Jazz Guitar Lessons

Understanding and playing 6th chords—both major and minor—is a powerful way to add richness and color to your guitar playing.

These chords are versatile and frequently used in jazz, blues, rock, and pop music, offering a melodic and harmonic depth that goes beyond standard major and minor chords.

This lesson provides 24 guitar diagrams and voicing charts to play major 6 and minor 6 chords on guitar.

Welcome to this lesson on one of the most iconic and modern-sounding chord voicings in jazz — the "So What" chord. Made famous by pianist Bill Evans on Miles Davis’s legendary tune "So What".

In this lesson, we’ll break down how to play the "So What" chord on the guitar, explore its structure, and learn how to move it around the neck.

Whether you're new to quartal harmony or looking to expand your chord vocabulary, this voicing will open up a fresh, sophisticated palette for your playing.

"There Will Never Be Another You" is a popular song by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (lyrics).

It is one of the most known jazz standards and an indispensable study for any jazz guitarist.

This jazz guitar lesson provides you different chord voicings (drop 2, inverted, rootless and extended chords) on the top four strings of the guitar to comp over this jazz tune.

To enrich and modernize the harmonization of a piece it is common to use fourth chords.

They can replace some original chords to bring more melodic freedom into improvisation and more tension in harmony.

Since the late 1950s, harmony in fourths has played a very important role in the development of modern jazz.

Musicians and composers have used a lot quartal harmony.

Among them, the great American pianist McCoy Tyner, who, is a master in the art of playing quartal chords. Mike Stern, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Bill Evans and Kurt Rosewinkel have also used this technique. 

In this lesson with tabs and shapes, we will see how to build chords in fourths, how to harmonize the major scale with and how to use them in comping. 

The major 2 5 1 sequence is the most common chord progression used in jazz music but also in a whole number of styles of music as pop, rock, blues, country.

It is present in many jazz standards (Summertime, Autumn leaves, Blue bossa, All the things you are and many more), this is why it is very important to master it.

Scale harmonization is the process of creating chords from each note of a given musical scale. This is one of the fundamental theoretical elements to understand music.

This lesson explains how to create triads and seventh chords from each note of the major scale.

Guide tones are the notes in a chord which leads or gives harmonic pull toward the next chord, these are an excellent way to study and absorb the sound of any chord progression. 

Guide tones are used to outline chord progressions in an improvisation.

They are most of the time the 3rd and the 7th because this is what determines whether a chord is major, minor, or dominant. 

This jazz guitar lesson explains how to solo over common jazz chord progressions by using guide tones.

Mastering arpeggios is inevitable for anyone who wants to improve its sense of improvisation and bring more musicality to its playing.

Practicing and mastering them is a necessity for all jazz guitarists, indeed arpeggios are great tools to improvise over chord changes and jazz standards. 

You'll find at the end of this lesson a basic blues study in C showing how to connect dominant 7 arpeggios and here a serie of Mini Lessons with tab, PDF guitar pro file and short video for practicing arpeggios a little more closely.

Drop 2 chords are very used and appreciated by guitarists of all styles, they are formed by dropping the second highest note of a four-note chord in close position down an octave.

This guitar theory lesson with diagrams and charts explains how drop 2 chords are built and how to play them.

Mastering triads is necessary for any guitarist who wants to expand his fretboard and theory knowledge.

Even if these chords are not really considered as jazz chords because of their basic sound, but they can be efficient tools for comping and chord soloing.

Indeed, the strong point of these chords is the simplicity of learning and playing.

You will find in this guitar lesson 84 ways of playing triads (major, minor, diminished and augmented) using root and inverted voicings in close and open positions.

How Chords Are Built?

Chord formulas show all the notes which constitute a chord.

They reveal their structure and provide a link between scales and arpeggios.

Why Learning Chord Formulas

Knowing the structure of chords will help you find any chord position on the guitar when you only have the name.

This will help you better understand the difference between many types of chords.

Learning chord formulas is necessary for anyone who wants to expand their musical knowledge and increase their guitar playing skills.

The formula chart below show how the main types of chords are built.

When you want to play altered jazz guitar lines over a dominant 7th chord, there is an easy and efficient option that is to play a major triad starting on the #11 of the chord you want to improvise over.

This way you highlight the b7, #11 and b9 and add tension to your playing.

Let's take an example with a II-V-I sequence in the key of C major. The progression is Dm7 | G7alt | CMaj7.

You'll find in this lesson some tips and trick for practicing scales, enrich and develop your playing or simply warming-up before a gig. 

A new video is online on the youtube channel since yesterday. This is a compilation of the best jazz guitar solo transcriptions posted on the youtube channel since one year. This video lesson contains transcriptions of great jazzmen as John Scofield, Charlie Christian, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Eric Gale. Here is the timeline:

Charlie Christian ( Benny's buggle) 00:00
Clifford Brown (Jordu) 01:23
Eric Gale (Too blue) 02:22
Grant Green (Grantstand) 02:59
Grant Green (Airegin) 04:00
Grant Green (N°1 Green street) 05:17
Jimmy Raney (Have you met miss Jones) 07:26
John Scofield (Wee) 07:56
Wes Montgomery (Full house) 08:50
Wes Montgomery (Full house) 09:42

This guitar lesson is about a Clifford Brown trumpet solo transcription in "Jordu".

Clifford Brown was an American songwriter and jazz trumpet player.  He composed two jazz pieces which have become standards, "Joy spring" and "Daahoud".

He has collaborated with jazz players as Art Blakey and Lionel Hampton before forming his own group with the drummer, percussionist and composer Max Roach. 

Jordu is a jazz standard written by Irvin "Duke" Jordan. He has been popularised by Clifford Brown and Max Roach quintet in the album that includes the two standards "Joy spring" and "Daahoud".

This is an AABA traditional jazz form in the key of C minor. Referring to the realbook the chord progression is :

A

D7 G7 | Cm | F7 Bb7 | EbM7

D7 G7 | Cm | Ab7 | G7

B

G7  C7 | F7 Bb7 | Eb7 Ab7 | Db7

F7 Bb7 | Eb7 Ab7 | Db7 Gb7 | G7

The transcription is focused on the A part only. This will allow you to understand how to improvise and which scale to play over two interesting jazz progressions :

• II7-V7-Im sequence (D7-G7-Cm) which is a minor II-V-I with a dominant 7th (V7) chord instead of the usual minor seventh flat ninth chord (II).
• II7-V7-IM sequence which is a major II-V-I with a dominant seventh (II7) chord instead of a minor seventh chord (II).

Dominant chords are pivotal in many styles of music, from blues to jazz and beyond, making it essential for any guitarist to have a repertoire of scales to draw upon when improvising or crafting melodies.

Throughout this tutorial for beginners, we'll explore 12 versatile scale ideas tailored specifically for dominant chords.