Most Popular Lessons

Hello everyone,

As with the previous lesson on dominant chord scales, I want to stress that just playing scales correctly won't necessarily produce the best improvisational content, and I think learning scales has a limited value. But there is value, and it's essentially figuring out what extensions happen on what chords.

A scale, at the end of the day, is just a 13th chord, with a 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 all put within one octave, and knowing this makes scales much more useful to me. So as you practice scales, remember this and figure out what chords they relate to.

Hello everyone!

This is a lesson geared towards beginners, but useful for everyone! I explain my method for going through all possible standard extensions and voicings for a dominant chord (there are 32 in total for any dominant chord!). The same applies to major, minor, diminished, etc.

C&C welcomed. First time uploading!
Anthony Luker

University of Southern Mississippi

Instructor Dr. John Wooton

Modes - 15 wk crs - Lesson 2

Assignments Due - Make sure all these assignments are completed.

Hey all,

The lesson offer is still on but with a small change; complete any two etudes from the blues or rhythm changes etudes I've posted and I will do a free 30 minute lesson. So if you want to do one of the blues etudes and one of the rhythm changes, you can get the lesson. Must be a decent version of each though :)

Hope to see some posts!

I always make a stand along version of tunes I'm learning. How can I play them simply and what would I do to play them like that.

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.

Here is David Friedman's Etude 2 from "Friedman-Vibraphone Technique: Dampening and Pedaling".

Line Building Blocks Exercise