Eb Dorian).

This cheat sheet is a guitar chart containing 12 shapes that show the main dominant scales used in jazz music (Mixolydian, Lydian dominant, Mixolydian b9, Mixolydian b13, dominant bebop, Phrygian dominant).