Posts by jazz-guitar-licks

"Blues For John" by Matteo Mancuso is a compelling funky jazz, blues piece in F that showcases his exceptional guitar skills and deep understanding of blues music.

This lesson provides a free PDF transcription of the main theme.

This guitar lesson provides 7 alternative scales to the Dorian mode.

These scales all include a supplementary note, making them octatonic scales (made of eight notes).

They can be used over minor chords and prove to be an original choice to enhance your soloing skills.

Here is a free printable sheet cheat for guitar showing the relation between the main types of arpeggios and chord voicings with fifth in the bass.

This lesson offers an easy warm up exercise for guitar implying a bebop melodic pattern and five 3-note chord voicings to play over a 2 5 progression.

You can download the transcription and chord charts in PDF format for free (or give what you want).

In the meantime here is a brief analysis of the lesson :

This page provides a free guitar cheat sheet with tab, score and chord shapes about the main types of scales harmonized in seventh chords : 

Melodic Minor

Diatonic Major Scale

Natural Minor Scale

Harmonic Minor Scale

Slash chords, distinguished by a chord followed by a forward slash and a bass note (e.g., C/G), are a powerful tool for enriching your guitar sound.

This guitar lesson for beginners unravels the mystery behind slash chords, revealing how they redefine familiar shapes and add a touch of sophistication to your chord progressions.

Learning jazz guitar requires a systematic and disciplined practice routine.

Here's a comprehensive practice plan bringing together 10 essential points to help you develop your jazz guitar skills. 

"Blue Bossa" is a jazz standard composed by trumpetist Kenny Dorham and one of the most popular Bossa Nova song.

The tune has since become a popular jazz standard, covered by numerous artists as Joe Henderson, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon and many more.

This guitar lesson provides an easy chord study with tab / notation and YouTube short video to learn how to comp over it.

You'll find the related PDF transcription in the GUMROAD STORE.

In this short guitar lesson you will learn how to play 6 types of altered and extented dominant chords (7, 7b9, 9, 7b5, 7b5b9, 9b5) to expand your harmonic vocabulary.

Diminished 7 chords bring a distinctive, mysterious sound to music.

Widely used in jazz and classical genres, they infuse tension and creativity into your playing.

This guitar lesson explains how they are built and how to use them thanks to four easy examples.

The harmonic minor scale is a captivating and versatile scale used in various musical genres, known for its distinctive sound due to the raised seventh degree compared to the natural minor scale.

By understanding both chords derived from this scale and the modes within it, you can create compelling harmonic progressions and melodic lines.

Here's an introduction on how to combine chords and modes derived from the harmonic minor scale, including a free PDF (or give what you want) with Tab / standard notation. 

Guest Post By Jack Handyside at pickupmusic.com

Jazz standards are some of the most beautiful and interesting pieces of music ever written, but learning these complex songs and committing them to memory can feel overwhelming if you don’t know where to start.

Luckily for you, we’re here to help! This article will introduce you to a tried and true, eight-step method that you can use to learn any jazz standard. Our focus today will be on the classic jazz standard Autumn Leaves written by Joseph Kosma.

Jazz improvisation starts with the right scales. Instead of learning everything at once, focusing on a few essential scales will help you understand harmony, navigate the fretboard, and start soloing with confidence.

In this lesson, you’ll discover the key scales every beginner guitarist should know to build a strong jazz foundation.

This guitar theory lesson about harmonic equivalents provides six examples, that demonstrate how dominant seventh chords (rootless, altered or extended) can also be considered as other types of chords (min6, dim7, 7).

This page offers a serie of funky groove backing tracks for bass players.

Guest post by Dennis Winge

One Scale, Many Cool Contexts

Apart from the major scale, no one single scale has so many uses in jazz as the melodic minor scale.  The table on the next page outlines the seven different points of view, or modes of the melodic minor scale, followed by some examples of usages.  

The basic melodic minor scale is the same as a major scale, but with a lowered 3rd.  In the key of C this would be the notes c, d, eb, f, g, a, b. 

Below is a brief overview of each mode of the melodic minor.  I explain the most common of them in this video.