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Rhythm Changes for Dummies

16 June 2010

Now before you get your panties in a bunch, the picture on the left is just for fun. There is no “Rhythm Changes for Dummies” book, though I’m sure someone has thought about writing it. If you’ve ever wondered where the “Rhythm” in “Rhythm and Blues” comes from, now you know. “Rhythm Changes” is a [...]

Jazz Blues Lines

15 June 2010

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Sorry there was no post yesterday, everyone. I was quite under the weather yesterday due to a bad allergy attack from spending time in a house with three cats. Needless to say I’m not their biggest fan. Anyway, I wanted to start off the week by giving you some actual material you can practice with. [...]

Improvising Pentatonics

8 June 2010

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I’ve been digging into pentatonics since starting my new practice regimen for my Six-Month Challenge. I’ve mostly been starting with Jerry Bergonzi’s “Pentatonics” book, which is very good. There are a lot of very cool pentatonic applications over certain chords that will give some very interesting sounds. I’m going to show you a few, but [...]

Chord Substitutions

26 May 2010

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One thing common to jazz but found less often in other styles of music is chord substitutions. In its simplest form, this is the process of playing one chord instead the one originally specified in order to spice up the harmony, create different voice leading, or take the song in a different harmonic direction. If [...]

Warm Up Before You Play

8 April 2010

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How many of you warm-up before you play for an extended period of time? Let me rephrase the question a bit. Have you ever picked up the guitar cold and just started playing? If you’re like me, it probably doesn’t feel all that great. In fact, it can be downright painful and frustrating. Unless you [...]

Finding the Right Guitar Teacher

6 April 2010

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Once you have made the commitment to learn the guitar, finding a good teacher is critical to teach you the correct way to play, to keep you motivated and, most importantly, to teach you what you are looking to learn. For day-one beginners what you are looking to learn doesn’t matter as much since most [...]

Chord Hacks: Chord Structures for Guitar

29 March 2010

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What I would like to do, for the sake of this article as an introduction only, is to get you to look at the guitar for playing chords as groups of four notes. Typically your fretting hand only has four notes to work with because you only have four fingers to use. There are exceptions [...]

Spice Up Your Pentatonics

23 March 2010

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We all play them. We all play them all the time. We all play them all the time pretty much the same way as everyone else. Sure, you can bend the note longer, or change your vibrato somewhat, but for the most part we’re all pretty much riding the same animal. So what can we [...]

Chord Hacks: My 5 Favorite Chords

18 March 2010

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Every guitar player has their favorites; chords they just love to try and work into the songs they write, when they are comping, and when a friend asks to “show them something on the guitar.” I thought it would be fun to share a few of my favorites with you and, hopefully, get you to [...]

Melodic Minor Scale Applications, Part 1

12 March 2010

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Melodic Minor Scale Applications, Part 1

Last month, Fretterverse guest author Dr. Matt Warnock introduced us to “that other minor scale,” the Melodic Minor scale. Because it’s such a highly-versatile scale with lots of applications, I would like to start a series of posts on some of the different ways it can be used. If you are not familiar with the [...]