Picking up where Jazz Guitar 101 left off, Jazz Guitar 201 explores the advanced techniques that great jazz guitarists use in order to successfully solo over chord changes found in both traditional and modern jazz compositions. Each lesson will provide you with a step-by-step approach to jazz improvisation, covering both rhythmic considerations as well as effective use of scales, arpeggios, and modes. Topics include altered pentatonic scales, across-the-bar-line phrasing, creating melodic tension on dominant chords, blues in jazz, and nonfunctional harmonic improvisation. You'll also explore transcription and rhythmic techniques applicable to both comping and soloing.

The course also provides a number of listening examples that you will study and model—recordings from past and present jazz giants, including John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, John Scofield, Grant Green, Pat Metheny, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mike Stern and many others. You will gain a more complete knowledge of the guitar fretboard—and how scales, modes, chords, and arpeggios are applied to jazz. By the end of Jazz Guitar 201, you will be able to compose your own modern jazz songs and have further developed your own jazz improvisational personality.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

Improvise over chord changes through the use of scales, modes, and arpeggios
Play solo transcriptions of Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Grant Green, and many other jazz greats
Apply advanced rhythmic concepts to comping and soloing
Demonstrate a more complete knowledge of the guitar fretboard
Improvise over nonfunctional harmony and modern jazz progressions
Compose your own modern jazz songs