Here you will learn how to use jazz guitar scales in your solos. All scale lessons include fingerings, tabs, exercises, and audio examples.
Learn these 7 guitar scales and you will be able to solo over almost any jazz standard. Understanding and knowing how to play these scales is essential for any beginning jazz guitar player. This lesson includes diagrams, audio, scale patterns, exercises, and solo examples.
The blues scale is a very versatile scale and one that is easy to finger on the guitar. There are 2 types of blues scales, the minor blues scale and the major blues scale.
In this lesson, you will learn how to build both blues scales, how to apply them to your jazz solos, how to finger them on the guitar + sample licks and solos.
The minor pentatonic scale is usually one of the first scales you learn as a guitar player. It is used a lot in blues, rock, and pop, but many jazz guitar players seem to neglect this scale.
This doesn’t have to be the case though, because the pentatonic scale is very useful, in jazz as well as other genres.
In this lesson, you will learn all the necessary fingerings of the minor pentatonic scale, and how you can use it to spice up your jazz solos.
The diminished scale is used to improvise over Diminished chords, which occur quite frequently in jazz chord progressions. This scale is built by alternating whole and half steps.
In this lesson, you will learn the theory behind diminished scales, as well as how to use them in your jazz guitar solos.
Expand your jazz guitar soloing chops by learning how to play and apply the dominant diminished scale.
Theory, diagrams, licks, solo & backing tracks included.
The bebop scale is one of the easiest ways to add a jazzy sound to your guitar playing. This is because you add a chromatic note to the regular modes, and chromatic notes are an important aspect of the jazz sound.
There are three types of bebop scales: the dominant, minor and major bebop scale.
In this lesson, you will learn what the bebop scales are, how they look on the guitar and how you can use these scales in your solos.
The whole tone scale is a cool-sounding dominant 7th scale that you can use to add tension to your dominant 7th chords.
In this lesson, you will learn how to build the whole tone scale and apply it to your jazz guitar playing.
The melodic minor scale is one of the most useful scales in jazz. In this lesson, you will learn what the melodic minor modes are, how they look on the guitar and how you can use them in your solos. All the modes on this page have the A root, so you can hear the …
When learning how to solo in jazz, one of the scales that comes up in our studies time and again is the altered scale, which is the 7th mode of the Melodic Minor Scale. While this scale comes up often when reading about jazz improvisation, it can seem like a bit of a mystery. To …
Exotic guitar scales are great to add some new flavor to your music. In this lesson, you will learn 11 scales from different parts of the world. You will also learn how to practice these scales and get an introduction to Indian music for guitar (ragas). Each scale is in the key of A and …
Though closely related in form and harmonic movement to its major blues cousin, the minor blues requires an understanding of a number of new scales and modes when first learning how to solo over this common jazz form. In this lesson, you will learn all the scales needed to improvise over a minor blues. Though …
The harmonic minor scale is a seven-note scale that has the same notes as the natural minor scale with the exception of the seventh note that is raised by one semitone. This seventh note works as a leading tone to the tonic, that’s why it is used often on dominant chords going to a tonic …
Working on guitar technique can often seem as separate from your soloing workout. You learn technique, put that away, then work on soloing concepts, keeping both separate in the woodshed. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. When you choose the right exercises, you can build your chops and increase your soloing vocabulary at …
String Skipping – Guitar Technique Builder and Soloing Read More »
Guitar modes are a type of scale that you need to master to be able to improvise in jazz.
Modes can be a bit confusing at the start, but once you get your head around the basic idea, you will notice modes can be quite simple and very useful for improvisation.
In this lesson, you will learn the modes of the major scale. You will learn the theory behind guitar modes, the different fingerings on guitar, and how to use them in your solos.
The melodic minor scale is built of seven notes. It contains a minor third (b3) and major sixth (6), but also has a major seventh (7) which gives it a unique sound compared to other minor scales such as the Dorian mode. Outside of the major scale system, the melodic minor scale is the most …
In this lesson, you will learn a theme based on the gypsy minor scale, a scale that is prominently used in Romani (gypsy) music. Exotic guitar scales like this one are a good way to bring new sounds into your playing. The gypsy minor scale (aka Hungarian minor scale or double harmonic minor scale) is …
As many guitarists begin playing rock, blues, and pop music before exploring jazz, one of the first scales we have under our fingers are the various positions of the major and minor pentatonic scales. To help you translate these commonly used scales to a jazz context, here are 5 jazz pentatonic scale patterns that you …
