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Get in touch via https://jimmybrewer.co.uk if you're interested in guitar lessons

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In the beginning, soloing over changes is a nightmare. As rock/blues guitarists we're often used to staying in one key and tearing it up in the pentatonic scale. When we start learning jazz guitar we're told to learn all of our chord tone arpeggios, which takes a lot of brain power and is actually quite hard to link together musically.

When we listen to the jazz greats, we hear these beautifully crafted lines full of tension and release. Sometimes this is coming from a diminished arpeggio which resolves to a chord tone.

I find this approach really simplifies things down to two elements tension and resolution. We are essentially getting to the fundamental movement of the chords functional harmony.

In this lesson I talk you through how to improvise over the first 8 bars of Autumn Leaves. It's a great place to start with jazz standards and I continue to enjoy playing over it after many years of studying jazz guitar.

This is one of many ways we can approach playing over changes, but I find this is an easier route into jazz and gets your ears attuned to the chord changes quicker.



I am a professional musician from the UK, and I'm primarily known for my work in the folk/country duo Smith & Brewer. I do all sorts of session work for other artists, and I perform in a number of other bands to pay the bills.

I've been teaching for around 20 years now and I love sharing what I have learned with my students. Get in touch via my website if you are interested in having guitar lessons I teach both in person and online.
https://jimmybrewer.co.uk/


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0:00 Intro
0:30 Autumn Leaves chords
1:40 Concept Overview
6:05 Playing demo 1
7:10 Moving down the string groups
8:18 Playing demo 2
9:27 THANK YOU
10:52 Filling in the gaps
12:18 The importance of articulation
12:41 Playing demo 3
13:48 Delaying resolution
14:48 Making patterns
15:41 Where next?