The Most Important Lesson I Ever Had (Jazz Beginner)
Wrong Exercises For Jazz
Most jazz guitar beginners waste years on the wrong exercises—I certainly did. Until a masterclass from Barry Harris completely changed my approach. So in this video, I’m going to show you the important exercises to start with that actually improve your Jazz playing. This approach has helped 1000s of my students play better instead of wasting time drilling scales.
Learning From Barry Harris
First, I’ll show you what I did wrong so that you don’t end up making the same mistake I did. When I started learning Jazz, I was spending hours every day running scales and arpeggio positions. But somehow, my solos still didn’t sound like jazz. Even the Jazz licks my teacher gave me felt completely disconnected from what I was practicing.I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. It was frustrating. I could play something, but I had no idea how to actually make music with it.
Then, a friend convinced me to attend a Barry Harris masterclass at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. A few days later, I was in that class with my Stratocaster, struggling to keep up while Barry Harris was teaching us one incredible Bebop line after another. But he didn’t just throw licks at us. He broke them down and showed us exactly what to practice to make those lines possible. And that was the moment everything changed for me — because those exercises were completely different from the scales and drills I had wasted so much time on. Let me show you!
If you think about it, it sounds obvious and simple, but we all get it wrong: If you want to play jazz lines, your exercises should be made of the same stuff that’s actually in those lines! But most of us—me included— get stuck practicing endless scales, huge arpeggio shapes, and pointless sequences. Because that is what most of us are told to practice.
In Barry’s masterclass, things finally clicked. He’d show us a jazz line—like this one:
Then he’d break it down, showing us the actual building blocks. Here, one of the most important ones is the Cmaj7 arpeggio.
And one of the first exercises you want to learn in all keys was the diatonic arpeggios, I believe Barry called them called them “the chords”:
But If you are new to practicing structures in scales like this, which I was, then he gave us two other exercises that help you gradually level up to this one. Because, arpeggios are just notes stacked in 3rds. So first play the scale in 3rds:
Then stack two third-intervals, so C to E and E to G, then you have a triad.
in this case, C major: C E G. That through the scale gives you this exercise:
If you first do the 3rds and then the triads, the 7th chord arpeggios get a lot easier. But he did not only show us exercises that were in the scale. A big part of the Jazz sound is creating tension with chromatic notes, which makes your solo sound much more like Jazz. Barry had us practice 3rds again, but this time, adding a sneaky chromatic note before each one:
Suddenly, the exercises felt like real music. I could hear the same sounds in my favorite solos—from Joe Pass, Pat Martino, even Charlie Parker.
This was more than boring exercises—they were the actual building blocks of jazz. In a second, I’ll show you two more exercises that instantly give you that bebop sound. But first, let’s talk about why these diatonic arpeggios are the most important shortcut for soloing—and how you can use them right away.
The Most Important Scale Exercise In Jazz
Sometimes comments tell me “Every scale exercise is just as important—diatonic 7th chords are not special?” Let me explain why that is not true! Remember, your goal is to play jazz solos—and jazz songs are built around 7th chords.
That means, if you practice these diatonic 7th chord arpeggios, you’re learning the exact shapes that make up real jazz tunes. Suddenly, you can “spell out” the harmony of any song—meaning, you can actually play the sound of each chord, not just random notes from the scale.
But there is also another level to this: once you know all these diatonic 7th chords, you unlock a secret shortcut. You can start using other arpeggios over the same chord.
Instantly, you double your vocabulary—without learning any new fingerings or patterns! It’s like having one master key that opens a whole bunch of doors in jazz. Let me show you exactly how this works in action!
The Most Powerful Arpeggio Trick
Here’s a trick that instantly doubles your creative options—and it’s way easier than you think! Let’s take the classic II V I progression in C major. Normally, you’d build your licks from the arpeggios of each chord:
as you can see:
The lines are built….
But here’s the secret trick: you can also use the arpeggio from the 3rd:
Dm7 is D F A C, and the 3rd is F so you use an Fmaj7 arpeggio.
G7: the 3rd is B so you use a Bø or Bm7b5:
For Cmaj7, the 3rd is E so you use an Em7 arpeggio.
You’ll notice the notes overlap a lot, but you get a beautiful extra color—the 9th—which makes your lines sound richer and more “jazzy.”
And because you’ve already practiced all your diatonic arpeggios, you don’t have to learn anything new—just use what you already know.
Try creating licks for a II V I using Fmaj7 over Dm7, Bø over G7, and Em7 over Cmaj7:
This is such a great way to add more color to your solos, and you’ll hear this trick in tons of classic jazz solos. But the exercises you work on should not only be about the notes, you also want to improve your rhythm and phrasing. But how do you do that?
Exercises For Rhythm
This was the exercise that made it all click for me. Certain rhythms are everywhere in jazz solos, and once you spot them, you can’t un-hear them. I’m sure you’ll recognize this phrase—it’s from the beginning of Wes Montgomery’s solo on “Satin Doll”:
What’s cool is that Wes is using the same “arpeggio from the 3rd” trick—here, it’s an Fmaj7 arpeggio over Dm7.
But what really makes it sound like jazz isn’t just the notes—it’s the rhythm. He plays it as an eighth-note triplet, with a leading note before the first note
If you listen to jazz giants like Wes or George Benson, you’ll hear these triplet arpeggios everywhere. So it makes a LOT of sense to take this through the scale. When Barry Harris showed us this in his masterclass, it was a lightbulb moment for me. Suddenly, I was practicing rhythms and phrases I actually wanted to play in solos—not just running scales up and down. Here’s that exercise adding rhythm to the arpeggios:
Barry understood that you don’t just need to learn what notes to play—you need to know how to play them. That’s why your exercises should teach you the right rhythms and melodies for jazz, not just finger technique. Before we move on to a killer melodic trick, check out how awesome these triplet (or bebop) arpeggios sound in action:
You can use this triplet rhythm with both maj7 and m7 chords, and it instantly levels up your lines. Jazz isn’t just about streams of 8th-notes—it’s about melody, phrasing and rhythm. Ready for the next trick? This Barry Harris concept will make your solo lines sound a LOT better!
Making Arpeggios Melodic
This concept was a total game-changer for me. You might have seen “octave displacement” taught as a fancy scale exercise—but honestly, those often just lead to awkward exercises that don’t sound like jazz. Barry Harris, though, cuts right to the heart of what makes bebop lines sing.
Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a typical way to play a 7th chord arpeggio:
What happens is that you “resolve” the tension created by the fast ascending arpeggio melody with a descending step. Here, the melody changes direction once, first up and then down.
But in jazz, we want more twists and turns in our lines, while still keeping that flowing sound.
Here’s the trick: You can move the root (the first note) up an octave. Since it is an arpeggio, it still makes sense as a melody, but we have more movement:
Barry called this a “pivot arpeggio.” It’s like taking a melodic shortcut—suddenly your lines have more bounce and surprise, but still flow and fit perfectly. You can hear this in action in a Grant Green lick (It’s originally in F but I’ve transposed it to C major):
And here’s how you can practice it: just take your regular diatonic arpeggio exercise and, for each chord, start by shifting the first note up an octave—then add the resolution note at the end (that’s the note that finishes the phrase smoothly):
Barry Harris’ approach makes your exercises so much more practical. You’re not just improving your technique and fretboard knowledge—you’re also leveling up your phrasing and rhythm, which is what makes your playing sound like real jazz. But there’s another piece of the puzzle: chords. Most people get stuck memorizing endless inversions and shapes they never actually use. Instead, you can take a much faster and easier approach—just like Joe Pass did. That’s exactly what I cover in this next video. It’ll help you finally connect chords to real music, so you’re not just stuck with “grips” but actually making music from chord symbols. Check it out!
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