The Guitar Exercises we mostly talk about when it comes to learning Jazz is mostly about scales, arpeggios and hitting chord tones. In this video, I go over 3 great exercises that you can work on that will help you develop your soloing and your skills as a jazz guitarist that is not about the hippest scale or most outside arpeggio.
The exercises in this video will help you work on playing better melodies and playing a solo that tells a story, not just a bunch of licks next to each other.
8:35 A More Abstract way of using the melody9:02 Like The Video? Check out My Patreon Page!
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This is one of the Finger exercises for Guitar that I often give to my students and some of the things I teach that are almost never really discussed but are so important for good technique!
This exercise is extremely difficult, but also extremely useful for your technique, your ability to play fast and also to think ahead when you are playing. The key things you want to train is your finger independence and your ability to use preparation. In this case preparation is about having the left hand fingers already in place before you want to play the note. This can make your playing much more secure and set you up for playing a lot faster with a good tone.
For me it is coming out of the classical lesson I had when I just started playing guitar, and it is a bit curious to me that we don’t talk more about it with Jazz and Rock music.
I am curious about this so leave a comment if you think there are more things we can learn from classical music!
Left Hand Preparation Exercise
The main exercise I am using in the video to demonstrate what to focus on is this simple semi-chromatic exercise. I often call it the 1234 exercise.
Making it more musical
When playing this it is of course about getting your hands synchronized, but if you focus on playing long more connected notes and preparing the next note all the time then you are going to be able to get much closer to get it to sound like a musical statement.
The idea is to have the next finger in place before you need it. When playing ascending in this exercise that is mostly not possible, but especially when going to a new string you can put your index finger in place in advance
The same type of strategy with the descending version is to put down all the fingers in advance when starting on a string. This is shown here:
Then when playing the exercise you lift one finger at the time.
You can of course after working on this for some time try to incorporate it into your playing when working on scales and arpeggios. I demonstrate this in the video.
Finger Independence and Control
The other aspect that you can work on with this exercise is to improve you control of your fingers. This is mostly your ability to move your fingers independently of each others to the degree that you can do that, this varies and most people (like me) don’t have completely independent 3rd and 4th fingers.
The way to exercise this control is to only move the fingers only as much as you need. Often this is described as making the fingers move less and allow for more speed. I think it is more about being more precise and having control of the movements.
Often I see students who let go of a string and the finger flies away from the guitar. This means that you have no control when you let the finger go and you have to force it back to wherever it needs to go. This is not so practical when playing.
Improving Finger independence
The way you can work on this with this exercise is that you also stay in control when you let go of the note. This means keeping the finger close to the string and not “flying away”
In the beginning this exercise can be extremely annoying and frustrating. But it is very much worthwhile to spend a few minutes on everyday.
How to work with these exercises
Exercises like this are very dry or boring and I actually don’t think you should spend a lot of time on this, but instead take the approach of just working on them by playing them slowly once or twice and then leave it at that. That approach worked very well for me at least.
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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
Most great Guitar Players mix a lot of different techniques when they are playing, and if that is the end goal then the scale exercises you do should also contain that element!
In this lesson I am going to go over some ways to take simple exercises and use them to combine legato, alternate picking and sweeping or economy picking.
Technique and Scale Exercises are for sound
For me it is in the end much more about having techniques so that I can play the music that I want to play and get it to sound right and having a flexible technique in terms of legato and picking is very useful for this.
Technique is there to help me play the Music that I want to play with The Phrasing and Sound I want to hear!
The exercises in this video is My take on how this works it is important to remember that the best solution is for you to
Find YOUR way of combining different techniques incorporate it into your practice routine and playing
Basic Scale Exercise and a few options
Example 1 is a C major scale in the 8th position played with a 3NPS fingering.
In the video I play it with alternate picking:
You can do this mixing with legato as well. Let’s do that like this: Down Up Hammer-on:
and of course you can also do Down Hammer-on UP:
Technique priorities – what to choose
The way I think about this is no that it has to sound the same, different techniques sound slightly different and when I play I am going to use the technique that is playable or easy AND that sounds the best.
The goal is to use the different sounds and dynamics of the technique in our phrasing
So it doesn’t have to sound the same!
Actually you make choices on this already with the exercises.
Here’s the scale in 3rds with alternate picking:
And you can try to add as much legato as possible by doing this:
But somehow it’s nice to have one more picked note to get it to sound a little more natural:
With all of these exercises I am choosing the approach and techniques that I like and that fits to me, but of course this is different from person to person so you might find that other combinations work better for you. The important thing is to make sure you can play it in time and that you get the phrasing or sound that you like.
Adding Economy picking to the mix
Of course you can also work with sweeping or economy picking, When playing arpeggios this becomes very practical. For example with diatonic triads.
And we can combine all of it in an exercise like this with triads up one down the next
It is up to your imagination and you get to challenge yourself and develop your ability to mix
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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
Scale Practice actually goes way beyond having to work on exercises. Taking phrases or licks and moving them around is a great way to expand your abilities on your instrument.
On the guitar moving to another key is maybe not as difficult as staying in the same key and moving around the neck, and you need to be able to do this if you want to be able to freely transpose songs.
In this video I will go over this exercise and demonstrate what the thinking is and what gain from working on it.
The PDF is available in the Patreon Facebook Group.
Working on Exercises while improvising is a very efficient way to improve your jazz improvisation. Developing you abilities while improvising means that you are finalizing what you have checked out as exercises or written new material with. In this video I will cover 3 exercises that you can add to your jazz guitar practice routine and help different aspects of improvising and translating your technical skills to your improvised solos.
I have also added an extra exercise that will give you a new way of developing and understanding of the harmony and voice-leading plus elp you come up with new licks or lines.
List of contents:
1:32 Solo only using Basic Diatonic Arpeggios 2:11 Discussion of Arpeggio solo exercise 4:32 Solo in one position 5:08 What to take away from soloing in one place on the neck 6:59 Continuous Motion solo 7:36 What to focus on and learn from Continuous Neck movement on the neck 9:43 When and how to use these exercises 11:04 The Bonus exercise to develop new licks or lines 13:31 How to make guide tones and what you can work on with this exercise.
