Even if you have lessons you know that most of the time you need to teach yourself and make sure you are improving while you practice guitar. You need to make sure that are getting something out of how you practice and spend your time.
In this video, I am going to talk about how you can easily add something to your practice sessions that will help you evaluate your playing and give you an idea about whether you are progressing. I will also go over 3 things to keep in mind to get the most out of this way of working.
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This is a question I get very often. And that is in no way strange. Starting to learn Jazz guitar is the beginning of a long journey with a lot of interesting stops along the way.
In this video and post, I will try to give you some places where you can look for the things you feel you need to check out and of course also what you think is interesting.
Learning Jazz, or any other style of music is not a set path the fits everybody. We all take different routes and need to work on different things longer or shorter. That is also the reason that there is no set way to go through this and why I am calling it suggestions. You need to figure out for yourself where to go next. If I have a student learning Jazz it is common that I take a few lessons to figure out what to work on and how to work on it, so expect that when you start working as well.
That said, I will try to make this a little less complicated and stop the information overload a little because I don’t think that is really necessary.
To keep it a bit short I am going to focus on three main topics:
Technique and Scales
Chords
Improvisation and Songs
Technique and Scales
Keep it simple. Start with the Major scale. Don’t overdo technique practice.
Start with one position and one key. You can add positions and keys along the way, with basic exercises.
Start with these exercises:
The Scale
The Scale in 3rds
The Diatonic 7th chords (Maybe Triads first, but many don’t have to)
For more information on what to do work on and how to use it:
It is practical to learn some jazz chords so that you can play chords on songs. As jazz guitarists, we spend more time comping than soloing. It is also a huge help to be able to hear the harmony that you are soloing over.
Especially I would start with a set of diatonic chords for the major scale which is exercise one or two of this lesson: How to play Jazz Chords on Guitar
From that material you can gradually expand chord vocabulary, learn songs and progress into rootless voicings and more complex comping and harmonization ideas.
Improvisation and Songs
This is the most important part of how to learn jazz guitar because this is where we talk about playing music. So it is about using the material that is practiced in the scales.
If you want to play jazz you need to spend time playing the songs and improvising and you should start doing this from the very beginning. Even if you can’t really play solos that sounds like jazz, just by trying you are building repertoire and skills to use later.
Maybe you already feel comfortable with the things I covered here, and you are looking for more challenges and explore the music further. Of course, you can browse the YouTube channel and my Website.
Another option is to join the 3000+ members of the Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook group and ask there, get inspired by the posts and comments of others:
Or join me on Patreon where you can support and help shape the content on the channel in the future. Patreon is really what has made all these lessons and the channel possible. Check it out here: Jens Larsen YouTube Lessons on Patreon
Learning to play jazz we practice a lot of scales and a lot of arpeggios. But you also want to make sure that you get as much out of your practice as possible. It is also more fun to work on making new lines and coming up with new things you can use in your solos, so you want to use arpeggios as much as you can and explore where they might sound good.
In this video, I am going to show you this process and help you get a lot more out of the arpeggios you know by finding more chords you can play them on.
To keep this simple, let’s take a Cmaj7 arpeggio and look at where we can use that.
You can play a Cmaj7 arpeggio like this:
I will probably use other fingerings as well in the examples, and in general, I think you should practice arpeggios in scales as diatonic arpeggios as I talk about in this lesson: The Most Important Scale Exercise In Jazz
#1 Cmaj7
The obvious place to start is using the Cmaj7 arpeggio on a Cmaj7 chord.
In this example, I am using inversions of the Cmaj7 arpeggio. The first part of the phrase is a descending 1st inversion Cmaj7 which is then turned into a 6 note phrase and repeated from beat 4 of bar 1. The second repeat is a descending root position Cmaj7.
The last part of the phrase is a series of descending chromatic 3rd intervals.
#2 Am7
If you have seen more of my lessons then you have probably seen examples of using the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord.
Here I am using the Cmaj7 as the arpeggio from the 3rd of Am7.
Am7: A C E G and a great arpeggio option here is the Cmaj7 arpeggio: C E G B.
#3 D7
Similar to how the Cmaj7 works well on Am7 then it is also a solid option on the V chord associated with Am7: D7.
In this example, I am using the Cmaj7 at the end of bar 1. Similar to the previous example I am playing the Cmaj7 arpeggio as a triplet with a leading note.
#4 F#ø
The Maj7 from the b5 of a half diminished or m7b5 chord is a great very useful arpeggio. This is also related to the previous examples, but probably you would see this in the context of a minor key.
In this case, that is a II V I in Em and the F#ø is coming from the harmonic minor scale:
The Cmaj7 arpeggio is also a useful tool to use on a Fmaj7(#11) chord.
In this example, I am mixing it with material that really spells out the Fmaj7 sound: Fmaj7 arpeggio and Am pentatonic.
6 Abmaj7(#5,#9)
The final, more exotic, sound is using the Cmaj7 as a part of the augmented sound on an Abmaj7 chord.
The scale sound this is using is the Augmented scale.
The Augmented scale is a symmetrical 6 note scale that can be seen as the combination of two augmented triads or as the sum of 3 maj7 chords.
In this case: Abmaj7, Cmaj7, and Emaj7.
The scale consists of Ab B C Eb E G Ab
With a little enharmonic spelling (since this is an atonal symmetrical scale) you can construct the 3 maj7 chords.
The example here below is using first an Abmaj7 arpeggio and then continuing in a Cmaj7 arpeggio really bringing out the #5(E) and #9(B) over the Abmaj7.
A great Arpeggio Workout!
Here is a great foundation when it comes to working with arpeggios and pentatonic scales on a Jazz Standard:
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
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.
Having good Jazz Chords for a minor II V I can be difficult. This progression is much more complicated than it’s Major counterpart. At the same time, it is a really beautiful progression. Especially because of the rich tonic minor chords and altered dominants.
15 Jazz Chord Sets
In this video, I am going to go over 15 sets of jazz chords for a minor II V I in D minor. They will give you some solid ideas with extensions, the melodies and also some inner-voice movement.
What makes this progression difficult is probably in part the IIø chord that is a little hard to get used to and also the mix of harmonic minor and melodic minor used on the V and the I chord. Very rich colors but also a bit hard to handle.
I am of course very curious about what you think about the video format, so if you have ideas for other topics that would work in a video like this then let me know!
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Get the PDF!
The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen
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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.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.
In this video I am to cover some different types of Jazz Chords and talk about the order you should learn them. I’ll show you the basic idea with the chords and how you can use this order to gradually build a chord vocabulary that you can also make music with.
I don’t focus on the types of voicings, like drop2 drop3, etc. because they are just names, it is more important to chords you can play music with.
Level 1 – A Set For Playing Music and Songs
To play songs and easily find the chords we need one set with the root on the 5th and one set with the root on the 6th string. This is shown in the example here below:
If you are used to finding chords in other genres this is probably how you think about it. These chords are basic chord sounds, not too many extensions.
They are Easy to play.
Similar to the bar chords you already know
Include the root – full picture of the harmony
A Complete set of chords
Why start with these:
You can play the song alone and hear the harmony.
Works well in a duo
Easy to add extensions and develop
Easy to turn into very flexible rootless voicings
Level 2 – Rootless voicings for Bands and Flexibility
Now you can play the chords and to get some more options then the best place to go is to just take the chords from Level 1 and then remove the lowest note: The Root. The essential exercise is this:
We can now start making the chords more flexible and add melody by changing the top note and even adding an extra higher note as shown below in example 3 for a C7.
Why:
Works better in a band
Is much more flexible
You can play melodic ideas with the chords
Level 3 – Inversions and more melodic options
Now we can start working on inversions, and a good place to start is to take these voicings that we come across while adding notes to the 3-note chords.
The idea of a chord inversion is really just to find the same notes in another order on the neck. The chords we have are called drop2 voicings, and I go over how to make the inversions in the Drop2 lessons in this guide: How To Learn Jazz Chords
If I take the four basic chords and play those inversions then I have this:
How To Learn Using These Chords
Whenever you practice something like this it is very important that you also practice using it in songs. Learning a lot of stuff that you don’t use in music is usually a waste of time and you just forget it again.
Having different Minor Scale will help you not always sounding the same in your solos. It is important to have a solid vocabulary to chose a minor scale from. The minor scale guitar solos in this video demonstrate 7 different sounds and I also talk about what the notes are and how I improvise with the scale.
Maj7 Chords are one of the most important tonic chord types. This video will show you 7 different ideas that you can use when improvising over Maj7 chords. The concepts I cover are using different arpeggio types, triad pairs and super-imposed pentatonic scales both common and more exotic.
