Scales & Arpeggios

Welcome to this guitar lesson on exploring the arpeggios and chords of the harmonic minor scale—a rich and expressive sound widely used in classical, metal, jazz, and fusion genres

In this lesson, we'll dive into how this scale builds unique chords and arpeggios, including the diminished and augmented types you won’t find in major or natural minor harmony.

You'll learn how to visualize these shapes across the fretboard.

Welcome to this short lesson where we dive into one of the most mysterious and powerful tools in a guitarist’s arsenal — the diminished scale.

We’ll break down the two main forms of the diminished scale (half-whole and whole-half), explore how they relate to dominant 7♭9, 7#9 and diminished 7th chords.

The Harmonic Major Scale is a unique variation of the major scale, created by lowering the 6th degree.

This small change introduces a mix of major and minor qualities, making it useful in jazz, fusion, classical, and film music.

In this lesson, we’ll explore how to harmonize the scale into triads and 7th chords, uncovering its distinct harmonic colors.

When exploring improvisation over a major 7 chord on guitar, pentatonic scales offer versatile and melodic options.

This approach allows you to expand your phrasing and musical expression over a single chord using the relative major and minor pentatonic scales.

In this guitar lesson with PDF and Youtube Short, you'll learn how to extend diatonic seventh arpeggios with the 9th, 11th and 13th.

Check this link to get the PDF transcription.

In this session, we'll cover 6 essential dominant scales that every guitarist should know.

These scales are the foundation for creating solos in blues, jazz, and rock styles

In this guitar lesson for beginners, we'll explore how major scale shapes relate to basic major seventh (Maj7) chords. 

In this guitar lesson with tab and YouTube short we’re diving into diatonic arpeggios, focusing on playing them in a fixed position.

Here’s a breakdown of seventh arpeggios and their related chords based on the major scale for guitar.

An arpeggio is essentially the notes of a chord played individually.

Seventh arpeggios add a fourth note (the seventh) to each triad, giving a more complex and richer sound.

In this guitar lesson, we'll be focusing on the arpeggios of the seventh chords derived from the G major scale.

You'll find the free PDF (or name a fair price) here in the GUMROAD Store.

This guitar warm-up exercise involves playing three types of triads—major, minor, and diminished—in a consecutive sequence following a descending progression.

The PDF, which includes both TAB and standard notation, is available for free (or pay what you want) in the GUMROAD STORE.

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.

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 :

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. 

Jazz music, known for its improvisational nature and rich harmonic complexities, is a genre that heavily relies on scales for melodic expression and harmonic exploration. Understanding essential scales is a crucial step in comprehending its harmonic structure and developing improvisational skills.

Here's an overview of nine fundamental jazz scales ideal for beginners:

Arpeggios are a fundamental aspect of music theory and play a pivotal role in creating expressive melodies, harmonies, and improvisations across various musical genres. In this exploration of basic arpeggios, we will learn how to connect Maj7, 7, min7, m7b5, dim7, min6, and 6 arpeggios (by moving only one note at a time) and how to make the link with basic chord shapes.

Harmonization of minor scales involves creating chords by stacking thirds on each note of the scale.

There are three common types of minor scales: natural minor, melodic minor, and harmonic minor.

This guitar lesson explore each one and explain how to harmonize them on guitar.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FREE PDF

This warm-up exercise for beginner guitarists is designed to help you build dexterity, finger strength, and familiarize yourself with the essential intervals within the context of the cycle of fourths.

In this guitar lesson, we will explore the differences between five different Phrygian modes taken from the major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, harmonic major and double harmonic major scales.

Harmonizing the minor pentatonic scale involves creating chords that complement the scale and enhance its melodic possibilities. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to harmonize the minor pentatonic scale on guitar:

This lesson provides a short guitar exercise that will expand your theoretical notions and fretboard knowledges. The principle being to harmonize the C major scale with 3-note chords also referred to as shell voicings while inserting short lines (from the major scale) between each chord.

In this theory lesson with diagrams and charts you will learn what's the difference between relative and parallel modes and how to play them on guitar.

This guitar lesson with tabs and staves will enlighten you by proposing several options to solo over half-diminished chords aka m7b5.

This guitar lesson propose 13 exercices implying the five main types of arpeggios (major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, half-diminished and diminished 7) to both preparing your hands, learning your fretboard and hearing the color of each arpeggio.

Free PDF Available Here On GUMROAD.

This guitar lesson is about a harmonic concept mapped out and developped by jazz musician Barry harris that can be found in the book "The Barry Harris Harmonic Method For Guitar" by Alan Kingstone.

This blog article details a little bit more in depth about what is the major 6 diminished scale and how to harmonize it with major 6 and diminished 7 chords.

FREE PDF AVAILABLE HERE ON THE GUMROAD STORE

This guitar lesson provides a 12-bar study (free PDF and short video) for practicing the dominant bebop scale, some rootless chords and also three types of arpeggios (min7, dom7 and half-diminished) over a turnaround variation.

This guitar lesson provides 10 easy exercises for understanding the relationship between the Melodic Minor Scale and altered dominant seventh chords. This is a free course (or give what you want) with a printable PDF with tab/standard notation and a YouTube short video. 

This short tutorial provides an effective warm-up exercise for guitar players of all styles and all levels. It comes with a YouTube short video with tab / notation overlayed and a downloadable PDF available for free on the GUMROAD STORE.

This guitar lesson lists 25 exotic and rare scales from different cultures and countries to add new colors to your playing.

You'll find two-octave guitar shapes, formula charts, audio files in the key of C for each scale and classified into five main categories :

Seven Note Dominant Scales.

Seven Note Minor Scales.

Seven Note Major Scales.

Six Note Scales.

Five Note Scales.

This free guitar lesson for beginners provides an easy exercise with tab/score and video for practicing the Bebop Dominant Scale. The free related PDF is available at the end of the lesson.

Quartal harmony is the way of building chords with intervals of fourths instead of thirds, it's a nice way to modernize and enrich your jazz guitar playing. This post provides an easy exercise for a first approach of quartal playing that is to arpeggiate three-note chords built in fourths, starting on each step of a major scale.

As is the case in many lessons on the website, you'll find a short YouTube video and the link to download the PDF for free, a little further in this article.

This exercise is the third of the serie covering ninth arpeggio practice around the cycle of fourths on guitar. While the previous two lessons dealt with major ninth and dominant ninth arpeggios, this one is about minor ninth arpeggios. As usual you'll find the related PDF transcription for free, here in the GUMROAD STORE.

Hexatonic scales are made of six notes, even if you can get them from any pentatonic scale (by adding one note) or diatonic scale (by removing one note), the most popular are the blues scales (major, minor), the augmented scale, the whole-tone scale, the tritone scale and the Prometheus scale.

This guitar lesson with formula charts and diagrams covers them in details and will you help to better figure them out.

This blog post provides a guitar lesson implying a basic jazz line, built with notes from the Ionian mode (major scale), harmonized and transposed in halftone steps. Once again you'll find the free PDF of the lesson transcribed in tab / standard notation in the GUMROAD SHOP and also the related Youtube short video at the bottom.

A new free lesson is available for download (or Give What You Want) in Jazz Guitar Lick's GUMROAD store. It's a 24-bar study involving the same major 9th arpeggio pattern following the cycle of fourths. This exercise is a good way to warm-up, untie the fingers and develop the musical ear.

In this guitar lesson with shapes, tab, video and analysis you will learn how to use seventh arpeggios over important jazz chord sequences as minor & major II V , major II V I and I vi ii V progressions.

You'll find the link to the PDF at the bottom of the page.

This short jazz guitar study with tab, score and chord charts provides some easy jazz lines to apply over three common chord progressions found in jazz. These licks will help you better understand what scales and modes can be used over basic chord changes. You'll find a link to the free PDF at the end of this lesson.

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

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.

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).

You'll find in this blog post several cheat sheets for guitarists about the Phrygian mode, third mode of the major scale. These infographics are related to the YouTube video below. They show how this minor scale is built, how to play it on guitar, what are the related chords, how to use it over common chord progressions, etc.

This infographic chart with guitar shapes show the main 6 major scales used in jazz:

• Ionian Mode
• Major Pentatonic
• Lydian Mode
• Major Bebop
• Lydian Pentatonic
• Lydian Augmented

This infographic with guitar shapes show the main 6 minor scales used in jazz as :

• Minor pentatonic
• Minor blues
• Dorian mode
• Aeolian mode
• Melodic minor
• Harmonic minor

This blog post contains free cheat sheets (infographics) for guitar players about the Dorian mode. You will find useful information on how to play chords, arpeggios and minor licks directly related to this minor scale.

Here are some free cheat sheets for guitar teachers and students about the Ionian mode aka The Major Scale. Here, you'll find chord and scale shapes with easy patterns and licks related to the Ionian mode.

This guitar lesson sheds light on the different types of minor modes and scales that can be used in jazz music.

They are built with different combinations of intervals starting on different steps of several scales as the major scale, the melodic minor, the harmonic minor, the harmonic major, the pentatonic scale and the bebop scale. 

The triad pair system is a technique used by many jazz improviser to build modern improvised lines.

It consists of playing two adjacent triads from a scale.

The most used are from the major diatonic system, however it is possible to use triad pairs from other scales as melodic minor, harmonic minor and harmonic major.

This guitar lesson with tabs, shapes and theory is focused on triad pairs from the major scale only.

The minor II-V-I sequence is equivalent to the major II-V-I sequence, but played in minor harmonic key.

This is a must know for any guitarist who wants to learn to solo over tunes in minor keys.

This guitar lesson for beginners explains what is the minor 2 5 1 progression, what scales and what chords can be used for improvising over it.

Whether simple or compound intervals are a very important part of  music theory.

Knowing them allow understand how scales, arpeggios and chords are built.

Intervals are useful tools to visualize the notes and understand their relationships on the guitar fretboard.

This lesson with downloadable pdf, guitar shapes and theory will help you better figure them out and play them on guitar.

This lesson explains how to build drop 2 and drop 3 seventh chords from the harmonic minor scale.

This action which consists in stacking notes in interval of thirds starting on each tone of a scale is commonly called "harmonization".

This infographic printable for free provides diatonic arpeggio and scale shapes for guitar practice. It shows the relationship between arpeggios and modes of the major scale. 

The II-V-I sequence is the most common chord progression played in jazz music and a must know for any guitarist who wants to learn jazz language.

The II, the V and the I (chords and scales) are constructed based on the corresponding second (II), fifth (V)  and first (I) step of the major scale.

In this guitar lesson you will learn what's the 2 5 1 progression and how to play easy jazz lines over a 2-5-1 using the most common scales found in jazz music.

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).

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.

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.

This lesson contains five free guitar studies for beginners that outline the use of arpeggios over a Bb jazz blues progression.

There are different types of jazz blues progressions.

The one used in this tutorial is built with a secondary dominant (VI7), a passing diminished (#IVdim7) and a turnaround (I7, VI7, iim7, V7). 

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.

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. 

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).

You will find here a free cheet sheat about major 7 arpeggios. This quick guitar lesson provides a brief description of major 7 arpeggios including neck diagrams and formula charts. This document is available in three versions : PDF (for printing), JPEG and PNG for on-line publication.

What's a Tritone Substitution?

The tritone substitution is one of the most common substitution found in jazz. The basic application of a tritone chord substitution is to take any 7th chord and play another 7th chord that has its root a tritone away from the original. This guitar lesson demonstrates how you can play scales and arpeggios starting from the b5 (a tritone away) of the V7 chord in a II V I chord progression. This way you will highlight altered tones as the b9 and the #11. 

When learning how to play jazz guitar, one of the most important device to master is to play each tone of a chord in order to outline a specific progression.

This is what we call arpeggios.

They are great melodic tools when you want to highlight the chords you are soloing over.

This lesson is focused on diatonic seventh arpeggios and their extensions.

In this lesson you will learn how to build, play and recognize each of the three types of minor blues scales.

Arpeggios are essential musical tools that allow you to build pure and beautiful lines while highlighting the harmony. When playing over chord changes, using arpeggios is the most efficient way to connect these chords together.

This lesson provides four exercises with tabs, standard notation and diagrams that will help improve your guitar skills and your theoretical knowledge.

Here is a list of the main musical scales and modes.

Giant Steps is one of those tunes in jazz that sends a bolt of fear through a lot of young or even experienced jazz musicians.

It certainly does that to me anyway! The fast harmonic rhythm and the seemingly distant relationships between the chords means it is a very daunting challenge.

However, there is a very cool and simple way of practicing navigating through these changes and it involves using 3 different pentatonic scales.

Learning and playing scales can be an important part of any guitarist’s practise regime.

By playing scales in a variety of ways we can develop our familiarity with the fretboard beyond simply going up and down scales.

In this tutorial we will look at combining two different scale patterns by shifting between them on various strings.

For this we are going to use two patterns of an Eb Melodic minor scale, patterns 2 and 3.

The Melodic minor scale consists of the intervals R 2 b3 4 5 6 7 (R is for the Root note).

Welcome to this guitar lesson on the CAGED method!

If you're looking to enhance your understanding of the fretboard, The CAGED method is a powerful system that will help you visualize and navigate the guitar in a more cohesive and comprehensive way.

What's the Blues Arpeggio ?

Traditionally, when a student learns to improvise over a jazz, blues tune, he taught pentatonic scales, major triads or dominant 7th arpeggios, but there is something missing to get this specific and exciting jazz-blues sound, "The Blues Arpeggio". This is a very interesting and important device to use over this musical genre. It is a mix of a major triad and a minor triad, it contains both major and minor thirds, representing one of the most vital elements of the blues. In this jazz guitar lesson we will see how to build the blues arpeggio, how to practice it and how to play it on a blues.

When a jazz beginner starts to improvise over a II-V-I progression, he generally plays arpeggios corresponding to the chords of the sequence.

In other words, he learns to play minor arpeggios over the minor chord (II), dominant 7th arpeggio over the 7th chord (V) and major arpeggio over the major 7 chord (I). This way the harmony is highlighted without taking risks.

In the long-run there is nothing exciting. That's why there is a nice trick used by number of jazz players to add smoothness to a dominant line. This is a little tip that makes all the difference which consists of playing a major 7th arpeggio over the V7 rooted on its b7 degree.

The minor pentatonic scale is by far the most used scale in the world all styles taken together (jazz, blues, rock, reggae, pop, country).

One of the explanation is given by the structure. Indeed, there are no semi-tones in it. It is easy to play on the guitar and it can be used in a whole lot of very different contexts.

This lesson will show you eight ways to use the minor pentatonic scale over a dominant seventh chord. The principle is easy to understand, this consists in playing the minor pentatonic scale starting on each tone of the Mixolydian scale (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, b7).

 This method helps to highlight certain notes and brings interesting colors to your jazz guitar lines depending on you want to play outside or inside.

Arpeggios are surely the most important tools to master when you want to start improvising. They create a more harmonized sound when played with their corresponding chord. They are very helpful to easily outline the chord changes in solos and improvisations. This guitar lesson focuses on the most basic forms of arpeggios made out of three notes called "triad arpeggios". 

In this lesson we will see how to use the minor pentatonic scale over a II-Valt-I sequence.

The principle being to play three minor pentatonic scales spaced apart of 1 semitone one from the other in order to bring out interesting colors to your jazz lines.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Ecclesiastical modes, also named "Greek modes"or "church modes" or "Gregorian modes" formed in the Middle Ages a set of seven scales whose use has weakened because of the appearance of the major / minor tonal system. 

Several centuries later these modes have reappeared. They are very used in jazz improvisation as scales of chords and modal playing.

This guitar lesson explains what are the seven modes, how they are built and how to play them on guitar.