With its complex harmonies and swing feel, jazz is one of the most difficult languages to master on the acoustic guitar. The lessons here cover everything from the very basics of jazz to chord-melody style arranging to note-for-note Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt transcriptions.
In this guitar lesson, Mimi Fox shows how a simple melody can open the door to myriad musical possibilities.
Take your time working through the piece, paying special attention to the rhythmic pulse.
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Green’s rhythm style—quarter-note strums in 4/4 time (aka “four to the floor”)—seems simple enough. But it’s rarely mastered.
In this lesson, we’ll explore how you can spice up your blues with a range of jazz ingredients, starting simply and then progressing to more advanced concepts.
Freddie Green is synonymous with swing guitar. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1911, Green enjoyed a 50-year career holding down the rhythm chair of Count Basie’s famed big band.
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In this guitar lesson we will focus on how to play chords “up the neck” in order to learn to play a chord-melody.
In this guitar lesson, learn to play swing rhythm guitar like Freddie Green, the guitarist in the Count Basie band for 50 years.
Try this approach to make a chord-melody version of Django Reinhardt’s iconic interpretation of “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”
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Jazz Manouche (aka Gypsy jazz) is a vibrant, acoustic blend of classical, Gypsy, dance music, and American jazz
Interested in playing swing guitar leads but don't know how to get started? Here I'll show how get the most mileage out of just a few notes—while getting a great workout on the fretboard.
Here are some ideas from jazz great Eddie Lang for some new chord melody techniques and textures on guitar, applied to the verse of the old standard “After You’ve Gone.”
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Learn how to play walking bass lines with chords—a cool approach to have up your sleeve, no matter what style you play.
Explore comping and soloing strategies over a standard 12-bar jazz blues progression, as well as chord substitutions and variations.
Eddie Lang's jazz guitar interpretation of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor keeps the dark and brooding atmosphere of the original piano piece.
Learn the rhythm guitar techniques used in Western Swing music in this video lesson.
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When playing chord-melody style guitar, sometimes you're not sure which chord to use when the melody isn’t a chord tone or moves too quickly. Here's the solution.
One should focus on Reinhardt’s total control of harmony, the sophisticated ways in which he moves the chords’ inner and outer voices
Learn to use tremolo picking on long notes and passing chords over multiple measures of rest to fill space in any chord-melody guitar arrangement.
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Knowing inversions is essential to understanding chord-melody, as it assures that you will have an appropriate voicing to place below the melody.
The importance of a solid rhythmic foundation is at the heart of Gypsy-jazz guitar
How to Use Guide Tone Voicings in Fingerstyle Jazz guitar lesson music notation
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Guide tones are simply the third and seventh notes of a chord (sometimes the third and sixth if the chord is a simple triad or sixth chord). Guide-tone voicings have long been popular with jazz musicians, including guitarists Grant Green, Jim Hall, and pianist Red Garland. Thelonious Monk often used guide tone voicings…
Oscar Alemán had an impeccable sense of swing and played with exciting rhythmic punctuations, a horn-like attack, and sharp attention to detail.
As with learning anything new, when tackling this jazzy arrangement of 'America the Beautiful,' take it slowly and work on getting a beautiful tone in both hands.
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THE PROBLEM You’re dissatisfied with the tone and volume of your playing and want to get closer to what you hear from other players. THE SOLUTION The development of tone begins with your pick hand and how the pick strikes the strings. Additionally, the pick-hand techniques offered here will yield…
