Harper Willis As a jazz improviser, what you play over dominant chords makes up a big part of your sound and style. Popular scale choices for dominant chords include the mixolydian scale, the mixolydian scale with a raised 4th, the altered scale and the whole tone scale. The diminished scale is another great and perhaps [...]

by Richard Gilewitz I never imagined my music would one day take me to Tasmania. But, it makes sense to eventually end up there since I’ve traveled nearly tip to tip on the globe – from Invercargill, New Zealand to the Orkney Islands and Hoy, which is two ferry boat rides away from the northern [...]

 by Harper Willis As guitarists, most of the time we can only play four notes at once—five or six if we use our thumb and/or bar the frets. Fortunately with music, as with most art, often less is more. Even the best pianists don’t play fat five and six note voicings all the time. Keith [...]

by Harper Willis  Playing endless strings of eighth-note lines over chord changes is fun—and impressive, but it’s shouldn’t be an end in itself. Eventually running licks or patterns through chord changes gets boring—for the listener and the musician. Here’s a simple practice technique that might help inject some musicality into your eighth-note lines.   Step [...]

I am the director of a small Christian School that my church started this year in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Chimaltenango is a fairly large city with a population of over 100,000 not including surrounding suburbs.  After seeing some of the struggles some of the students were having in their regular studies, I decided that it might [...]

by Tomas Altamirano    A sequence is a musical pattern repeated at various intervals. Sequences are excellent for warming up and for developing great picking and fretting technique. Once you get comfortable with them you can apply them to any type of notes and create interesting melodic lines and solos.   Before playing the exercises [...]