Jazz Guitar for the Bewildered
An approach to understanding the fretboard
In order to master Jazz guitar, it is, I believe, necessary to view all its facets from many different directions. The more approaches to understanding, for example, which notes will work over a chord progression, the better. These concepts support and shed light on one-another and the combinations that you choose (consciously or subconsciously) will will evolve over time and will be a large factor in defining your personal style.1
However, all this can be quite overwhelming and unlike with, say, Rock, Blues or Classical guitar, it can seem that the more you learn, the less you can actually play.
What's outlined in these pages is just another approach to understanding how chord progressions etc. relate to the guitar fretboard and is not intended to replace any other method or approach. Instead, it is offered as a solid framework on top of which other approaches can be applied.
There is nothing particularly new here. Essentially I've combined the traditional ‘CAGED’ approach with some Major Sixth and Minor Sixth shapes.2 This allows us to pare down our materials to something very small and manageable. These materials forms a foundation on top of which we can build most of the important musical structures used in modern jazz.3 By concentrating on a few shapes, we can become familiar with their ‘sight and sound’ without getting overwhelmed.
This may appear quite restrictive but once a concept is well understood and ‘lies under the fingers’ naturally, the framework itself may be abandoned. This is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
One of the most disheartening things about learning Jazz guitar is that, once you've put in the necessary effort to learn scales/modes/chords/arpeggios in every key and position it is still very difficult to piece them together into a coherent musical narrative in the face of a relentless onslaught of chord changes. The approach taken here (once we're familiar with the basic shape) is to learn the changes using the basic chord shapes and then derive the arpeggios and scales shapes from them. This allows to learn progressions as a unit from the start rather than a collection of separate ‘boxes’ that then have to be combined.
At the risk of repeating a cliché, I wish I had known about these ideas when I started learning Jazz guitar. 4 I have found that viewing Jazz guitar using the method described here has helped me transform dry theory into improvisation techniques that are easy to understand and fun to apply and to view previously difficult progressions (e.g. the ‘Coltrane Changes’) as easily navigable collections of familiar shapes.
Bon Voyage!
- One Shape to Rule Them All
Describes how the basic open major shapes are essentially all the same and how we can move them up the fretboard to make other chords.
- Going Round in Circles
We look at five ways of playing the same chord progression and how they are, again, essentially the same.
- Darkening the Mood
Minor chords.
- Intervals I
The Major 3rd, the Minor 3rd and the Perfect 5th.
- Filling in the Gaps
Transform chords into arpeggios.
- Intervals II
The Prime and the Octave.
- Intervals III
The Major 2nd, the Major 6th and the Minor 7th
- Sixes and Sevens
Adding notes to the Major and Minor arpeggios to form the most important structures in Jazz.
- Lateral Thinking
The relationships between chord shapes at different areas of the fretboard.
- Intervals IV
Perfect 4th and the Tritone.
- Dropping off
Drop-2 voicings for Major 6 and Minor 6 chords.
- When Two Worlds Collide
In which we reconcile the Drop-2 voicings with the system we built up in the first nine chapters.