TrueGuitarist.com Free Video Guitar Lessons » Phrasing

Playing in Fourths

Gianni — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:40:41 +0000

I really like this style of phrasing, take some great examples like McCoy Tyner, and a lot of the ‘hard bop’ jazz cats. The basic idea is this: take a scale, in this example I will use a C major scale.

Now play all the diatonic fourths contained in C major:

In the video I am playing on a Dm (Dorian) vamp, but you can use this phrasing technique on any scale, mode…have fun.

Guitar Great Vic Juris: A couple of great video lessons.

Gianni — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:56:39 +0000

I was lucky enough to study with Vic Juris in the early 90′s. Today I stumbled into a couple of great lessons on youtube and I wanted to share them with you. He is a great jazz guitarist, if you don’t know about him, check out his music: http://www.myspace.com/vicjuris

In this lesson he talks about some very cool (and incredibly easy) applications of the standard box pentatonic shape:

Here he talks introduces his book Modern Chords:
Modern Chords: Advanced Harmony for Guitar [With CD] (Mel Bay's Private Lessons) ">Advanced Harmony for Guitar (Mel Bay’s Private Lessons)

I cannot recommend enough to check out this incredible musician!

Recycling melodic material

Gianni — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:02:08 +0000

Recycling melodic material is a concept that you can apply to many different situations. Here we will see how to change a melodic line and how to adapt this line (with some harmonic knowledge) to other chords.

1) This is our original melodic line, a D minor ‘jazzy’ kind of phrase.

2) The first thing I could do is to lower all the A to Ab so to use the same phrase on Half diminished chords (natural nine adds a really nice color to the phrase)

3) Let’s now change the m3 (F) to M3 (F#), and the m7(C) to Maj7(C#)

4) Let’s try anther one: m3(F) to M3(F#), m7(C) to Maj7(C#), P5 (A)to #5(A#) goes to morph the phrase so that if fits a Dmaj7(#5) chord. Very Modern indeed.

5) Let’s see if you can spot these other examples: Altered dominant & Dim H/W

Expand your vocabulary Pt2

Gianni — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:02:22 +0000

Expand your vocabulary Pt2

After I have learnt my phrase in every key I will now use it in context. Here I am using it on ‘autumn leaves’ every time there is a 2-5-1. of course I use it in the appropriate key, and I fill the rest of the tune with material stylistically similar. Here you’ll find the two files you’ll need to do this exercise:

Printable PDF: 2-5-1 Example Phrase Exercise

Printable PDF: Chords for Autumn Leaves

Expand your vocabulary Pt1

Gianni — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:00:31 +0000

Expand your vocabulary Pt1

In this video I’ll show you how to ‘import’ in your playing a new phrase/ melodic snippet by analyzing its shape and transposing it in every key. This is the phrase I use: