1-hour Guitar Mentorship

Coaching•By Adam Levy

Comping Study: Henry Mancini's' "Days of Wine and Roses"

Full-voiced chords. The pdf includes notation, tablature, and chord diagrams (with suggested fingering).

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

Comping Study: Horace Silver's "Peace"

Full-voiced chords, four ways: rooted chords, rhythmic variation, rootless chords, "broken" chords. The pdf includes notation, tablature, and chord diagrams (with suggested fingering).

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

Comping Study: Sonny Rollins' "Doxy"

Full-voiced comping chords, two ways: "Mild" (chords without extensions or tensions) and "Spicy" (chords with extensions and tensions, as well as some chromatic passing chords).

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

Jazz Chord Cheat Sheet

This PDF shows the common 4-note (7th type) chords with the Root on 6th string, 5th string, and 4th string. There are no extensions (9ths, for example) and no inversions here — just the basic forms. Good stuff to know, for Jazz and beyond. As Dr. Bronner might say: Transpose! Transpose! OK!

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

John Coltrane's "Naima": solo-guitar arrangement

My arrangement of John Coltrane's "Naima", in drop-D tuning. Level: Intermediate.

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

Phrasing: Play What You Mean

I made this course because I get so many questions about phrasing in my teaching practice. You see, the basic elements of music are easy to grasp. Scales, rhythm, chord relationships. But the way these things are often taught, it’s like looking at a recipe that merely lists the ingredients — but doesn’t tell you anything about cooking time, temperature, or spice variations. Those are the things that we will spend the most time on in this course. In the five chapters, you’ll learn how to begin and end your phrases with confidence, connect with the underlying chord progression, tell a story, and cultivate your own style. Throughout the course, I will be playing along with some chord loops I have made. These loops will be included for you to download so that you can jam along and work on your phrasing any time you like.

Course•By Adam Levy

Shell Chords: Essential Shapes for Jazz Guitar Accompaniment

This book is written with intermediate-level guitarists in mind — specifically, those who are interested in jazz repertoire and jazz harmony, and who want to develop their accompaniment skills. Most of the lessons in this book are presented via etudes based on well-known jazz tunes — such as “Beautiful Love” and “Straight, No Chaser.”

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy

Three Useful (and Flexible) Dominant Shapes

This PDF goes along with this excerpt from a recent YouTube livestream: https://youtu.be/1lHc-Zft_6U I was asked by a viewer to demonstrate three of my favorite dominant shapes — so I did. I find these shapes super useful in jazz — for comping, chord soloing, and chord-melody arranging. I hope you'll put them to work!

Digital file•1 file•By Adam Levy