Jazz Guitar Lesson: Learning to Play Over Giant Steps

I lay out and approach to playing on Giant Steps on the guitar. This approach can work for learning how to improvise over the changes to any tune. Sorry for the abrupt end. I was almost out if time.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Jazz
• Guitar
• Giant
• Step
• Improvisation
• System
• Learning
• Lesson
• Coltrane
• Change-Running

[BINKYTHEDOORMAT1]

Greetings from Newcastle , England Geoff. Your the best teacher by far on here, ive learnt so much from you , you explain everything so clear it's easy to understand but not to play!! Lol any chance of a quartal harmony lesson and it's applications. Keep up the great work I'm so grateful your doing this in your spare time for us, your a good guy man. Cheers!

[geoffstockton]

@BINKYTHEDOORMAT1 I'm gonna try to record it and post it on Monday. I've been meaning to hit that topic for sometime. Thank you for all the words of appreciation and encouragement. Sincerely!

[hsnopek]

do you use digital patterns in this video? i think it's an interesting subject.. btw, i've always felt that playing the home scale of ii-V-I is like cheating.. how common is that practice in jazz or players mostly tend to follow every change seperately?

[geoffstockton]

@hsnopek On a tune like this, where the changes are as frequent and distant as they are, this would be what's usually going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm altering some 9ths & 5ths and here and there when I'm hitting the V7 chords. I'm still emphasizing the notes differently depending on whether I'm on a Imaj7, a IIm7, or a natural V7 though each mode relates back to the same major scale. So by all means, really learn to play the changes but but start by learning the tonal movement of the tune.

[geoffstockton]

Respond to this video... Also, learn to apply all the diatonic and non-diatonic substitution concepts that you learn to the chords in the progression when you play over it. Anyway, I had already decided that this lesson was gonna be a part 1. So I'll get into it more soon.

[ohadvik]

thank you !! 

[Broyale26]

THANK YOU!

I have the sheet music in front of me and you've made it so easy for me to understand what's going on with the chord changes. All that's left to do is practice this badboy....thanks again.

[SIRONEDRAGON]

cool : )

[9shailendra6]

Excellent lesson. It perfectly explains playing over Giant Steps, specially for guitar players. All the best, Sir, and keep up the great work.

[Kaitano94]

great stuff

[JGCanning]

This is great Geoff, thanks.  Could we possibly prevail upon you to do a quick lesson on Giant Steps comping? It would be particularly cool to learn to add a bass line like the one you sampled (and/or simply a lesson on adding bass parts to major and minor 251s). Might such a thing be in the near future? Thanks a ton. Cheers -JGC