Learn to Comp Like Jazz Legend Freddie Green
Green’s rhythm style—quarter-note strums in 4/4 time (aka “four to the floor”)—seems simple enough. But it’s rarely mastered.
Ron Jackson
New York City-based jazz guitarist Ron Jackson has performed and recorded in over 30 countries, with artists such as Taj Majal, Jimmy McGriff, and Ron Carter.
How to Add Jazz Flavors to the 12-bar Blues Form
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.
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Weekly Workout: Building Colorful Chords from the Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scales
In this advanced guitar lesson, meet the melodic and harmonic minor scales and then explore the harmonies that can be generated from them.
How to Strengthen Your Picking Skills Through Efficient Patterns
In this guitar lesson you'll learn economy picking, which includes alternate and sweep picking styles, as well as legato techniques for your fretting fingers.
Weekly Workout: Add Jazzy Walking Bass Lines to Your Accompaniments
Learn how to play walking bass lines with chords—a cool approach to have up your sleeve, no matter what style you play.
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Learn Sweep Picking to Add Excitement To Your Guitar Playing
This technique involves using a plectrum to play a series of single notes on adjacent strings in a consecutive motion, resulting in a fast, fluid sound.
Review: Yamaha CG-TA TransAcoustic Nylon-String Guitar
Yamaha's CG-TA TransAcoustic guitar is the company's first nylon-stringed model in its popular TransAcoustic lineup of guitars, which include built-in effects.
Woodshed: Learn a Jazz-Meets-Punk Version of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’
This arrangement is in the guitar-friendly key of E minor and includes a steady eighth-note bass line that nods to the Clash version.
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Lesson: Get to Know Your Fretboard
If you'd like to strengthen your knowledge of the fretboard, try viewing it through a handful of different perspectives.
Video Lesson: How to Use the Whole-Tone Scale
The scale is known for its ambiguous, dreamlike quality and has been used to great effect by composers such as Claude Debussy and jazz musicians like Thelonious Monk.
Video Lesson: How to Spin Endless Variations on a Simple Tune
By taking a basic melody and changing the rhythms, pitches, and articulations, you can make some hip variations.
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Lesson: An Introduction to Jazz for All Guitarists
Jazz is actually comprised of lots of little bits of language that, when strung together in different ways, sound as if they’re spontaneously composed.
Video Lesson: 4 Ways to Improve Your Sightreading
Playing by ear is a great skill to have, but being able to read music is an asset that will take you to the next level as a guitarist.
Video Lesson: Learn to Play Guitar Chord Melodies Like Chet Atkins or Earl Klugh
Learning to play chord-melody style—that is, expressing melodies in chords rather than single notes—is a formidable and valuable skill.
Video Lesson: Four Ways to Silence Your Guitar Strings
Explore four solutions and subtle technique adjustments to deal with unwanted, distracting string noise when you play guitar.
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Video Lesson: Spice Up Your Guitar Playing With Jazz-Style Harmonic Flavors
The concepts taught in this Weekly Workout will help you play with new depth and excitement.
Weekly Workout: How to Pick Like Jazz-Great George Benson
Learn the secrets behind George Benson's special way way with the plectrum to improve your own picking technique.
Weekly Workout: Tone is in the Hands—and Here’s How to Find It
Whatever style you prefer—and regardless of whether you’re more of a soloist or accompanist—you should learn how to get these techniques under your fingers.
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Video Lesson: How to Play Funk on Acoustic Guitar
Funk guitar might be most commonly associated with scratchy electric rhythms, but the acoustic guitar lends itself just as well to these cool percussive sounds.
Video Lesson: How to Build Speed & Flexibility
Whatever your style, if you work on these etudes diligently, you’ll develop speed, finger independence, and flexibility.