Scales & Arpeggios

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.