Sid Jacobs’ Socially-Distanced Holly Woodshed

Sid Jacobs leads this 6-week course — part one of a multi-part exploration into the process of making music, creativity, and the tools we can use to play with the 12 notes we are given. The work centers on voice leading, the fundamental principle behind chord progressions, and applies everything to standards and jazz tunes so the information stays practical and fun to play.

What's covered

• Triad pair and slash chord vocabulary — creating lines from two distinct triads drawn from diatonic and symmetrical scale sources
• Fourth chords and lines, plus counterpoint exercises for improvising with two voices
• Reading voice leading in lead sheets, real books, and fake books — recognizing the linear moves that make cadences
• Seeing scales through the cycle of fourths: five perfect fourths give the pentatonic scale, seven give the major scale — a perspective that opens up intervallic lines
• Making solo guitar arrangements of standards in real time, with tunes chosen at students' request
• Economical fingering concepts that may be new even to advanced guitarists, and getting phrases to breathe and dance

For guitarists who want to deepen both their vocabulary and their understanding of how harmony actually moves. As Sid puts it: music is love — if it's not fun you're doing it wrong.