Jazz guitar is hard until you focus on these 3 things
Most guitarists try to practice 20 different things to get better at playing jazz, and that’s why they find jazz so overwhelming, never have enough practice time, and always feel behind.
But Pro guitarists, well, they only practice 3 things.
So in this video, I’m going to show you what those 3 things are, why they’re the ones that actually change how you sound, and how to use them to make faster progress without drowning in exercises.
Don’t Make Jazz It Difficult
So let’s look at why most guitarists make it harder than it needs to be and what the ones who actually improve do differently. Because the difference is about one thing: your goal when you practice isn’t to get through exercises — it’s to get better at playing music.
Think of it like this: If you took lessons from a teacher, asking to learn jazz, and all he gave you as homework was Green Day songs— you’d fire that teacher immediately, right?
It’s the same for you: If your goal is to play jazz, then you need to practice playing jazz.
Obviously, when you start out, it is completely normal that you need to practice some exercises to build a foundation. There is no way around that. But as soon as you can play real songs, you need to focus on making music — the few things that actually change how you sound.
What makes learning jazz hard is spending all your practice time on exercises that never turn into music. What makes it easy is knowing what to actually work on.
Why You Practice Playing Songs
Here’s John Scofield’s advice:
” Just practice tunes; learn the tune, really learn the tune, you know.”
And he is right–playing music IS the goal. The only way to do that is to play songs. Tennis players don’t just do push-ups next to the court
And this is where you get stuck, just working on endless exercises, practicing arpeggio patterns for days, or never going beyond soloing over a II V I loop.
Let’s start with the loops.
Maybe you’re thinking — what’s actually wrong with practicing a II V I loop?
Here’s the problem: A real song is not just II V I progressions.
Take the opening of It Could Happen To You:
Not a II V I in sight. And the rest of the song has progressions just like this — common ones you’ll find everywhere, but only if you actually learn real songs.
There’s another problem: a II V I always resolves.
Every phrase lands on a final sound.
Take a listen:
Now listen over a real song — notice how the phrases react to each other
One idea flows into the next and you can build a story
Practicing over a loop is like writing one paragraph over and over. You can make that paragraph great, but you’ll never learn how to write a whole book.
And if you’re thinking — that’s a specific progression, I won’t see that anywhere else — you will:
You’ll find this progression — or a close variation — in all of these songs.
But knowing the progressions is only part of it.
When it comes to exercises and arpeggios, there’s one thing most players underestimate — being able to play something doesn’t mean you can use it in a solo.
Joe Diorio once asked Wes Montgomery what he practiced:
Joe Diorio: Wes, what do you practice?
Wes Montgomery: I don’t practice anything during the day that I don’t use at night on the gig.
So it is not enough to just practice the arpeggios like this:
You need to know how to turn them into music:
The arpeggios are just the raw material. You can practice them for years and still not be able to use them in a solo.
If you want to work on applying them to real songs, I made a free PDF with all these examples written out so you can work through them away from the video. The link is in the description.
But not every song is worth practicing. Pick the wrong ones, and you waste a lot of time. Here’s how to avoid that
Practice The Right Songs
I always loved this Peter Bernstein quote on learning jazz:
But often, I see students go from Take The A-train straight to Round Midnight or Confirmation.
Jump to songs that hard too early and you end up fighting the song instead of learning from it.
I once made a deal with a saxophone player to learn Some Skunk Funk over the holidays. We usually played Beautiful Love and Satin Doll, so you can probably imagine how that went.
When it comes to finding songs, there are 3 rules for beginners and 3 rules that apply at any level. Let’s start with the beginner ones.
Rule 1: Start with songs that have few chords and mostly diatonic harmony — Perdido, Take
The A-Train, Mack The Knife, All Of Me.
Now these two rules might surprise you.
Rule 2: Avoid minor key songs early on. They’re harder to get into your ear and involve more scales and analysis than you need in the beginning.
Rule 3: Avoid modal songs. They’re less useful for building your solo skills step-by-step because in modal music the chords are not really connected.
Now If you think I’m wrong about minor keys or modal songs, tell me why in the comments.
Here are 3 rules that apply at any level.
Rule 1: The next song should look almost easy to you. If the key or tempo is challenging, the harmony should be simple — and vice versa.
Rule 2: You should recognize 90% of the progressions immediately. If learning a new song feels like starting from scratch, it’s the wrong song.
Rule 3: Organize your repertoire into families — major key standards, minor key standards, jazz blues, bossa nova, ballads. Make sure you’re building across all of them, not just the ones that feel comfortable.
But there’s one thing that makes all of this actually work — without it, you’re still memorizing the hard way.
The answer is chunks
Let’s start with chords.
I showed you the chords for the first bars of It Could Happen To You:
Knowing this set of chords makes it super easy, barely an inconvenience, to remember and play songs like Slow Boat To China and Ain’t Misbehavin’.
That’s how you use the songs you know to learn new songs.
And it is the same for melodies:
Try to remember these notes: G A Bb Eb F G A D Eb F G C D E F# Bb
That’s not very musical, and unbelievably difficult.
But if you think of it as a motif moving across the chords, it is a lot easier:
Thinking in phrases instead of notes helps you learn the melody a lot faster.
Phrases have a logic your ear can follow — and that’s what helps you remember them.
If you are new to jazz and want my help learning the first standard and how to play solos that actually sound like jazz, then check out my Jazz Guitar Roadmap course. It is a step-by-step method for learning to play real jazz solos on an actual jazz standard. The link is in the description.
Songs are where the music happens. But how do you actually improve the solos you play on the songs?
How To Actually Improve Your Solos
Do you practice soloing like this?
You find a new lick, put on a backing track, and try to force it into your solo — hoping it magically fits and makes you sound better.
It almost never works. And it’s not because the lick is bad.
Keep track of:
• Chords
• Groove
• Form
The problem is that you’re trying to learn something new while at the same time keeping track of the chord changes, the groove, and the form of the song.
It’s like deciding to learn to juggle, but you start with knives, not something simple like apples.
You want to make it easy.
There’s a better way to work.
The better way is to compose lines.
Here’s why it works: when you compose lines away from a backing track, you only have one job: making the new material sound good.
You’re not keeping track of the changes, the groove, or the form at the same time.
You can focus entirely on getting the new thing to work with the rest of your vocabulary — and that’s when it actually gets into your playing.
Let me show you how this works:
Here’s a short Cmaj7 phrase
The easiest way to get this to work is to use very short phrases, 4-6 notes — they make better building blocks.
The main character here is the descending Em triad with the leading note, so let’s just use that.
Listen to how that connects to an enclosure and two Cmaj7 chord tones:
Octave displacement and a chromatic run also fit perfectly:
Another option: lead into the phrase instead of out of it. Here’s a Cmaj7 triplet arpeggio morphing into the triad:
Or this descending Em7 triplet arpeggio:
The free PDF has all of these examples written out so you can work through them away from the video, at your own pace. You can grab it by scanning the QR code on screen, or use the link in the description.
Focus on these 3 things, and you will make more progress than most guitarists who practice twice as much.
Practice playing songs — not loops, not exercises. Songs are where the music actually happens.
Practice the right songs — they should be easy to learn and use what you know to build what you don’t.
Build your vocabulary — but do it by composing lines, not collecting licks. That’s how new material actually gets into your playing.
That’s it. Three things. Everything else can wait.
Wes Montgomery’s Efficient Arpeggios
If you want to see how Pros like Wes Montgomery approached a daily practice routine, then check out this video. It shows you exactly how to get more out of arpeggios the way the pros approach it.
Check it out!
Learn Jazz – Make Music
Ever feel like you practice for hours, but you just don’t get any better? Well, the fix is just one simple tweak that will finally get you unstuck. In this video, I’m going to show you the exact daily practice routine the pros use to break through plateaus and how you can use it to play like this.
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