Sonny Rollins - Tenor Madness and more

Even more stuff coming up now... for example, my transcription of Sonny Rollins' Tenor Madness. I played it at a slow pace, used some blues chord substitutions. All in all a great standard and fun to play. No tab for the melody, figure it out yourself or ask me ;-)

Also, a sort of simple analysis of the progression and ideas to use for improv. I haven't embellished this section too much, and I put the emphasis on the melodic minor since I've had more experience soloing over blues. But the good part is a 90 second jam track you can noodle on for a while. Look at the changes, be smart, mess with the melodic minor suggestions. I'm just working out a few positions (6th and 12th fret), but obviously would like to cover the neck. We'll see how it goes.

Other than that, chord voicing charts have come together a little more. I hope to get some melodic minor vamps up tonight to practice those modes. Sort of like how I used to practice the Dorian scale over a Dmin7 vamp or something, but now for the melodic minor modes.

More references - key signatures, transcriptions, intervals

You can see where this database is going now. I've been continually adding new stuff so that I'll have every tool at my disposal. Ideally, you could open up a few windows so you have fingering charts, key signatures, intervals, etc. It's simple without a lot of flair, but that makes it easier to navigate. Check out the new changes here. Lots more to go up Sunday. As I go through some jazz standards, I'll be putting up my notes for the song there. Theory analysis, comping ideas, melodic ideas, scales, etc. Some recordings too hopefully.

Chord voicings for comping

I'm in the middle of uploading my chord charts that I use for comping on the guitar. Most of these are engrained in my head by now but I always like to have something to reference. It's always helpful to know the inversion of chords so that, given any chord tone in your bass string, you can still form that same chord and not worry about moving all over the neck. Substitute in some embellishments like a 6, 9, or 13, and now it starts to sound jazzy. Check out the Major 7 Chord Inversions and Minor 7 Chord Inversions. Obviously more to come, specifically the min7b5 and dom7 chords. A work in progress.

7th mode melodic minor - Superlocrian practice

Now we're rollin... I decided to setup a simple website to keep track of my materials. I have lots of materials stored on my computer that I created myself, and it's hard enough to navigate through that. With a website, I'll be able to organize things more logically and let anyone else access them. I've called it the "Jazz Guitar Project" because I eventually hope to have a large database that many people can contribute to. Free jazz guitar resources for the broke, aspriring jazz guitarists out there like me.

I've only uploaded a few things so far. First is my practice for the melodic minor scale. I'm practicing the superlocrian (7th mode melodic minor) since it is prevalent in so many tunes. The progression I chose was a 4 measure excerpt from On Green Dolphin Street. Check it out here.

Buckling down on the melodic minor!

Ok I'm super motivated this time around to nail down the melodic minor. Not in one day of course, but worth starting. My plan of attack is to learn the positions just as I did with the major scale back in the day, and get comfortable with the fingerings and sound of each mode. I'll throw it right into practice of course with applying it to Stella by Starlight again. This makes use of the 6th mode a lot and the superlocrian (7th mode), as well as some others. Gonna post tonight some charts I am going to use to get crackin and do some old fashion muscle memory.