To build a jazz solo, start from the melody and the chord changes, find the voice leading inside the shell voicings, and treat that as the skeleton line. Then add flesh on top of it in layers: the Wes Line, upper structures, triads and drop 2 voicings. Junewon Choi laid out this order on a VoiceLid Jazz Guitar live stream, and it's the same order our online jazz guitar lessons follow. The layers only work if you learn them inside real tunes, not as separate drills.
What Is the Skeleton Line?
It's the voice leading you can hear between chords. When Dm7 moves to G7, play only the guide tones and you'll notice that one note moves: C, the 7th of Dm7, drops a half step to B, the 3rd of G7. Everything else can stay. That single moving note is a piece of the skeleton.
Junewon's point is that the skeleton comes from the music, not from a theory chart. The melody comes first, then the chord changes, and the voice leading is what you discover between them. The shell voicing (root, 3rd and 7th) is the tool that makes it visible, because it strips the chord to the notes that actually move. For why the root often drops out of the picture, see Why Don't Jazz Guitarists Play the Root of the Chord?.
Why Is the Shell Voicing at the Bottom?
Because jazz harmony grew upward. Single lines became counterpoint, counterpoint became three-note triads, and with the blues the four-note seventh chord became normal. Once the 7th was there, Charlie Parker's bebop stacked the 9th, 11th and 13th on top. A shell voicing plays 1, 3 and 7 and skips the 5th, which leaves room above it for those tensions.
So in Junewon's diagram the shell sits at the very bottom, literally a shell. Everything else is stacked on it.
What Goes on Top of the Shell?
In the order Junewon wrote them out, which matches the free PDF and the lecture playlist on his channel:
Shell voicing — the base and the source of the skeleton line.
Wes Line — the diagonal two-octave line Wes Montgomery organized from bebop harmony. The scale chapter's idea that the same structure repeats two octaves apart is what makes it work.
Upper structures — the chord a third above the root. Dm7 has Fmaj7 on top; Em7 has Gmaj7.
Triads — the major and minor triads inside those upper structures, practiced in cycles.
Drop 2 voicings — full four-note chord shapes stacked at the top.
The Bridge Series covers the shell, drop 2 and triad layers as daily practice, so you can build them in this order.
Why Learn the Layers Inside a Tune?
Because a ii-V drill has no melody. Junewon was firm: don't learn this from ii-Vs or licks or isolated chord changes. Learn it from a tune, and grow your repertoire. A short tune can carry a lot. His own course starts with an eight-bar tune before moving to a full standard, and the layers above get pulled out of those melodies one at a time.
A viewer described the process neatly: use the triad as the frame and step from chord tone to chord tone like stepping stones. That is the skeleton line with flesh on it.
How Do You Practice This on One Tune?
Pick a tune with clear ii-Vs, such as Satin Doll or Fly Me to the Moon:
Play the melody until you can sing it.
Play only the shells under it and mark the notes that move between chords.
Solo using only those moving notes, landing each one on the beat where the chord changes.
Add the upper structure: over Dm7, play an F major triad; over Em7, a G major triad.
Last, add a drop 2 voicing on the strongest beats.
For a precise definition of the voice leading you're tracking, read What Does Voice Leading Actually Mean?.
How Do You Know It's Working?
Your lines start to sound like they belong to the tune and not just to the key. If you want a structured path that takes these layers through real standards, the Fundamentals Program is where they come together.
About the Author
Junewon Choi is a Berklee-trained jazz guitarist and the founder of VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, an online education platform teaching jazz harmony and improvisation through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA) — a chord-first method built on voice-leading rather than scale boxes.
Wes' Insight — Wes Montgomery's fretboard logic, in lesson form
Fundamental 1: Wes Diagonal System — the FDA from the ground up