Intro to Jazz Guitar Improvisation

Series Summary

Jazz was born in New Orleans as a genre of music full of swing and swagger. Since then, it has grown into a style particularly well-suited to improvisation. Many jazz musicians are given to play melodies loosely, and to expand on the general musical themes of a song through chord comping, modal playing and soloing.

Jazz guitar is rooted in minor 7th chords and diminished 3rds—in smooth, rich, muted tones that paint a kaleidoscope of moods. Guitar players rely on complex chord constructions and syncopated rhythms to create a sound that plays as point or counterpoint to the jazz conversation happening on stage. In these free guitar lessons on video, learn how to play improvisational jazz riffs and chord comps for a variety of song styles. Our expert will explain a bit about open position melodies, double melodies, chord voicings and shapes, key changes, shifting modes and modal playing techniques. He’ll even give you some comping tips for classic Latin rhythm patterns like the bossa nova, samba, and the waltz.

Take some time to expand your musical vocabulary. Get out your guitar, set your laptop somewhere convenient and watch these videos. If you pick up a few tricks for your routine, it was time well spent.

Video Transcript

"CASEY CORMIER: In this segment, we'll be learning how to play jazz style guitar. Now, the genre of jazz, basically America's classical music is, has intricate theory problems that we haven't thought of before. We often understand reading music for one thing, a little bit more in depth than we have before. We have to understand reading key signatures. Key signatures are the order of sharps and flats in the beginning of a piece. We need to be able to look at those, the sharps and the flats, and see just by looking what key we're in. You need to be able to tell these things so that we can tell which chord changes fit and which chord changes a little bit off, and understanding naturalized notes and flats and sharps that don't belong in the key being appearing within the measures, so we can read a melody and not have too much difficulty understanding what's going on. We'll also learn how to read chord changes like I said. We'll be understanding some of the chords that we've already done and then also just some turnaround progressions, maybe changing the key in that chord right there on us, so understanding how to do that for swing jazz would be very simple things, but when we get in the Bossa and Latin rhythm, we'll be understanding how to comp. Comping is playing those chords with a certain rhythmic feeling that goes along with what the rest of the band is doing. We'll learn how to solo using some of the areas of these basically using the arpeggiation of chord progressions and understanding what modes we're in as well as playing and embellishing upon the melody and making a melody sound more interesting by using octave displacement, so join me in learning your first step towards being a jazz guitarist."