CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS FOR THE PEDAL STEEL As I have progressed writing my book “Contemporary Sounds for the Pedal Steel” I…
This first sentence is probably the most important thing to remember: Context is everything. I will come back to this…
Since every chord progression, whether Major or Minor, uses a V7 dominant chord to return to it’s root, or home…
A turnaround is a short chord progression of two to four bars that can serve as an introduction, an ending,…
If you’ve studied many music instruction books you may have read the admonition after a musical example: “Practice this in…
Quartal chords, with their open, ambiguous sound, are great for comping behind a soloist or melody line. In this Blues…
Chords based on stacks of fourths instead of traditional triad-based harmony have been a staple of jazz players since the…
The E9th tuning that we know today offers many possibilities for harmonies based on the simple Major and minor chord…
Here’s a nice, usable, bluesy sounding lick on E9 that can work over the basic changes to a blues or…
PENTATONIC APPLICATIONS Any five note scale can be called a pentatonic scale, but the one that gets the most use…
THE NUMBER SYSTEM I first read about the Number System in Jerry Coker’s 1964 book “Improvising Jazz”. I found it…