60 Beginner Jazz Guitar Licks
If you're a guitarist who:
- loves jazz
- wants to learns some jazz guitar
- would like to use some jazz ideas in your playing
How I Started
I remember when I first started learning jazz 21 years ago. I was young and excited to try this style called jazz. I was fascinated with the whole idea of improvising and creating melodies magically out of thin air.
So, I learned about chord scales, modes, arpeggios, bebop lines, substitutions, reharmonization and all sorts of cool (but difficult sounding) things. One article would tell me that I need to know bebop. Another would mention that I need to use modes.
There were so many things to learn. It was overwhelming and to be honest a bit too much for me.
Do you know how it feels like to be lost?
Well I did!
The Discovery
When I was a student at Berklee College of Music, my improvisation teachers kept encouraging me to do a few things:
- Transcribe
- Analyse
- Compose
The idea was that when we transcribed, we would learn how the masters played over certain chords or chord progressions. I remember transcribing Sonny Stitt lines, Charlie Parker phrases and Joe Pass licks. Sometimes I could do it, sometimes it would take hours to even get anything into my playing. I would listen to the same song, sometimes the same few seconds again and again to try to copy a lick.
Transcribing was hard. I mean it was worth it but boy was it hard.
The second thing was to analyse what we listened to or played. When we understand the music we loved, we could use the concepts we learned in our own music.
The third thing was to compose. I remember one of my guitar teachers Rick Peckham telling me to write 5 guitar licks to internalise a concept. This was something I really found useful. It allowed my creativity to flow & be challenged. I learned a lot from composing my own guitar licks. It helped me develop my sense of melody and help me find what kind of melodies that I enjoyed playing.
The Student Becomes The Teacher
After graduating, as I became a teacher (even teaching at Berklee), I realised that many guitarists from other styles of music have a serious challenge learning jazz. Part of it was using TOO MUCH theory. They would play the right notes and the right scales but the lines were not jazz.
You see, jazz is a language. It's not just about playing the notes but about playing phrases that evoke the music's history. Good jazz licks are tempered by osmosis from hours of listening.
Now, you're probably wondering - what is Az talking about?
Well, basically this - if you want to learn some jazz (and sound jazz) - I've assembled & composed 60 jazz guitar licks to help jazz up your playing.
This is my latest eBook & it's the first one specifically designed for beginners to jazz.
What do you get?
You get 60 beginner jazz guitar licks. They are arranged in 4 sections:
- Chordal - using mostly chord tones, clearly stating the harmony
- Modal - exploring Dorian, Mixolydian and Lydian sounds
- Chromatic - discover how to add tasteful & idiomatic chromatic notes
- Playing Through Changes - connect the different ideas through 3 common chord progressions
If you try 1 lick a day, you get 60 days (2 months!) worth of high quality practice material to help you get jazzier. All you have to do is get the eBook and work on 1 lick per day. The best part is that everything is in the key of C Major so that you can see how all this relates to the same Dmin7 G7 Cmaj7 core chord progression.
I could have written everything down in all 12 keys for you but that would have made it 12 times bigger & I could have charged more for this book. Instead, I wanted to keep it simple and easy for guitarists to work on.
Remember when I said I felt overwhelmed? Well, I don't want you to have that feeling when you start getting into jazz. I believe in keeping things simple so that you actually improve rather than give up.
So, if this sounds good to you, get my eBook: 60 Beginner Jazz Guitar Licks now. :)
- 60 Beginner Jazz Guitar Licks
- 33 page eBook
- Notated in Standard Notation & Tablature (TAB)
Bonus 4x
In addition to the eBook, you'll also receive these bonuses:
✅BONUS #1: (VIDEO) Effective Lick Practice Tips
✅BONUS #2: (PDF & AUDIO) Hybrid Chords Lesson
✅BONUS #3: (PDF & AUDIO) Jazz Blues Soloing Lesson
✅BONUS #4: (MUSIC EP) The Jazz Bromance - Live at Bobo KL // Duet Live EP with Jazz Saxophonist, Julian Chan