How to Play Solo Jazz Guitar:from Simple to Complex

Juampy Juarez walks step by step through the tools of solo jazz guitar, starting simple and building to complex — using Autumn Leaves as the working example. His core advice: get the melody perfect first (transposed an octave up to leave room for chords), let silence do some of the work, and add harmony gradually rather than trying to play everything at once.

What's covered

• Memorizing the melody and chords, and playing melody as a question answered by simple three-note guide chords
• Guide tones (3rds and 7ths, no bass) in the style of Jim Hall, Ed Bickert, and Lenny Breau
• Block chords, inversions, drop-2 and drop-3, rootless and three-note voicings
• Soloing within solo guitar, diatonic passing harmonies, and ideas from the melodic minor scale
• Playing bass and melody simultaneously with contrapuntal lines that still swing
• Intros and endings, working inside or outside a harmonic center
• Modern harmony: quartal voicings, clusters in the style of Herbie Hancock and Bill Evans, diminished and augmented tonalities
• Signature sounds of players like Lenny Breau (harmonics), Chet Atkins, Ralph Towner, and Jim Hall

Standards, blues, and bossa nova are all covered, and the material is presented so any player willing to do the work can start building arrangements and a solo repertoire. The class is over an hour long and includes 12 pages of written material in standard notation and TAB.