Why Do Other Guitarists Get Better Fast?
Do you look at other jazz guitarists and feel frustrated that they are getting better faster than you?
The gap between them and you isn’t talent — it’s something most guitarists never look at.
In this video, I’ll show you why great players practice songs not exercises, why shell voicings are the best chords to learn first, and how to make everything you practice actually show up in your playing.
And it starts with how you’re practicing. Because most guitarists are working on the wrong things entirely — and they don’t even know it.
Why great players practice songs, not exercises
Most guitarists practice the same way. They run scales, they drill arpeggios, they work through exercises — and hope all of that will eventually show up in their playing.
It doesn’t.
And it’s not just me saying that. Here’s John Scofield.
“And it’s of course real important just to get into the chops area, but it’s really important to stop doing that as soon as possible, to stop running scales, to stop running arpeggios mindlessly.”
He’s right.
And the reason it doesn’t transfer is simpler than you think — you’re never really using the exercise for anything.
You’re just moving your fingers when you also need to work on using it in music.
You need to learn where it fits, what to play before and after.
Let’s say that you are practicing diatonic arpeggios.
Like this, you learn how to play them, but that is still far from actually turning them into solid jazz lines.
Instead, try mapping the arpeggios onto a song to get an overview of what you need in your solos. Keep it simple, one arpeggio for each chord.
And you want to start rubato and then once you are comfortable with that, you can turn it into an exercise in time
And don’t just play the arpeggio. Practice making licks out of it adding scale notes and chromatic phrases.
And gradually, you can take the material onto a song where you can open it up even more and make it something that you play without having to think about it.
The song is where everything comes together — and without it, you’re just practicing patterns that you’ll never use.
And there’s another problem most guitarists never think about — your solo should tell a story. Not just notes with no beginning, no middle, and no end.
A song with a form gives you that story — it has built-in chapters already. Different sections that help you make the solo interesting.
Most guitarists practice soloing over loops. That’s not enough — a loop is just the same few bars repeating forever, and there’s nothing to build toward.
So you end up noodling, just filling up space instead of actually saying something.
If you want to be good at music, then play real music, play songs.
You don’t need to memorize the examples and exercises off the video, to get started with this. You can grab the free pdf so you can practice it at your own pace to actually play better solos. There’s a link in the description.
And this doesn’t just apply to soloing. Most guitarists are wasting years on chords too — for exactly the same reason.
The Best Chords Are Simple And Flexible Shell Voicings
So many guitarists spend hours memorizing complicated chord voicings. Beautiful shapes, difficult fingerings — but they never use them in a song.
The problem is the same as with exercises. You’re practicing something in isolation that doesn’t connect to real playing. Even if the chord sounds great on its own, it rarely fits with all the other chords you use when comping.
And it’s not just me saying that. Here’s how Joe Pass put it:
“You must think about the chords in the most simple possible form”
For jazz, you only need two sets of simple shell voicings — one with the root on the 5th string,
shell voicings, root on 5th string
and one with the root on the 6th string.
With just two sets of simple chords, you can play through any standard.
But the important thing is that starting simple means you can actually focus on what makes comping sound good — the timing, the rhythm, making the chords flow and groove.
Those are the skills that get left behind when you’re too busy wrestling with difficult fingerings and trying to remember chords.
Here’s how to put it into practice. Start with a song you know well — a 12-bar blues works perfectly.
Turn on your metronome and just play through the changes with your shell voicings. Don’t overcomplicate it. Focus on getting the groove across.
Once that feels comfortable, start playing variations on the rhythm and adding chromatic passing chords— that might sound difficult, but it is incredibly simple: just approach the next chord from a fret above or below.
Super easy, barely an inconvenience! Like this:
And you can use the same idea to create movement from one chord to the next which really drives the music forward:
From there, you can start experimenting — new rhythms, new ideas. And if something doesn’t work, you just try it again next time around.
Simple chords give you the freedom to focus on the music. That’s what makes them the best place to start.
If you want more videos like this, subscribe to the channel. I post new lessons on jazz soloing and chords every week.
Now there’s one way of practicing that makes everything you work on actually show up in your playing — but almost nobody seems to talk about this.
How to make everything you practice show up in your playing
There’s a problem that comes up all the time when you’re trying to internalize something new — like a new arpeggio, a chromatic phrase, a new way through a chord change.
It could be this lick:
You practice it, you get it under your fingers, and then you try to use it in a solo, but even if can play it, it just doesn’t work.
That’s because there’s a missing step that nobody talks about — between practicing something as an exercise and actually using it in your playing.
You need to practice composing lines with the material to get it to connect to the other things you use in solos.
Most people jump straight from the exercise to the solo, and that gap is too big, it never works
Composing is basically improvising slowly — you can stop, go back, fix what doesn’t work, and figure out exactly how the new thing fits in.
It’s how you actually connect new material to everything else you play.
And this isn’t just a practice trick.
Barry Harris built his entire solo masterclasses around composing solos and lines while explaining how Bebop melodies work.
If it was good enough for him, it’s worth taking seriously.
Here’s how to do it.
Take something you’ve been working on — a lick, an arpeggio, a new phrase — and try to compose a line with it.
or
Don’t worry about playing in time yet.
And here’s something that trips a lot of people up with this.
When you start composing lines, it’s tempting to treat each line you come up with as a lick to memorize and practice.
But that’s missing the point entirely.
You’re not building a collection of licks — you’re practicing the process of combining material and coming up with lines on the spot.
That’s the skill. The lines you compose are just the byproduct.
B-roll: overlay 2 cameras: using the lick
Just focus on making the line sound good and getting the new material to fit naturally with the rest of what you play.
Do this enough and the new material stops feeling like a foreign object in your playing. It starts sounding like you.
This is a part of the process that I use in my Jazz Guitar Roadmap course to help students learn to play real solos.
You get a few exercises and a step-by-step method for turning them into solos that sound like jazz on an actual jazz standard. Until now, 7500 students have used it to get a strong start.
If you want to join them, there’s a link in the description.
If you’ve been feeling stuck — like you’re putting in the work but nothing is actually showing up in your playing — this is why.
These three things won’t just make you practice better.
They’ll change what happens when you actually play — because you’re not just building skills in isolation anymore, you’re building a real musical foundation.
This Barry Harris Exercise Will Save You Years
And if you want to take this further, check out this video on a Barry Harris exercise that helps you practice your scales and arpeggios directly on the song — so they actually turn into real jazz lines and easily get into your solos.
Learn Jazz Make Music
This Barry Harris Exercise Will Save You Years (But Most Ignore It)
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