Melodic Development – How to make your solos more interesting

In this video I quickly explain how to take a basic idea and try to develop it to make your solos more interesting and memorable. Remember to leave lots of space!! Recommended reading: Hal Crook: An analysis of his core improvisational style: An analysis of trombonist Hal Crooks’ improvisational style from 1994-96, through the examination… Continue reading Melodic Development – How to make your solos more interesting

A tool to improve your improvising skills.

It’s not a secret that one of my all time favourite guitar instructional books is The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrich. One the exercises explained in this great book is about creating a random sequence of chords by writing every type of chord (major, minor, all the 7th chords and, if you feel more adventurous, chords… Continue reading A tool to improve your improvising skills.

Playing in Fourths

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… Continue reading Playing in Fourths

Tips: play Giant Steps on guitar

Giant Steps has always been a challenging standard to play, in this video I give a few tips on how to approach this famous tune. The Chords (from the fake book-as far as I know it is not copyrighted material so I am posting the original): One good ‘pattern’ to start familiarising with the progression in playing… Continue reading Tips: play Giant Steps on guitar

How to use the Diminished Scale Pt 2

Continuation of the diminished scale video…in this Pt2 I show how to incorporate triads into phrases or altered chords voicings. If we take a C half step/whole step scale C, Db, Eb, E, F#, G, A, Bb we see that four triads can be found within the notes of this scale: C major, Ebmajor, F#major,… Continue reading How to use the Diminished Scale Pt 2

How to use the Diminished Scale Pt 1

In this guitar lesson I am going over a scale that is widely used in the jazz and fusion circles and creates quite a distinctive sound. Actually…it is not a single scale, but two. The two scales are very similar and in my opinion this is something that can create some confusion. These two diminished… Continue reading How to use the Diminished Scale Pt 1

Pat Metheny Clinic and Chromatic scale Exercise

Not too long ago I posted this guitar exercise video: the never-ending chromatic scale. find the original post here: http://www.TrueGuitarist.com/never-ending-chromatic-scale/ Just yesterday I found this video of a clinic by Pat Metheny. Check out the video, what he’s doin at the very beginning is exactly what I am talking about.

Basic Music Theory for Beginners Pt 2:on Guitar, Practical Application.

Basic theory knowledge pt 2: on Guitar! Let’s now go back to the basic theory post (quite successful over 10k views just the day I posted!) , and let’s see how things apply to guitar…just read the explanatins in red and watch the videos! Let’s start again: The natural sounds are: English C D E F… Continue reading Basic Music Theory for Beginners Pt 2:on Guitar, Practical Application.

Basic Music Theory for Beginners

Basic theory knowledge What follows is just a brief summary of basic theory and harmony necessary to understand practical applications on your instrument. The natural sounds are: English C D E F G A B You might also find in some books the name of these notes in Italian (nothing to do with ‘solfege’!) Do,Re,Mi,Fa,Sol,La,Si… Continue reading Basic Music Theory for Beginners