Jazz Guitar Lessons
You will find in this section the latest jazz guitar lessons: videos, PDFs, Tabs, transcriptions, licks, music theory, exercises, chord and scale diagrams, published on the blog and on the website. The content is regularly updated with fresh articles, so don't hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter.
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Miles Davis Lines Transcribed For Guitar on YouTube
- By Stef Ramin
- On 10/14/2019
- 0 comments
A new video is available on the YouTube channel. It contains 10 easy Miles Davis lines with analysis, audio files, standard notation and tabs overlayed transcribed from Solar, Vierd Blues and Tune Up.You can also check out the free full course about those 10 Miles Davis licks for guitar.
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Blues Progressions For Jazz Musicians - 11 Forms With Analysis & Audio Files
- By Stef Ramin
- On 10/06/2019
- 0 comments
Jazz blues progressions are very common in jazz music, however there is a lot of twelve-bar blues variations based on the typical form with which every musician is familiar. You will see in this lesson how to incorporate major and minor II V I sequences and turnarounds in order to make evolve a basic blues progression. Each chord changes chart contains roman numeral analysis to facilitate transposing them in any key.
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Diatonic Guitar Dyads - Lesson With Shapes - Music Theory
- By Stef Ramin
- On 09/29/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
What is a Dyad?A dyad is a two-note chord, a pair of notes played at the same time. These two notes are separated by an interval. Considering there are different types of intervals, there are therefore different types of dyads.
What's an Interval in Music?
An interval is the distance between two notes. It can be melodic or harmonic.
Is a Dyad can be considered a Chord?
A chord must contain, at a minimum, 3 notes. As its name implies a dyad is made of only two pitches. So, a dyad is considered as being an interval, not a chord.
What's a Diatonic Scale?
A diatonic scale is built with of half and whole steps. The term diatonic comes from the ancient Greece. In western music a diatonic scale is based on five whole steps and two half-steps that can be ordered in many specific ways. The best known is the diatonic major scale based on the formula W - W - H - W - W - W - H which means Whole-Step | Whole-Step | Half-step | WholeStep | Whole-Step | Whole-Step | Half-Step.
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10 Jazz Guitar Intros and Endings with Tabs and Audio Files
- By Stef Ramin
- On 09/27/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
How to Play a Jazz Intros and Endings on Guitar?
There are mutliple ways of taking an intro or ending a jazz tune, the truth is that you can play whatever you want. You can start from the V of the key, simply play the last 4 or 8 bars of the tune, try to incorporate a turnaroud and its several variations, the list is long....You''ll find in this lesson 10 jazz guitar progressions with tabs, standard notation and audio files that work both as intros and endings for any jazz standards in C major. Altough all these exercises are in the key of C major, it is possible and very important to transpose them in any key. The general purpose of this lesson is to adapt these lines to you favorite tunes.
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17 Scale Choices For Improvising on Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 09/14/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
What Scale to Choose for Improvising?
One of the most common question a beginner asks when he wants to start improvising on guitar is : Which scale to choose over which chords? However, there is a lot of scale and a lot of chord, it is easy to get lost. That's why it is important to make the relation between them, trying to understand what is the appropriate scale that fit the chord and vice versa.
This guitar lesson provides the seventeen most important scales with shapes and formulas to know for improvising over the most used chord types in jazz music (major, minor, dominant and diminished).
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36 Ways of Playing a Dominant 7 Chord on Guitar - Beginner to Advanced
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/30/2019
- 0 comments
Dominant 7 chords are one of the most important chords to know, they can be found in many styles of music as blues, funk, pop and of course in jazz music. In this lesson we will see how dominant 7 chords are built and how to play them on guitar using 36 different voicings and shapes. -
Harmonization of the Melodic Minor Scale - Chord Shapes and Theory
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/26/2019
- 0 comments
In this lesson we will see how to harmonize the melodic minor scale in thirds with seventh chords. In other words we will see how to build seventh chords by stacking thirds from each degree of the melodic minor scale.
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What Scale to Play Over 7b9 Chord
- By Stef Ramin
- On 07/12/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
Dominant 7 flat ninth chords (7b9) are generally related to the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale known as Phrygian dominant scale, which makes it the most obvious choice for improvising over 7b9 chords. However, we will see in this article that there are many other options. -
5 Easy Jazz Blues Arpeggio Studies For Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/26/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
This lesson contains five free guitar studies for beginners that outline the use of arpeggios over a Bb jazz blues progression. There are different kinds of jazz blues progressions. The one that is used in this eBook is built with a secondary dominant (VI7), a passing diminished (#IVdim7) and a turnaround (I7, VI7, iim7, V7).
Bb7
Eb7
Bb7
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I7
IV7
I7
I7
Eb7
Edim7
Bb7
G7(b9)
IV7
#IVdim7
I7
VI7
Cm7
F7
Bb7 G7 (b9)
Cm7 F7
iim7
V7
I7 VI7
iim7 V7
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Jazz Guitar Methods - eBooks & Printable PDF with Tabs, Standard Notation & Audio Files
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/25/2019
- In Guitar Cheat Sheets, Methods & Books
- 0 comments
This page lists the eBooks available for download on the website. All theses methods are in PDF format, so they can be printed and viewed on all types of media systems (tablets, smartphones and computers). -
Joe Pass Blues - Transcription with Video and Analysis
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/07/2019
- 0 comments
Joe's blues is a 12-bar blues taken from one of the many Joe Pass methods named "Joe Pass on Guitar". This lesson covers the first 24 bars of the original lesson. If you listen to the audio file provided with the book you can hear that there are a lot of mistakes in the transcription. That's why I have decided to transcribe those lines directly from what I heard. -
How to Practice Pentatonic Scales On Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 06/01/2019
- 0 comments
What are Pentatonic Scales?Pentatonic scales are scales with five notes per octave. They are frequently used in music all over the world. The word "pentatonic" comes from the Greek word "pente" meaning five and "tonic" meaning tone.
Talk of "the" pentatonic scale generally make reference to the major pentatonic scale and its relative minor. It's a mistake, indeed there are many types of pentatonic scales (Egyptian, Ritusen, Man gong, Altered, Locrian...).
Pentatonic scales are considered earlier than heptatonic scales (seven-note scales) and can be divided into two categories :
- Containing semitones (hemitonic)
- Without semitones (anhemitonic)
The purpose of this post is to propose some tips and ideas for practicing and develop pentatonic scales.
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12 Types of Major Scales - Guitar Lesson With Diagrams
- By Stef Ramin
- On 04/16/2019
- 2 comments
What's a Major Scale?
A major scale is a scale containing a major third (3) and a major seventh (7). There must be four half-steps between the root and the major third and one half-step between the major seventh and the root. The most known is the major scale spelled 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7.
What Are the Twelve Types of Major Scales?
When we think about major scales, the first that comes to mind is the Ionian mode, best know as THE major scale. However, there are several other types of major scales (Ionian #5, Lydian augmented #2, Ionian b6) which deserve a little more attention. Here they are listed with guitar shapes and formulas.
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II V7 Bebop Patterns - David Baker - Analysis and Scale Diagrams
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/21/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
This blog article is related to the video tutorial published on JGL YouTube channel. It contains 10 II V7 jazz bebop guitar patterns with analysis and scale shapes. These lines come from the first chapter of David Baker's book "How To Play Bebop Vol.2 - Learning the bebop language". They correspond to the first ten exercises of the section named "The Use of The II V7 Progression in Bebop".You 'll find in this lesson a quick analysis of each pattern with scale diagrams (Dorian, Dorian bebop, Mixolydian, dominant bebop, Mixolydian b13, altered, mixo-blues and half-whole diminished).
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What's a Dominant 7 Arpeggio - How to Play it on Guitar
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/05/2019
- In Scales & Arpeggios
- 0 comments
What Are Dominant 7 Arpeggios?
Dominant 7 arpeggios are built with root (1), major third (3), perfect fifth (5) and minor seventh (b7). They are basically used to play over dominant 7 chords.
Dominant 7 Arpeggio 1 3 5 b7 G7 G B D F -
Solar - Miles Davis - Guitar Chord Melody Lesson and Analysis With Tabs
- By Stef Ramin
- On 03/04/2019
- In Jazz Guitar Lessons
- 0 comments
"Solar" is a jazz standard written by Miles Davis in the key of C minor with four tonal centers that are : C minor, F major, Eb major and Db major. Solar contains essential chord progressions as major and minor II V I. This lesson provides a short harmonic analysis and a chord melody arrangement for guitar with tabs, standard notation, chord shapes and audio file.
