10 Jazz Guitar Tips from Larry Coryell

Larry Coryell is a modern jazz master who teaches some amazing concepts well above and beyond that of most typical jazz guitar lessons.

In his 3 DVD series, you will be exposed to some of the wildest, most unorthodox guitar tricks, that will open your mind instantly to new worlds.

Here's just a few tidbits of advice from the first DVD:

1. The first thing, as obvious as it sounds, is to hold your guitar so you have easy access to the entire fretboard. This makes things 10 times easier and its essential if you want to fly all over the neck.

2. Second thing, - pay attention to your posture. Don't slouch. Making sure you have good posture will prevent serious back pain later on.

3. You should have a daily routine. Larry says to start at the beginning, which is with scales. Start with the major scale.

4. Experiment with different ways to play the same scale, and different fingerings too.

5. You should also learn variations of the scales with “successive fingerings”, meaning you're using the same finger twice in a row as you slide up or down. This will give you more flexibility to move from position to position.

6. After you practice the major scale, work on some more advanced scales such as the melodic minor scale, diminished, augmented, and whole-tone.

7. You can also play scale sequences, and a particularly effective technique is to accent every fourth note, or every third note.

8. When playing a blues or any jazz piece for that matter, pay attention to voice leading in the bass notes. For example, if you're playing a blues in C, one cool move you can do is to go from a C in the bass to an E in the bass while on the I chord. The E is the third of C, but now what's interesting is that you have a nice half step movement up to the F, the IV chord.

9. Experiment with chord substitutions. You can start with simple inversions – putting the third or fifth in the bass... You can use half-step motion in the bass, which will often create a diminished chord as a passing chord... And you can use extended and altered chords to spice up ordinary progressions and cadences.

10. Use guide tones – this may be a new concept for a lot of guitarists, but this is the nucleus of a chord – the 3rd and 7th degrees only, on the D and G strings. Doing this will help you figure out a lot of cool voicings and smooth transitions.

These are just a few of the things on the first DVD. On this DVD, you will learn in much more detail about this concepts, plus chromatic scales, arpeggios, modes and intervals, building an intellectual understanding between scales and chords.

You will also learn about movements between harmony and bass lines, how to go beyond diatonic chord/scale usage, single-note line improvising over changse, and a lot more.

On the second DVD, you'll learn more improvisation secrets, more about chord substitution, the jazz minor scale and related chords, how to apply the jazz minor scale over standards, the importance the minor/major7 sound, repositioning of altered chords, blues phrasing, guitaristic devices, improvising on standards as a solo, plus more involved chords and improvisation.

And there's another third DVD, completely jam packed with far out and sophisticated jazz guitar secrets.

If you're ready for the most powerful jazz guitar lessons available, this is for you. www.coryelljazz.com/main.php