Scales & Arpeggios

Arpeggios are among the most essential tools to learn when beginning improvisation.

When played over their matching chords, they produce a more harmonically connected sound.

They also make it easier to clearly outline chord changes in solos and improvisations.

This guitar lesson introduces the simplest type of arpeggios, built from three notes, known as “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.