Triads are often underrated! You try to get away from using triads because they are too simple and boring. It becomes about playing the hippest extension and the most glorious superimposed arpeggio. But often the triad, and especially the major triad is a way to get those notes to make sense. If you solo only focusing on what extensions you are playing without thinking about making it melodic, you will not sound great, and triads can help you fix that! Let’s check out how to use triads to create Bebop lines, Some Jazz Blues, and play melodic upper structures even a bit of outside symmetrical ..read more

Even if you are like “Guitar George” and know all the chords, that won’t get you anywhere if you don’t have some solid rhythms to use while playing chords behind a soloist. Let’s make sure that is not what is holding you back! Here are 7 comping rhythms that will make you sound a lot better when you are playing chords, some of them can get even you in trouble, but if you use them the right way they are amazing. I’ll also go over some other essential things to consider playing chords! Rhythm #1 – Charleston The Charleston rhythm: It’s quite magical if you think about it, it is a two-note rhyt ..read more

The Cheapest Jazz Guitar On Amazon ? In this video, I’m taking you on a ride as I unbox this budget Jazz axe, put it through its paces, and answer the burning question: can you actually play this thing and how does it sound? Did you ever get shocked by he price tag of a decent jazz box? I know I did, so I decided to throw caution (and maybe a little common sense) to the wind. I grabbed the absolute cheapest jazz guitar I could find on Amazon – we’re talking around $270! You can check out the guitar here: https://geni.us/Gear4Music First Impressions: Cardboard Concerns and Not-So-Hateful Fret ..read more

As you know, It is a lot of fun to play Jazz chords and check out beautiful progressions, and the best place to put those chords to work is in intros for a songs! I am going to show you 7 common intro types with variations, but I will also show you some concepts that help you take them further and make them your own! And, I’ll add some stories about how intros and beautiful harmony can get you in a lot of trouble with the singer! Let’s get nerdy with some harmony! #1 Turnaround – It’s better than you think The first one is the trusted old I VI II V, I am going to start by not using the VI fro ..read more

Imagine if there were 5 short licks that you can already play that would make your solos sound 10x better! If you are trying to sound more like Jazz when you solo then you have probably run into this problem: You can play an arpeggio: and you can play a scale: and you can put it together to a lick that fits the chords but… It doesn’t sound right, even though the notes are all “perfect” and “correct”, Now what? Let me show you! #1 Make Your Arpeggios Swing! This is about rhythm even with examples like this that are all 8th notes. And you need the right melody to get the right rhythm. It al ..read more

The “Random Phrases” Solo A big part of why a solo sounds great is the flow. (example 1) But it can be difficult to get that right and very often you feel like you are trying the best you can but there is no flow at all and nothing fits together The real problem is how you think about your soloing. To fix it, you need to go pretty far back, but once you do, you will not only become much better at making solos sound more natural over the chords, but you will also start to hear the chords better and hear how your favorite Jazz artists also think and hear phrases in the same way, I’ll show you ..read more

I am incredibly lucky that I get to jam with great musicians, and one of the reasons for that is something that Jazz beginners miss: You need to be able to lay down great-sounding chords that feel comfortable to play over. If you can’t play chords and comp then nobody wants to play with you. Let me show you 3 rules that your comping needs to follow, and don’t worry none of them are about difficult complicated chords and with the 3 rules, you can start to play beautiful and swinging comp, and even though I am starting with really simple chords, you can go as far as you want with this, check it ..read more

Music Theory can seem very scary for a Jazz beginner, and you will come across people insisting it is bad for your creativity, but in reality, it is a great help when it comes to learning Jazz, and it helps speed up the learning process. Imagine a guitarist who doesn’t know theory. He’s stuck, and can’t turn the licks he learns into new vocabulary, he doesn’t have a way to learn and organize the notes on the fretboard and he can’t use the songs he knows to learn more songs easily, Learning Jazz becomes very difficult like that. So there are a LOT of advantages to learning just a bit of basi ..read more

As a Jazz guitarist and teacher then let me help you avoid a few things that a LOT of Jazz beginners get wrong and waste a lot of time on! You might be making one of them right now, and there are certainly a few mistakes I have made myself as well, but I’ll tell you about it along the way. #1 Music Theory Is Not Music I know that Jazz is complicated, and it can be fun to learn music theory and read about all the different options and things to study that you have available in books or online lessons, but that is a very superficial way to learn things. With theory, you should aim to learn the ..read more

The Most Difficult Skill To Learn You want to sound like Jazz. That’s the goal! You want to be able to take a song, solo over it, and play stuff that sounds right, with good phrasing and good timing. And That, is the most difficult thing about learning Jazz is not the technical things like scales and arpeggios, hitting the changes. One of the best places to get started with this is to start learning solos by ear, and I think you should start with Grant Green solos. You might wonder why Grant Green That is because His solos will teach you: Amazing Bebop Phrasing and Vocabulary on the guitar ..read more