Intermediate Starter Series

Description

Series Includes:

Expanding Your Chord Vocabulary Class Content | Vic Juris

The Art of Fusion Guitar – Part I Class Content | Maurice Arenas

Maurice Arenas has specially created this series for Mike’s Master Classes targeting the overall player who wishes to comprehend and master many musical genres. In the first video of the series a fusion solo is broken down that contains elements of Jazz, Blues, Shred, Rock and Fusion. This first video was intended for guitarists of many skill levels from Beginning, Intermediate to the Advanced. Each level will receive something on each topic, which enables the student to continue learning more after certain concepts are internalized.

The first in this video series covers a variety of concepts used in many genres, including Rock, Shred, Blues, Jazz and Fusion

The techniques and concepts shown and explained are:

• Chords used in the lesson (including Jazz chords and Slash chords)
• Sweep Picking Arpeggios similar to “Frank Gambale” (Level 1 and 2)
• Hybrid Picking
• Playing Chromatic passing tones – outlining small chords
• 3 Octave Scales with a logical approach
• Pentatonic Scales with a repeated notes similar to “Allan Holdsworth” and “Paul Gilbert”
• Diminished Arpeggios and Applications in Jazz, Blues and Rock
• 7 Modes of the Major Scale – 3 notes per string
• 5 Pentatonic Boxes – 2 notes per string
• Fingerboard Knowledge Overview – Maurice Arenas basic approach to viewing the guitar
• Scales on one string, 2 notes per string, 3 notes per string, 3 octaves

View clips from this class

Bebop Flow: Connecting Harmonic Concepts with the Family of 4 Class Content | Sheryl Bailey

How to Improvise with Major Triads Class Content | Juampy Juarez

All the scales covered

A simple tool like the major triad, well known for most jazz players, now becomes a powerful device for improvising and composing, and for a better guitarist’s understanding .
These triads have a very strong sound in itself. For this reason, we can mix them and improvise with many of them together.
In this clinic we will learn to use major triads belonging from Melodic minor, Diminished, Harmonic and Augmented, so we are covering all the scales that we use in Western culture.
I added two blues of my own, of which the melodies are based upon major triads indeed.
Most important of all, we will sound more modern than before, and many new melodies will appear in our sonic palette. Geniuses like  John Coltrane, Joe Diorio, Pat Metheny and many more used major triads in their playing.
Juampy Juarez

Advanced Harmony for the Jazz Guitarist Class Content | Roni Ben-Hur

The Half Diminished Sound Class Content | Tom Lippincott

Half diminished (also known as minor seventh flat five) chords are a familiar structure to most jazz guitarists and occur in many, if not most, standards.  Even beginning-level players usually know a couple of half diminished voicings to plug in when needed.  However, because this sound isn’t as common as major, minor, dominant, and even fully diminished chords, jazz guitarists are often not as well-versed with half diminished as with the other sounds.

Many players who can otherwise improvise and comp comfortably and effortlessly through a tune might stumble when a half diminished chord comes up.  It’s understandable that we aren’t as familiar with concepts that we don’t use as frequently.

This class will focus, in detail, on the often ignored, but beautiful and ethereal-sounding half diminished chord.  First, we will find chord voicings and arpeggios all over the neck with exercises and suggestions for improving fluency.  Then, we will investigate many different uses of the half diminished sound so that it can be implemented over just about any of the commonly played harmonies in jazz.

This class will help you become more comfortable soloing and comping on half diminished chords, and it will also give you new ideas for using half diminished chords and arpeggios superimposed over other harmonies to create new and exciting sonorities.

The Half Diminished Sound covers:

• Basic structure and sound of the chord
• All voicings on the guitar of the half diminished/minor seventh flat five chord
• Half diminished arpeggio fingerings, both along individual strings and across the strings by position
• Exercises for gaining fluency with the chords and arpeggios all over the neck
• Explanation of different techniques for adding color tones to half diminished chords, with numerous examples
• Thorough exploration of using half diminished sounds to represent harmonies from the major and melodic minor scales, both as chords and as arpeggios, with multiple example of each • use of half diminished chords to create harmonized melodic minor scales
• Finding the four half diminished chords contained in the diminished scale and using them as chords and arpeggios to create fresh sounds on diminished chords • single note solo etude demonstrating material from the class on the chord changes to “Upper Manhattan Medical Group”
• Chordal etude using a harmonized melody utilizing the concepts from the class, also using the chord changes to “UMMG”
• Running time: 95 minutes
• Includes 22 pages of written examples and exercises • All musical examples from the video are provided in music notation, tablature, and chord grid form.
• Each example performance in the video is titled and numbered for easy navigation.
• MP3 backing tracks for written examples, as well as full-length tracks for improvisation practice