Jody Mac

This lesson is a latin feeling improvisation that utilizes notes from two easy sources: the G Major scale, and the D minor pentatonic scale. You will notice that it is in the key of G Major....

The chords contained in the backing are:  G7M, C#sus4, C, C7M   Notice that the G note in the bass is held for most of the progression. Movement is minimal despite the tonal chan...

In this example, be careful of bar 2 where there is a short burst of three notes. They are intentionally fast, passing notes to set up the G note on the first beat of bar 3. Remember also th...

If you have a tremolo bar on your guitar, now is the time to put it to work! This example uses it quite sparingly, but you can experiment with greater degrees of bending for a more 'outside'...

Important note:  the last 7 bars use the fingers of the right hand in place of the pick. Bar 2 can be a tricky transition, so practice transferring your pick to a comfortable place...

This backing is in the key of G Major and is set to 120 BPM. Have fun improvising!

Lick 1 The first example uses a chromatic run and legato. Use it to break out of the traditional blues box. The chromatic notes add interest and stretch the listener. The tempo is quite fas...

Lick 2 This is a unique way to turn ordinary lines into head turning slide emulation. Heavily influenced by Jimmy Herring and Derek Trucks, it uses only a few notes, but wrings every possib...

Lick 3 This is a lick in the style of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Nothing says blues like an occasional nod to one of the greats. Many players try to emulate Stevie to the point of unoriginality. B...

Lick 4  This lick is built around an Am arpeggio played over G minor. It sounds fairly outside when played in context due to the first notes in the pattern. Don't overdo it though. An ...

Lick 5 This lick requires you to master the art of raking the strings. It's a good transition lick to set up your favourite blues runs. It is derived from the F# Blues scale. Don't let the ...

Introduction   The Nashville number system allows you to quickly jump into unfamiliar music even without knowing standard notation! As the name suggests, it originated with Nashville ...

Theory   Now that we know the chords of the diatonic key (naturally occurring chords within the major scale), we can apply the follow roman numerals to each of the chords:  &nbs...

Rhythm   This system of interpreting music has a very handy visual method of showing rhythms. All the chords are broken down into measures. When you look at a chart, you can see exact...

Hey Guys!  This tutorial is an introduction to sight reading. It assumes that you are already familiar with standard notation on the treble clef. If you aren't ready to dive into it ye...

This example is a rather tedious, but highly beneficial exercise to work into your practice routine. It uses a repeated note (open b string) and cycles through four single meters - 2/4, 3/4,...

The last example is a Jazz phrase over a II/V/I chord progression in the key of Db Major. It begins to tie together the concepts of rhythm and notation reading. I've intentionally put it in ...

One of the most important, and often overlooked elements of the guitar is the tone created by your fingers. It is the first point of contact that you have with the guitar, and possibly one o...

The following is a simple lick at first glance, but contains a number of elements which require attention to detail. The lick, which is derived from a Gm Pentatonic scale uses only the right...

This lesson builds on what we learned in the previous video. It vamps on a Dm7 chord to achieve a funky rhythmic sound. Although we are only using one chord, the percussive stops and staccat...

This example is a short jazz comp which connects chords of the diatonic key using a walking bass line. Passing tones are used as a way to get from one chord idea to the root of the next. In ...

Hey there! In this video we'll be looking a blues lick inspired by Joe Bonamassa, a modern blues player. Remember to learn it slowly in parts. The lick is played over an Am7 chord. Be sure t...