10 Essential Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercises www.mattwarnockguitar.com When learning how to play jazz guitar, most of us will start of with a pick before exploring other right-hand techniques down the road. These techniques could include hybrid picking, using a thumbpick or fingerpicks, or solely playing with the right-hand fingers in a jazz guitar fingerstyle approach to the instrument. For those that are ready to explore fingerstyle jazz guitar, or have set out on this journey and are looking for a way to expand your technique and dexterity, in today’s lesson I have put together 10 Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercises that will help get your right-hand up to par in the woodshed. Each of these exercises can be played with a pick and fingers, or just your fingers, so feel free to apply one or the other, or both, techniques as you work through each of these 10 important exercises. To keep things simple at first, I’ve written out all of the exercises over a ii V I VI chord progression in the key of C Major. As you become comfortable with these patterns in this key, and over this particular progression, feel free to explore these ideas in all 12 keys, over different common chord progressions, and of course over any tune you are working on in the woodshed.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 1 - Bass Then Chord The first fingerstyle exercise that we’ll look at involves separating the bass from the top three notes of any given chord. When doing so, you are putting a focus on the bassline of the chord progression you are playing. So, this exercise is ideal for those situations when you are jamming without a bass player, especially duo and solo situations. Click to hear audio for this example.
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 2 - Chord Then Bass In the next exercise, we will reverse the order of the chord and bass notes, but still keep a focus on separating the lowest note of each chord from the chord itself throughout the progression. Once you get these first two exercises under your fingers, try playing them back to back over a tune, or alternating them within a four-bar phrase so that you can hear the difference, and similarities, of these two, right-hand techniques in action. Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 3 - Melody Then Chord As we did with the first two exercises, in this exercise you will be separating one note from the other three notes of the chord, only this time it is the melody note you are focusing on. By putting a focus on the top note of each chord, you are drawing the listener’s attention to the melody line, which can be highly effective when chord soloing or playing chordmelody arrangements on guitar. 100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 4 - Chord Then Melody You can also play the lowest three-notes first, followed by the melody note in each bar of the progression. Again, this keeps the focus on the melody line and helps separate the four-note chord in a way that can sometimes sound like two guitarists are playing at the same time. To push this idea further, play the low three-notes a bit quieter as compared to the melody note, which will allow it to stand out even more and bring that much more focus to the melody notes of each chord you are playing on the tune. Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 5 - Outer Then Inner Notes The next exercise is something I’ve head piano players doing, and so I decided to transfer it to the guitar. Here, you are going to be playing the outer two notes of the chord first, followed by the inner two notes of each chord.
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
This will produce a nice “chime” effect that sounds great at slower tempos, especially on really slow ballad tempos. Again, you are playing the top note of the chord first in the bar, so you are also keeping that focus on the melody that we saw in the previous two exercises. Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 6 - Inner Then Outer Notes Here is the reverse of the previous exercise, where you are now playing the inner two notes of each chord first, followed by the outer two notes of each chord in the progression. Try playing the inner notes quieter than the outer two notes in order to reproduce the “two-guitar” effect that you explored earlier in this lesson. Click to hear audio for this example.
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 7 - Ascending Arpeggio After exploring multi-note approaches to developing your fingerstyle jazz guitar technique, here is an arpeggio exercise that can help work on finger independence, while giving you melodic material for your jamming at the same time. Though the exercise is simple, playing it with perfect time, and with each note at the same dynamic level, can be tricky. So, don’t dismiss this exercise just yet. When you can play each note at the same volume level and directly in time, with a swung 8th-note feel, then you’ve fully got this exercise under your fingers. Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 8 - Descending Arpeggio Again, we’ll now take a look at the reverse of the previous exercise, where you are now arpeggiating from the top of the chord down to the bassline throughout the progression. When doing so, avoid the temptation to play the lowest note as the loudest note. Instead, a good exercise to work on is making sure the top note of each of these chords is the loudest note, then each of the other three notes is quieter after that. Click to hear audio for this example.
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 9 - Descending Chord Then Melody The next exercise is going to break up the arpeggios that you just looked out, by first descending the lowest three notes of each chord, and then playing the melody note as the last note in each bar. Again, try and make the melody note louder than the other three notes in order to develop your right-hand control, as well as work on highlighting the melody note of each chord in your chord soloing and chord melody playing. Click to hear audio for this example.
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercise 10 - Melody Then Ascending Chord The last exercise is the reverse of the previous fingerstyle jazz guitar exercise, where here you are starting with the melody note first, followed by the lowest three notes after that. Again, keep the top note louder to focus on the melody line. But, if you want to take the exercise a step further, try highlighting any of the the other notes. So, play the 2nd note
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
of each bar the loudest. Or the 3rd note etc. Great way to work on right-hand independence and bring a focus to unorthodox notes in your arpeggio work. Click to hear audio for this example.
As you can see, by working out these 10 Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Exercises, you will not only increase your technical ability, but you will increase your musicianship and musicality at the same time. If you have even a few of these ideas down, it will leads to countless variations in your comping and chord soloing as you bring this style of playing to a jam or gig situation, allowing you to get the most out of one or two simple chord shapes as your right-hand does the bulk of the work. Do you have a question or comment about this lesson? Visit the Matt Warnock Guitar Facebook Page and post a question on the wall, be glad to help out.
100s of FREE Jazz Guitar Lessons at www.mattwarnockguitar.com
