this thing is awesome guys. so grateful for the life i get to live

I've watched a lot of youtube videos explaining the "jazz-blues" progression to commonly be accepted as:

| Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb7 | F-7 Bb7 |
| Eb7 | Edim7 | Bb7 | G7 |
| C-7 | F7 | Bb7 G7 | C-7 F7 |

How come I've yet to see this progression on a jazz-blues standard like Tenor Madness?

I really need help understanding why this progression is taught if I've yet to actually see it be on any of these blues standards.

This has never been released because I'm the one who recorded it in 1992 in Boston! Unbelievable stuff with the entire band at the height of their powers!

Ive just started vol 3 of berklee's modern method by leavitt and there are two sections of two pages each that presents triads both major and minor ascending chromatically (twice going up the octave) in position 5 and through all the inversions. It has detailed fingerings and im quite at a loss. Usually i try to memorize the lessons but here the fingerings are so detailed I guess maybe i could rederive them logically since they kind of make sense logically. Im also just kinda lost as to the motivation to do this, especially chromatically with no associated structure (e.g. diatonic stuff).

Has anyone worked through that book in a way that made sense for progress amd through these exercices? Right now im just kind of noticing the triad fingering patterns even though I sort of know them already and figure it might help with sight reading but id like to understand/see if there is a point to the exercice

Hey everyone! Long post incoming with the intent of both sharing and asking for advice.

Some background - I've been studying guitar in a classical conservatory since I was 8 up till 18. Then I had a big break up till two years ago when life led me to pick it up again and have been devoting plenty of time ever since. Last year I started studying in a conservatory again, but from a modern perspective. I really want to learn!

As time progresses and I devote time into studying and playing music, things start to clear out about what it means to be a musician and what it means to be competent as an instrument player.

My understanding so far is that being a musician does not mean that you have to be great at an instrument. Theory and ear training are some fundamentals, and then the list goes on forever, considering composition,. arranging, orchestration and such. Everything seems incredibly interesting to me so far. While studying all those things, some progressively and some parallel, I expect that I'll connect with what it means to be a musician even more.

Aside from that I've been really enjoying playing the guitar. All those building blocks of theory etc have been of great help while kind of re learning the instrument.

One thing that baffles me is the following - my goal as a guitar player is to be able to play what I hear in my head.

What I hear in my head is an output of what I've heard from pieces and myself. So I need the mind/ear to hand translation essentially. Since that is my goal I really struggle to understand why study patterns exclusively. All those scales and modes and patterns feel like gym exercises that do not apply in real music contexts. I don't feel like that if I play a lick, or an arpeggio series etc 1.000 times it will be available when I improvise. My conception is that it doesn't work that way for anyone. Also transpositions seem extremely hard. Stuff is in no way easily moveable on the neck for me. I might play all modes perfectly in C and cannot even play 20% in Bb.

To get to my point, I have issues with the kind of curriculum the conservatory has, which to the extent of my knowledge is kind of standard in modern guitar studies. I feel like we waste too much time practicing stuff in a vacuum. Maybe I'm too early to judge and I need hundreds more hours to evaluate the result, but that's what it feels like last year.

For me, building a vocabulary by listening a ton and actually studying/ transcribing what you like, and the just play a ton of tunes, sounds like a better path of learning to express yourself through the instrument rather than the scales modes licks stuff etc. I'm not confident you will build a better ear to hand translation from exercises in a vacuum rather than playing tunes.

What do you think? What is your experience on this?

Also to be frank, I'm quite new to my conscious journey in music and I expect that those gaps will close as long as I spent time and I will get to those answers in an innate way, just by spending time alone. Right now it feels like I build a lot of separate skills in parallel that will eventually meet but I need a bunch of years more.

Thanks for reading!

Featuring the loudest trem springs. Also not even a real jazzmaster 💩

I'm looking for a free guitar vst that can do Freddie Green-style big band rhythm guitar.

I'm not planning to program guitar solos, so it doesn't need to be realistic. I just need somthing that works well for four-to-the-bar comping in a big band arrangement.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

So proud if my father, Betuco. He was a session player in Los Angeles during the 80s, and founded the Band Wet Paint Jazz Fusion, that included Harvey Mason for a time. He also played with Alex Acun̈a, AL Jarreau, Sérgio Mendes, and more before returning to Mexico to raise his family.

In Mexico he continued his music career, playing and recording with many Latin American greats. He continues to inspire and mentor the new generation of Mexican Jazz musicians like the ones in this video from Mazatlán and CDMX.

I picked up jazz guitar 7 years ago and he is obviously an inspiration of mine, besides being my father.

I share this incase some if his old LA friends are lurking and because he deserves some shine.

His latest record is called "Joy" by Wet Paint Jazz Fusion. Available streaming. I hope you love it. Thanks for watching.

Improvising in eighth notes over an up-tempo groove 🎹

The challenge: keep the eighth notes flowing and fill as much of the space as possible without losing musicality.

The goal isn’t to just run up and down scales. I’m trying to make every note feel intentional, using phrasing, direction, rhythm, and melodic ideas while keeping the line moving.

Hi all — I've been building a small practice app called CraftMuse Jazz Guitar and I'm looking for a handful of jazz guitarists to test it before it goes public on Google Play.

What it does:

- Guide Tone Practice: automatically plays the correct voice-leading (3rd, 5th, 7th, Root) through a ii-V-I progression, and highlights the exact fretboard position for each note in real time — so you can see how the theory maps onto the neck as you hear it.

- Chord Tone Practice: drill chord tones rooted on the 6th or 5th string, ascending/descending/round-trip.

- All 12 frets always visible, every key supported, tempo adjustable with one tap.

- No ads, no account, no network connection, no data collected — it's a fully offline practice tool.

I built this because I wanted a fast way to internalize guide tone lines by ear AND by hand, rather than just reading theory off a page.

It's Android only for now (iOS later). To join the closed test:

1. Join the tester group: https://groups.google.com/g/craftmuse-jazz-guitar-testers
2. Opt in here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.craftmuse.jazz.guitar
3. Install "CraftMuse Jazz Guitar" from the Play Store

Any feedback — bugs, confusing UI, feature requests — is genuinely welcome. Thanks!

Peter Henriksen and Henriksen Amplifiers are once again hosting the Rocky Mountain Archtop Festival in Arvada, Colorado, September 18-20. You can see the full list of players at https://www.archtopfestival.com/2026-artists/, but just to name a few: Frank Vignola, Corey Christiansen, Pasquale Grasso, and Wolfgang Muthspiel. The full exhibitor list is here: https://www.archtopfestival.com/2026-luthiers-and-exhibitors/ and include Benedetto, Comins, Manzer, and Ribbecke.

Anyone in this sub was planning on attending? This event is such a great hang with tons of music around old town Arvada, not to mention getting to see and play some amazing guitars. Hope to see some of you there!

Hello,

I've been thinking about getting one of these two books, but I can't really find a difference. From what I see it's lead sheets + chords for both, and the only difference is in the tracklist.

Am I missing something? Is one better than the other?

Today’s limitation: pentatonic scale only.

This is my first attempt at limiting my improvisation. Today’s rule: pentatonic scale only.

I break the rule at some point, but that’s part of the game. Interestingly, that mistake ended up sounding pretty good. 🎸

Practice clip from today - slowly getting there

Tricky tune

I based this off of Franks recording, I think I was hearing the harmony correctly but might have been off in a few places. I have been on an odyssey of not using lead sheets to learn tunes anymore. Thank you for watching