Jazz Guitar Online

I'm Dirk Laukens, jazz guitar player, teacher and webmaster of this jazz guitar instruction site.

This website is full of lessons, tips, licks and tricks and will help you learn how to play jazz guitar better.

First Things First:

• Subscribe to our free newsletter called The Jazz Guitar Gazette. This newsletter is packed with guitar lessons, tips and tricks that will help you learn how to play jazz guitar. You'll be informed about website updates and you'll get the Jazz Guitar Chords eBook...
  
  
  
• Register yourself as a member of the Jazz Guitar Forum and join our community. This is the place to be for all your questions, feedback and friendly discussion..

Our free guitar lessons are the center of this website and cover a great variety of topics. There are lessons for beginners as well as for the guitar pro. All online guitar lessons are illustrated with guitar tabs and traditional notation, some have video and audio.

Some topic examples:

• Jazz Guitar Chord Theory
• Jazz Guitar Scales
• The Pentatonic Scale
• How to Play Bebop, Latin & Blues Guitar
• Arpeggios for Guitar
• Guitar Technique Exercises
• How to Play Jazz Standards like Autumn Leaves, So What, Take Five, ...
• Video Guitar Lessons: Stella by Starlight, There Will Never Be Another You , ...
• Guitar Lessons for Beginners : How to Read Guitar Tabs, The Major Scale, How to Improvise a Guitar Solo
• ...

Our licktionary has guitar riffs, licks and patterns from over 45 master jazz guitar players such as Pat Metheny, George Benson, Bill Frisell, Django Reinhardt, John McLaughlin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Pass, Al Di Meola, Mike Stern, Les Paul, John Scofield, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, but also Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. It's the ultimate guitar lick collection!

Use these jazz guitar licks as an inspiration for your guitar solos. They are written in both standard notation and guitar tab.

Next part of the website is dedicated to jazz guitar chords.  For beginners we grouped all the basic guitar chords that are needed to play jazz music.  For every chord type there is a free printable guitar chord chart.

If you want to learn how chords are built, I suggest you check out the jazz guitar chord theory tutorial, essential reading if you want to make use of the guitar chord finder.

You can also download the Basic Jazz Guitar Chord Book, a free ebook that groups all the basic guitar chord charts together with the music theory you need to know as a beginning jazz guitarist.

For the advanced players there are guitar chord charts to more complex chords.

Other topics include:

• Jazz Chord Progressions
• Blues Guitar Chords
• How to Play Fingerstyle Walking Bass
• Guitar Chord Inversions
• Rhythm Changes
• Chord Substitutions
• Comping studies on popular jazz standards
• ...

Make sure you visit our guitar music books, music software and multimedia eStore: a selection of must-have jazz (guitar) books such as the Jazz Theory Book, The Real Books, The Latin Real Book, The Brazilian Guitar Book, The Serious Jazz Practice Book, The Blues Scales and a multimedia jazz guitar course called "Master Jazz Guitar Solos", an interactive program that teaches you how to improvise and comp.

We also have Band in a Box in store, an amazing piece of automatic accompaniment software for your computer. Just type in the chords you want your virtual band to play, set the tempo and style and push the play button. Practicing guitar will never be the same again (and you'll never look back at Jamey Aebersold play-a-long cd's again).



On the guitar solo transcriptions page you'll find transcribed guitar solos, some of them in traditional notation only, others with guitar tabs. Studying transcriptions (or transcribing yourself) enables you to find out what goes on in a guitarist's mind.


In the free sheet music part of the website you will find guitar sheet music of standards and originals that are not found in the Real Book or anywhere else.

In the Guitar Gear section you will learn how to get a jazz guitar sound. How do I choose amongst the range of available jazz guitars? What guitar amp should I buy? Do I need guitar effects? Are Fender guitars any good for jazz? What about guitar strings?

Find out how your favorite guitar player gets his signature sound. What kind of guitar amplifiers does Pat Metheny use? What type of Gibson guitar did Wes Montgomery play? How does George Benson get his sound? Did Charlie Christian use acoustic or electric guitars?

Discover some new music in the free jazz guitar mp3 section.  Listen to free mp3's from jazz guitarists from all over the world!

Here are some more useful parts of the website:

• Free Online Guitar Tuner: an easy to use online guitar tuner...
• How To Read Guitar Tabs: an essential lessons for beginners.
• Links & Downloads: if you're finished with the material on this site (this might take a while though) and you're still looking for more online guitar instruction,  have a look at the  hand-picked quality links to other jazz guitar sites. That's also the place for free downloads, like a blank guitar tab sheet, a blank guitar chord chart, the Jazz Handbook or the Real Book for Band in a Box.
• Reviews: reviews of books, software, electronics, DVD's & Videos that I find useful to make the process of learning how to play guitar and how to improvise on guitar a little easier.
• What's New?: check here to find out if there are any new guitar lessons on the website since your last visit.

I wish you good luck on your quest to learn jazz guitar improvisation and have fun!

P. S.  A lot of people ask me what software I use to create the guitar tablature and note script used on this site.   This piece of music software is called Sibelius and there's a short review on the recommended page.