One exercise I'm now working on is memorizing my scales in every key by going up and down on one string and saying the note name and the interval.  E.G., for A Major, I need to find an A on a string, say "A, root" and then work my way to the second or the 7th on the same string.

This should help me:

• Learn the intervals of a scale -- how many steps to the next note.
• Learn the names of the notes for each particular scale in each key.
• Get the sound of the scale in my ears.

Wes Montgomery did a lot of soloing this way, going lengthwise up and down the neck.  He was more apt to move up and down the neck horizontally instead of work in one position and articulate vertically.  It's certainly easier to perform his trademark octave runs this way.

It's important to practice them descending as well as ascending, and practice them on every string.

When I first started taking jazz guitar lessons, I put a lead sheet up and my teacher noted all the 2-5-1 progressions.  I asked how I could spot them.  He said you just kind of learn to see them and suggested I make some flash cards to learn them all.  I made some online flash cards which are linked in another post.

The PDF below lists all the major and minor 2-5-1 turnarounds and also shows how the the 2, 5, and 1 in any diatonic sequence are actually all neighbors in the circle of 4ths.  If you go counter-clockwise on the circle of fifths, you see each key moving in fourths.  Any three counter-clockwise movements of that cycle is a 2-5-1 progression in the key of the last note.

The pdf also shows the Major and Minor diatonic progressions.  The chords in a Major diatonic progression are identical to those in the Major scale for any particular scale.  For a C major scale, the root is C, and the "2" chord is the same as the second note in the C Major scale, a whole step to D.  The Dm chord is harmonious with Cmajor, because all the notes in Dm are in Cmaj.  The Dmaj  chord won't sound as harmonious, because the major third of D (which is F#) is not in the C Major scale.  Flattening the third of Dmaj to F keeps it harmonious with C Major, and makes your chord a Dm.

This means if you want to solo over a song using chords only in the diatonic progression of a Major key (C in this case), you can play any note of the C Major scale and you will always be in some sort of relative harmony with any of the diatonic chords played under it: Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, G7, Am7 and B-7b5.

With a minor 2-5, the progression is based off the harmonic minor scale.

I managed to learn a lot from Gary Burton's Introduction to Improvisation online class offered by Berklee via Coursera.  If you can catch this course, I would recommend it.

Even though I'm not really a sight-reader, I managed to get through the whole course and made some real improvements.  Gary's video lessons were short and to the point and there is a discussion forum with the course which was beneficial.

During the course I put together this giant PDF of the scales and modes Gary outlined, along with his decision tree for what scale to play over what chord.  Some of the material is repeated in different ways. 

musictheory.net has some great exercises to start learning sight reading and the notes on your fretboard.

This interactive guitar is kind of nice to visualize the fretboard and some arpeggios.

Here is another fretboard which shows the intervals of scales.

I've been adding flash card sets to this site to quiz myself.

So far, I have flash cards for these topics:

• Relative Majors and Minor keys
• Major Triads
• Major and Minor Triads
• The 2-5-1 Chord Progressions (which also help you learn the cycle of 4ths)

When the changes are moving fast in a song like "Fly Me To The Moon", you don't have time to find a scale and noodle over it.  That is why I'm learning the essential chord tones for each chord -- the 3rd and the 7th.

After targeting the essential tones of a chord (3rd and 7th), there are two things you can fall back on, or learn as a beginner.

The first is the "Joe Pass" lick.  The "formula" for this lick is play the scale step above and the a half-step below your target tone.  For a dominant 7th chord, you would probably want to target the 7th, since that is what is giving the chord its character from a Major 7th.  A scale step above is the root.  Then slide a half-step below the 7th.  Finally, hit the chord tone -- the 7th itself.  You can also swap the "upper neighbor" (the root in this case) and the "lower neighbor" (the sixth in this case), but always resolve on the chord tone.  You can start the upper neighbor or lower neighbor on the "and" of a rhythm to give it more of a "punch" when you land on the chord tone.

The next thing you can learn is to arpeggiate from the chord tone, down or up.  I learned arpeggios going down, but now I need to learn them going up.  I need to find the 3rd and 7th on the upper strings and learn my arpeggios descending.  You probably are only going to get 4 tones at most during quick changes when starting out.


For a dominant, you can drop down in minor 3rds from the 7th of the dominant chord, like a descending diminished scale run.  This will land you on the flat 2 of the dominant, which is a bit hipper than landing on the root.  In the meantime, you will hit the 5th and the 3rd.  Pretty cool!

The essential tones of a song's changes every jazz guitarist should know are the third and seventh of every chord.  You should obviously know the root, but that is written plain as day on the lead sheet.

Just by playing the 3rd and 7th of every chord, a guitarist can outline the harmonic movement of a song.  When a bass play is involved, they will generally play the root, so there is no need to repeat that.  The third will identify a chord as Major or Minor and the seventh will reveal whether the chord is Dominant or even fully Diminished.

I have a pdf chart with all the shell voicings here.

This site is my notes about learning jazz.  Email me if there is something wrong on the site.