Posts by jazz-guitar-licks

Altered chords add color, tension, and sophistication to your playing, making them a must-know for jazz, fusion, and even blues and rock guitarists.

An altered chord contains one (or several) altered notes that don't belong to the diatonic scale.

These notes are the b5 (flat fifth), #5 (sharp fifth), b9 (flat ninth), #9 (sharp ninth).

In this guitar lesson we will see that they can be grouped into three disctinct families (major, minor and dominant) and also how to play them on guitar.

This serie provided by our favorite backing track channel on YouTube is a collection of 3/4 drum tracks for practicing your favorite musical exercises (scales, chord comping, warm-up, etc) as you would do with a metronome.

You'll find here an infographic related to the lesson about upper structure triads on guitar. 

This guitar lesson discusses a very useful way to come out new colors to your soloing or comping ideas called "Upper-structure Triads".

This technique consists of superimposing triads to highlight extended notes of minor, major and dominant chords.

This lesson provides a chord melody arrangement for guitar of the famous song "Days of Wine and Roses" written by Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the movie film of the same name. 

Unlocking that smooth tension and release in jazz harmony is where the magic lies—and the dominant seventh flat-fifth (7♭5) chord is one of your secret weapons.

Imagine sliding into a chord that sounds both unexpected and inevitable, bridging the gap between yellow-and-gold major chords and grey-shaded minor ones. That’s what the 7♭5 chord does.

Here is 12-bar jazz-blues study in Bb with guitar tab and standard notation mixing basic jazz chords and minor blues scale fragments. You'll find it for free (or Pay What You Want) on jazz-guitar-licks Gumroad store.

A new guitar poster referencing the most used arpeggios shapes is available on Jazz Guitar Licks Teespring Store. This reference chart includes 50 diagrams to help guitarists figure out arpeggio positions all over the guitar neck. The size of this poster is 24 x 36 inches (60 x 90 cm), the arpeggio types covered are:

• Major 7
• Minor 7
• Dominant 7
• Half-diminished
• Diminished 7
• Minor Major 7
• Augmented Major 7
• Augmented 7

This free guitar chord chart available as a PDF file contains the most important altered and extended dominant guitar chord shapes that any guitar player should know. It is totally free (or Pay What You Want) in return, don't hesitate to support this website.

Lesson By Steve Down

This video is the last installment of the lesson series on the funky Kenny Burrell version of "My Favorite Things" from his 1966 album "Soulero". In this last lesson (please consider watching the 7 previous) we finish off by looking at the final head, the outro solo and I give you my top 5 take aways from the series complete with some extra example licks!

Have fun practicing!

This free PDF chart contains shapes for a better understanding on how to play of music intervals on the guitar. This cheat sheet is available for free (or Pay What You Want) on Jazz Guitar Licks Gumroad Library

Here is a cheat sheet containing three easy exercises for connecting basic guitar chord shapes as min7, maj7, dim7, m7b5, 7sus, 9th, 7#9, 7b9, min6, 6. It is available for free (or Pay What You Want) in Jazz Guitar Licks Gumroad Shop.

This music theory cheat sheet file explains effectively how drop 3 chords are built. You can download the printable PDF file (better quality) for free (or make a donation to support this website) following this link.

Lesson by Joost Zoeteman

This video lesson is taken from JGL's facebook group "Jazz Guitar Lessons". Guitarist Joost Zoeteman explains how different types of pentatonic scales can be applied to a 2 5 1 chord progression.

Drop 2 chords are built by dropping the second highest note of a close chord down an octave, thus giving four supplementary ways of playing a seventh chord (min7, maj7, dom7, m7b5, dim7, aug7, augMaj7).

This free music theory cheat sheet will help you understand how these drop 2 voicings are built. You can easily get it for free (or name a fair price) in PDF format on GUMROAD.

This lesson is about a good warm-up exercise for guitarist implying a short pattern (4 beats) made of dominant seventh arpeggios  separated by a tritone (3 whole tones = augmented fourth). This pattern is repeated following a descending chromatic movement.