As jazz guitarists, it’s often a good practice to remember your roots and to stay grounded in the fundamentals.  The most important fundamental in jazz is it’s rhythm and the concept of swing.  If the way you’re playing doesn’t swing, then that’s a major problem.  This applies to every type of jazz player regardless of the [...]

A while back I posted an article entitled “8 Essential Jazz Chord Forms for the Beginning Jazz Guitarist“. This article focused on the importance of developing your knowledge of seventh chords with their roots located on the 5th and 6th strings.  To take this concept further, let’s take a look at the same jazz chords [...]

I recently came across the free electronic version of Jody Fisher’s Rhythm Guitar Encyclopedia.  Just click the picture below to view the book and print any pages. Rhythm is the most important element of successful jazz guitar playing. So, the more you can incorporate a wide variety of rhythms in your playing, the better you [...]

Ok, I’m back — Helping you build your jazz vocabulary. Here’s a nice jazz guitar lick that can be played over a Dm7 chord.  Also, try it over G7 or other chords in the key of C.   To download the pdf chart for this lick just click below and sign up for my email [...]

Check this out: Learn Jazz Guitar directly from George Benson Jazz Guitar tips from the man himself! Enjoy, Leon

In one of my previous articles, I discussed how important it is to develop a jazz vocabulary so that you actually start sounding like a jazz player instead of just playing up and down scales.  I mentioned the importance of learning licks and phrases.  But even if you know some licks, it can still be [...]

By Dave Fox, Pianist In this article Dave Fox gives us jazz guitarists some insight into how to play with a piano player: I am a small-group leader who likes a rhythm section to consist of guitar, bass and drums. What’s unusual about that, you ask? Nothing – except for the fact that I play [...]

Many of you may not have heard of Nick Colionne. He’s a smooth jazz guitarist that plays in a similar style to that of Norman Brown and George Benson. Check him out at www.nickcolionne.com.  But I would say that in some ways, he’s much more influenced by Wes Montgomery than Norman. I recently stumbled across [...]

Recently, a visitor to my site asked me the following question: “My Instructor wants me to sit in with a group of guys at small gig. I don’t think i’m ready for this because I still make too many mistakes.  I respect your wisdom so what do you think?” I’ve decided to answer this question [...]

The first video in this lesson demonstrates how to play a 2-5-1 phrase in the key of F. Gm7-C7-FMaj7. The concept that I used to create this phrase is the same as with the phrase that we learned last time. I’m basically using a Gm7 arpeggio and then transitioning to a diminished substitution to the [...]