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Blues and Jazz Guitar
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A bilingual (English/Spanish) "step by step how to" blog about guitar lessons, arrangements, soloing, improvisation, chord melody, chord solos, fingerstyle, etc... With free exercises, theory, lessons and anything related to jazz and blues guitar.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'arrangements: how to...'
Exploring a variety of sounds.
In the 2nd bar of Summertime, there are several choices we can make as far a harmonizing goes. I only show three here, I could probably come up with many more. What works best in these situations is to explore new sounds. Try odd fingerings, chord...
Exploring a variety of sounds.
When doing an arrangement of a tune, don't settle for the harmony that is indicated on the lead sheet. Try different chords. For example in "Summertime" the first chord is a Dm7 but there's nothing stopping us from trying other forms of Dm. Let's ...
Chromatic passing chords
Here's a little article from a Spanish "Guitar Player" magazine from many years ago. It really helped me in my arrangements and comping. Chromatic passing chords add alot of color and interest to your arrangements and comping.Este artículo es de u...
Walking bass for guitar (9)
Here's a walking bass line with the melody to "All the things you are". This style with just walking and melody is great if you want to play a melody solo at an up tempo.Aquí hay una línea de "walking" con la melodía de "All the things you are". ...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (6)
Now that we've seen (and heard) how a walking bass line sounds with only melody and bass, the next logical step is to add some harmony.Listen carefully to how a piano or guitar accompanies a soloist (sax, trumpet...) in medium to up tempo tunes. Mos...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (5)
Let's continue with our arrangement of All the things you are. I'm going to introduce a walking bass line at this point. I was debating whether to temporarily stop the arrangement lessons of this tune and do several on guitar walking bass or contin...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (4)
At this stage it's important to say that the melody is first and foremost. If you start to get so complex in the bass and/or harmony areas that the melody is now choppy, indistiguishable, weak, or any other thing that makes it not clear, then you ne...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (3)
Now that we have the bass giving us some movement we'll look at some ways whereby we can get the harmony to move and fill in some of the blank spaces that are not taken up by bass or melody. The example I'm going to show you here is used alot by Mar...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (2)
The arrangement up to now is starting to sound decent. Played as written however it sounds a little "classical". Not to put classical music or guitarrists down...maybe I should say it doesn't sound like jazz. Let's look at different ways to make t...
Guitar arrangements: How to do them (1)
I've always liked solo guitar chord melody playing. It's like a puzzle that has several different pieces that fit to make the big picture and depending on what pieces you choose, your big picture will look a little different than if the same puzzle ...
