Here’s a youtube of Pat Metheny playing an Ovation nylon string guitar. Pat Metheny became famous in the mid seventies at a very young age touring with Gary Burton the vibes player. He recorded numerous albums on the European ECM label such as Bright Sized Life, WaterColours and with other players like Eberhard Weber. Pat Metheny has inspired many guitar players with his perfect tone, melodic lines and very musical sounding jazz guitar.
Here are some three note (triad) versions of minor seventh chords for guitar.
You may find they are more suitable at times than using full chords.
Many jazz players use these type of chords.
To download a printable version in Adobe Acrobat click the link Minor Seventh Chords
In this article I have created a simple guitar Tab and music notation of Major Seventh Chords for guitar.
Major Sevenths have a sweet sound about them, many of the seventies tunes by acoustic bands were full of major seventh chords. A clasic example from the sixties would be ‘Don’t let the sun catch you crying’. Another would be Magnolia by JJ Cale.
I have done them as triads, threenote chords. I like using triads, they have a lot of bounce in them and are very movable.
To download the free guitar tab and notation click on the
Major Seventh Chord Triads for Guitar TAB and Notation
The Aeolian mode, although it has an unusual name is more common than you may realise. It is really just the Natural Minor scale, it is the same as a C Major scale C D E F G A B C, but it starts on the A instead e.g. A B C D E F G A. It is used in improvisation over the 6th chord in the Key of C . The Chords would be Cmaj7 Dm7 Em7 Fmaj7 G7 Am7 Bm7b5. There would also be other chords which are built on the notes from the key of C but we’ll keep this simple.The example I have used is a G Aeolian. The G Aeloian mode is the same as a G Natural Minor, it consists of G A Bb C D Eb F G and it is the 6th scale from the key of B flat (Bb) . It is used over a G minor , G min7, Gmin9, Gmin sus4, it could also be used over a Gmin+5 and Gmin6. The chord scale built from the B flat scale is Bbmaj7 Cm7 Dm7 Ebmaj7 F7 Gm7 Am7b5.I have written two versions of the TAB and Notation for the G Aeloian Mode, the first version is movable up the fretboard, the second is written with some open strings, as stated in many of my other articles I like the open string sound on an acoustic guitar, and also your playing will become a little less mechanical by using different fingerings that require a bit more thought.
For the quality printable version click Aeloian Mode for Guitar
Just when you think you are getting your guitar chops together you suddenly remember the Rosenburg Trio. Two guitars Maccaferri style and a double bass playing acoustic gypsy jazz a la Django and Grappelli style minus the violin to remind you that there are always new height to aspire to. If you are not familiar with the Rosenberg’s you are in for a treat or shock. I love the ending of this tune, his chords are just fantastic after playing all those incredible single lines. The tun e is called For Sephora
Enjoy!!!
Peter Spragues music was something I became aware of in the eighties. When I was studying with jazz legend Ike Isaacs I’d always turn up and say “Ok uncle Ike, who’s hot? ” and he’d mention different players that I’d never heard of. One such player is a guy called Peter Sprague. I went straight out at the time and got a copy of Na Pali Coast on vinyl, it is still in my collection of coveted guitar albums that other guitar players I grew up with look at and go yeah…I rember that. The album was on the Concord label, to jazz experts, that would mean someting and to other people who are up to speed on drummers, it had Peter Esrskine on drums, not to mention Bob Magnusson on Bass and Steve Kujala on Flute and Tripp Sprague sitting in on one tune.
The beauty of having a guitar blog site like this is I can dig into my musical history and introduce all these astounding guitar players that you as a reader may never have the opportunity of hearing.
So here is Peter Sprague some years later, live in his lounge room, doing what he does best, play brilliant guitar.
Here’s Peter Spragues Guitar site
Tony Hogan - The Guitar Blogger
This guitar tutorial is for players that can already play to a good basic standard.
I’ve written a guitar TAB and music notation chart that uses triads (three note chords) and have also added a simple bass part. I’ve used a common chord pattern, it consistts of.
The last line is a series of chord substitutions for the Cmaj7 A7 D7 G7
If you study this chord chart very closely you’ll see there’s a lot to work with. There are so many variations that could be used. Often you need to call on different styles to add to your musical skillset, else all your music might end up sounding the same. This sort of playing is great if you have to accompany a singer in a jazz ballad. Once you get it inone key and see how it works, with a little thought you’ll be apply to take the basic principles I’ve used here and run with it.
To download the printable version click on the link: Jazz Guitar Chord Tutorial
Jazz Guitar moving bass parts is the third guitar lesson in this series of tutorials. Although this chord fretting exercise includes the previous guitar part, it moves up the guitar neck to the E minor to A Seventh chords, when you play it it will sound familiar. After the Em7 and A7, it heads back down to the Dm7 and G7.
After that sequence, it goes back to the C major 7 and has a simple turnaround that goes back to the top of the chord pattern. The chords after the Cmajor 7 are E flat 7, D7 and then a D flat 7.
Take your time working through this, this is a very useful chord pattern. Once you know it inside out you’ll hear it coming in a thousand and one songs.
To download the printable version click jazz guitar moving bass parts
This guitar site is regularly updated with guitar tutorials and lessons for guitar players of all standards and various style.
Larry Corryell, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia help take guitar improvisation to new heights in the seventies. Many people that are new to guitar and not aware of the standard that these players reached. Paco with his Flamenco background, McLaughlin with his Jazz and Indian, and Coryell with his Jazz, Rock and Fusion explorations. This youtube video is a McLaughlin piece that he recorded with his electric band The Mahvishnu Orchestra. To have one guitar player with the ability to play to this standard is brilliant, but to have three together bouncing of each other is almost unheard of. Not all people may wish to play that fast or in that style but it shows the level that players can aspire to.
Jazz guitar is more than just playing a few major 7 and minor 7 chords. These chords existed and can be found in many classical pieces and other music forms. I will not in this article attempt to define jazz guitar but I will continue on from what I wrote just under a week ago about moving bass parts . I have taken the previous exercise and added a little more to it. What I have done is broken up the chord triad (three note chord) to seperate the bass part out from the rest of the chord. This type of playing adds a bit more of a bounce to the chord progression.
Take your time with it. For those that have a bit of trouble reading dots the rhythmic pattern is just:
1 + 2 3 + 4 1 + 2 3 + 4 (the + sign equals a half beat)
If you are not used to this style, once you sort it you’ll see it opens up a lot of possibilities in your playing. Let me know how you go with it.
For a printable version click Jazz Guitar Moving Bass Parts Free Tab and Notation
I will write the 3rd part to this article with the next 7 days
My other guitar blog is at acousticguitarist.wordpress.com
John McLaughlin and Shakti came to the fore in the mid seventies, at the time they had John McLaughlin on a guitar with a scalloped fretboard, some drone strings and an Indian gentleman L Shankar on violin both playing at an awesome speed. John was known for his explorations into electric improvised music with Mahavishnu Orchestra. John McLaughlan studied Indian music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, at one point Ali was rated the greatest musician in the world by Yehudi Menhuin (one of the worlds greatest classical viloinists) .
Unless a person has studied Indian music it could be difficult to miss how complex it is and in a way this playing is a part of guitar history because it took the guitar into new areas and created new possibilities and raised the standard of guitar playing way above what we had considered possible.
My favourite Shakti album was Handful of Beauty
The folowing John McLaughlin youTube was from 1974. The interplay between musicians is of an unbelievably high standard
To show the diversity of this musician I’ve added a youtube of him playing a jazz standard for the fun of it.
By the way he’s still playing.
I first heard of Ralph Towner in the mid seventies when he played with the acoustic ensemble/ band called Oregon. I rember at the time they .played 72 instruments amongst the four members, Colin Walcott (late), Glen Moore, Paul MaCandless. Ralph Towner single handedly opened the door for many players to follow, he played a form of contemporay jazz on the nylon string guitar and also 12 string guitar. Ralph Towner is also one of my favourite piano players, his chord playing at times reminds me of Bill Evans. His guitar playing is a mix of jazz improvisation and classical (to say the least). You may hear him play straight jazz tunes at times but his approach makes them unique. Personally I think he is one of the truly great guitar innovators of our time and his impact on a lot of players has been to think a little differently about the nylon string guitar.
Ihave owned about fifteen albums featuring Ralph Towner, not only with Oregon but with Paul Winter, Chic Correa, John Abercrombie and numerous others on Manfred Eichers ECM label. The youtube I have posted about is called the Reluctant Bride, it is typical of Towners playing, a cross betwen arranged music and improvisation. What i like about Ralphs playing is his willingness to take risks and head into harmonic areas that other players don’t dare to go.
I have been fortunate to see Ralph Towner play a couple of times in my life, once with Gary Peacock in Athens Greece and with the band Oregon in Sydney Australia. If you get the chance to see Ralph Towner live, make the best of the opportunity, it truly is a music lesson on the guitar.
This guitar blog site is updated regularly with quality content to inspire other guitar players and also other guitar teachers
If you are just begining to learn to play jazz guitar chord changes, you’ll love this. It is a simple four chord pattern in C major: C major 7 , A minor 7 , D minor 7 and a G 7; commonly known as a 1 6 4 5 chord pattern. I’ve written the chords as triads, triads are three note chords. Each chord is approached from one note (one fret) above,.
It should have a bit of bounce in it when you play it. It’s very normal to play this sort of thing when accompanying a jazz singer or in a small group that has no bass player.
Click the link for the free TAB and notation of this simple guitar lesson. Moving bass parts jazz guitar
Please note, there was a small music typo in the origanl pdf file that was uploaded, it had a Bb insead of an Ab in he second bar. It has been fixed.
