In the following video, I show how to play a nice 2-5-1 phrase in the key of C. Dm7-G7-Cmaj7. The ii-V-I progression is the most popular chord progression in all of jazz. It’s critical that you learn how to play over this progression. Take you time with this lick. Rhythmically, it might be a little [...]

I decided to create a video presentation giving more of a detailed overview of the structure of the Norman Brown lesson series. It will give you more of an idea of what to expect. Let me know if you have any questions. Part 1 of the series should hopefully be posted this weekend if I [...]

In one of my previous posts, I made an important point that jazz is in fact a language and it’s important to learn that language from master jazz musicians by listening to them regularly.  So, going forward I’m going to be focusing on some of the language of these musicians.  We’ll take some of their [...]

Here’s a technique that I came across that has really helped me to learn jazz guitar a lot faster and more efficiently.  It’s called the “5 Penny Method”. I just made up that name. You can use pennies or licorice sticks. It doesn’t really matter. The idea here is to use a goal/reward system to [...]

Many beginning jazz musicians have misconceptions about what professional jazz musicians actually do when they improvise. In fact, many believe that they are simply playing melodies off the top of their head or that they just have a gift for creating beautiful solos on the fly. This is most certainly not true as I’ve learned [...]

This is the second article in a series for beginning jazz guitarists. In the last lesson, I gave you what I considered to be the 8 Essential Jazz Guitar Chords. I consider them essential because they can be used right away to play through a number of jazz guitar tunes. Well, now that you’ve learned [...]

When you’re starting out as a jazz guitarist, it can be overwhelming to think of all of the chords that you have to learn. Most rock and blues guitarists are familiar with open string chords, barre chords and other “plain” chord types. Well, jazz guitarists like to spice it up and we often use extended [...]