Quick Navigation:

• Click the button to download a quick chapter from my book, “The Improvisor’s Path”. This can serve as an overview of most everything covered here.

• Make sure to check out the FUNDAMENTALS MODULE first to explore lessons on pentatonic scales as well as more of the basic ‘building blocks’ of scales and fretboard awareness.

 The Major Scale & Related Modes

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Intervals Explained

What intervals are, how the naming conventions work and why they are so useful to think about.

Fretboard Awareness: Root Down

Many of us get locked into only thinking from the root up through scales and arpeggios but learning to see other scale tones from either side of your root is paramount to fretboard freedom.

Scales As The Alphabet

Why are scales important? There are some useful and not-so-useful ways to approach scales. Here is my perspective.

Major Scale 1

Mapping out the major scale all over your fretboard. There are so many ways to approach this one scale and building a strong foundation with the major scale makes everything easier.

Major Scale 2

Ways to expand upon the way we perceive and explore our major scale using broken intervals and double-stops.

Turning Scales Into Music

I like to always practice making music when I practice, even when internalizing patterns and mechanical devices. Here are my thoughts on how to use music making as a way to have fun exploring your scales and expanding upon them to create melodies and grooves..

Internalizing Diatonic Relationships Using Chordal Grooves

Creating little grooves is a great way to explore making music with your scales. Here is how I further internalize scalar relationships using simple chord shapes and rhythm to make music while I practice.

Modes of the Major Scale

Major scale modes!

Other Useful Scales

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Pentatonics: Major & Minor Interchange

Exploring the major and minor relationships within our pentatonic scale.

Chord Scales 1: What, Why & How

What are chord scales?

…and why I think they are the best way to think about harmony when playing through chord changes.

Chord Scales 2: In Practice

How we can apply chord scales and incorporate them into our practice.

Octatonic Scales: The altered / diminished relationship explained

1 scale… 8 chords!

What are octatonic scales and why do jazz musicians love them so much? An incredibly useful scale for playing over both altered dominant chords as well as diminished chords.

Arpeggios & Inversions

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Arpeggios & Inversions 1

The foundation of what arpeggios are, how we build them for different chord types as well as an explaining what ‘inversions’ are.

Arpeggios & Inversions 2

Here, we start exploring arpeggios & inversions in our practice through chord changes.

Arpeggios & Inversions 3

Incorporating extensions into our arpeggios and inversions (9 11 13)

Other lessons referenced in this video:

Why I Practice Chord Tones Out of Time

Exploring chord tones out of time through a set of chord changes is a fantastic way to give ourselves time to practice thinking through and recognizing chord tones without the pressure of a metronome or play-along. I’m a huge fan of using a set of chord changes as a vehicle to explore harmony on my fretboard freely and at my own pace.

Scales & Arpeggios to the 9

This is another nice way to start introducing extensions into our patterns in an intentional way.

Scales & Arpeggios to the 13

Continuing on to include every note of the scale over two octaves giving us our full chord scale in 3rds!

Stand-Alone Video Sections