Don Mock, master guitarist and educator, reveals his favorite chord voicings and comping concepts and demonstrates them in the context of soulful jazz and blues chord progressions that are easily applied to any situation. Includes: the "best" and most useful chord voicings, chord extensions and alterations, chord substitution and secondary dominants, powerful "half-step connections," and several complete 12-bar blues progressions. Includes tab booklet.

Great musical ideas need great chops to back them up. Build your finger strength, flexibility and independence with these exercise books from one of America's leading guitar schools. Jazz Chops covers the finger independence needed for smooth, rapid changes between complex jazz chords in the context of important progressions, such as ii-V-I. Develop your chops practicing exercises in the style of music you enjoy!

The same notes can sound square or swinging, depending on how the music is phrased. This revolutionary book shows how many people misunderstand jazz phrasing and shows how to replace stiff phrasing with fluid lines that have the right jazz feeling. In this book, master pianist Hal Galper also shows how get that feeling of forward motion and also how to use melody guide tones correctly, how to line up the strong beat in a bar with the strongest chord notes, and much more!

(Musicians Institute Press). Perfect for seasoned rockers seeking new challenges and jazz newcomers looking for a good start, this book/CD pack covers scales, chords, licks, techniques and other vital jazz improv concepts step by step. The accompanying CD features 65 full-band demo and play-along tracks.

When improvising, what your mind hears is more often than not determined by what your body can reproduce on your instrument. Much of your conception as an improviser is determined by your technique. If you can't play certain types of ideas, you are simply not going to conceive of them while you are improvising. Even if you could, it wouldn't matter, since you couldn't play them anyway. This book presents serious chops-building technical studies for single note lines and chords. Plus, the examples feature a lot of harmonic content. The material is written in standard notation.

General Reference