Jazz Guitar Improvisation Tips: How to Keep the Melody in Your Ear While You Solo
Great jazz solos stay tied to the melody. Learn how to play a tune's melody in low and high registers — like Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell — so it never leaves your ear mid-solo.
Chord Melody Guitar: Why Playing the Melody in the Middle of the Neck Sounds More Like Jazz
When you play a jazz standard's melody on the first two strings, it sounds thin. Mid-register melody — the Wes Montgomery territory — sounds like jazz. Here is why, and how to move there.
Jazz Guitar Improvisation Tips: Why the Original Melody Should Stay in Your Head While You Solo
If your improvisation drifts away from the song, you're not soloing — you're playing a different tune. The fix is to keep the original melody humming inside you while you play, and here's the exact mechanism that makes it work.
Voice Leading Guitar: How to Play Counter-Motion Over Descending Chromatic Changes
When the chords descend chromatically — Dbmaj7, Dbm7, Cm7, Bbm7 — most intermediate players run out of ideas because every voicing wants to slide down too. The professional answer is counter-motion: when the harmony goes down, you take the line up. Here is how that works on the fretboard.
Swing Rhythm Guitar: What Wes Montgomery’s Thumb Technique Actually Needs
If you've spent any time learning jazz guitar, you've almost certainly heard the same piece of advice: Wes Montgomery played with his thumb.
Jazz Guitar Improvisation Tips: A 5-Part System to Master Jazz Blues
Jazz blues is one of the most rewarding areas of jazz guitar — and one of the most poorly approached by intermediate players. The common entry point is a pentatonic scale over a 12-bar form, maybe a blues scale for extra color.
Hearing Harmonic Rhythm: How Dominant Function Drives the II–V–I
If you’ve been playing jazz guitar for a few years, you already know what a II–V–I progression looks like. You can name the chords, you can find them on the fretboard, you can probably improvise a passable line over them in a familiar key.
Jazz Guitar Improvisation Tips: How Transcription Connects Everything You've Learned
Shell voicings, drop 2, II–V–I — you've learned the concepts separately. Transcription is what connects them. This guide explains why analyzing real solos (like Benson on Billie's Bounce) reveals how jazz harmonic vocabulary actually works in practice.
What a Structured Jazz Guitar Course Actually Looks Like
If you search for "structured jazz guitar course for beginners," you will find a lot of courses that look organized. There are units, modules, week-by-week schedules, neat little checklists.
How Down Strokes Create Swing — The Intermediate Player's Guide to Groove
Alternate picking is efficient — but it works against jazz swing. This post explains why consistent down strokes are the foundation of authentic groove in the Wes Montgomery tradition, and gives you a simple protocol to rebuild your technique from the ground up.