Jazz Guitar: Beginner to Professional

A complete, sequenced course: fretboard and reading, harmony and theory, chord voicings, rhythm and comping, improvisation and bebop language, repertoire, chord melody, modern harmony, and the professional skills that turn a player into a working musician.

80 lessons · 80 quizzes · 439 notated examples and études · every chord shape, scale map and theory table generated and verified by the course engine.

Start with Module 1 How to use this course

Module 1 · beginner

Foundations

Set up your instrument and technique for jazz, learn to read tab and notation, know every note on the neck, and read rhythms with confidence. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 2 · beginner

Theory I

Intervals, the major scale and its keys, triads, the three minor scales and the harmonised major scale: the vocabulary every later lesson is written in. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 3 · beginner

Theory II: seventh chords and the ii–V–I

Move from triads to the four-note chords jazz is built on, harmonise the major and minor scales in sevenths, master the ii–V–I in major and minor, and learn to read a real chord chart. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 4 · intermediate

Voicings I: shell voicings

Build your comping on three-note shell voicings (root, 3rd, 7th), learn them with the root on the 6th and 5th strings, play them Freddie Green style, add 9ths and 13ths, and take them through all twelve keys. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 5 · intermediate

Rhythm and swing

Make everything you play sound like jazz: swing eighths, comping rhythms, syncopation, a time feel that holds up without a drummer, bossa nova and jazz waltz, and the articulation of a horn player. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 6 · intermediate

The blues

Learn the 12-bar form inside out, comp and solo through the jazz blues in F and in every key, build a vocabulary of blues phrases, and handle the minor blues and bird-blues variations. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 7 · intermediate

Improvisation I

Build a first jazz solo from the inside out: arpeggios in position, guide-tone lines, chord-tone targeting, approach notes and enclosures, and motifs that turn notes into phrases. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 8 · intermediate

Voicings II: drop-2, drop-3 and rootless shapes

Build the complete four-note chord vocabulary of jazz guitar: drop-2 on three string sets, drop-3 on two, nearest-inversion voice leading through every progression, and the extended and altered rootless shapes that make a ii–V–I sound like a record. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 9 · advanced

Scales and modes

The complete scale vocabulary of jazz improvisation: the major modes, chord-scale theory and tensions, melodic minor and its modes, harmonic minor and harmonic major, the symmetric scales, and pentatonic superimposition. 0 / 6 lessons complete Module 10 · advanced

Improvisation II – Bebop Language

The bebop vocabulary on guitar; bebop scales, ii–V–I and minor ii–V lines, altered and diminished dominants, rhythm changes, a complete transcription method and a system for turning cells into lines of your own. 0 / 6 lessons complete Module 11 · advanced

Harmony II: substitution and reharmonisation

Go beyond the diatonic chords of a key: secondary dominants and their related ii chords, tritone substitution, diminished passing harmony, borrowed chords, the Coltrane major-third cycle, and a complete method for reharmonising a melody. 0 / 6 lessons complete Module 12 · advanced

Standards and form

Learn how standards are built, how to learn them by ear and keep them in your memory, which progressions they share, and how to play them with other people on a bandstand or at a session. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 13 · advanced

Chord melody: solo jazz guitar

Play a tune alone: harmonise a melody with drop-2 and drop-3 voicings, walk a bass line under chord stabs, build intros, endings and turnarounds, arrange a complete ballad, and develop the fingerstyle and hybrid-picking technique that makes it all sound like one instrument. 0 / 5 lessons complete Module 14 · advanced

Modern harmony and rhythm

The post-bop toolkit: quartal voicings and modal comping, upper-structure triads, triad pairs and intervallic lines, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban grooves, odd meters and polyrhythm, and the techniques of playing outside. 0 / 6 lessons complete Module 15 · professional

Professional skills

The non-negotiables of working life: reading anything put in front of you, running and playing gigs, sounding good in any room, earning from teaching and writing, handling the business, and staying healthy enough to do it for fifty years. 0 / 6 lessons complete