The library

Jazz guitar, article by article

Every article on this site, grouped the way the ideas build on each other. New to jazz guitar? Start at the top. Came with a question? Jump straight to it — each piece links whatever it leans on.

Start here

• Where do I start with jazz guitar?An ordered first-three-months path — a few chord shapes, one progression, a blues, first lines, then a standard — in the order that makes each step possible.

Coming from rock, blues, or CAGED

• How to make guitar chords sound jazzyFive moves that turn plain open and barre chords into a jazz sound, shown on C–Am–F–G with before-and-after audio.
• Is CAGED enough for jazz?An honest answer: CAGED is a map of the neck, not a chord vocabulary — hear a ii–V–I as barre grips versus drop-2 voicings.

The voicing family, one step at a time

• What are guide tones?The third and the seventh — the two notes that decide a chord’s quality, and they sit under two fingers.
• Shell voicings: the step before drop 2Add a root under the guide tones and the chord stands up on its own: the three-note jazz chord.
• What is a drop-2 voicing?The four-note staple the app is named for — how it is built, and its four inversions with playable audio.
• Drop-2 voicing explorerA tool, not an article: every root, quality, inversion, and string set as fretboard cards with audio — with or without a bass on the root.
• What is a drop-3 voicing?The wider sibling from the sixth string, and when jazz guitarists reach for it instead of drop 2.
• Voice leading on guitarMove each voice the smallest possible distance and the progression starts to sound composed.
• Voice-leading explorerThe article's diagram, made interactive: four progressions in any key, every voice drawn as a line, and the movement counted against the same chords in root position.
• Chord extensions on guitar: which note do you drop?Ninths and thirteenths on four strings — which notes leave, and where the color goes.
• How do you reharmonize a song on guitar?Keep the melody, change the chords: the secondary dominant, the ii–V insertion, and the tritone substitution.

Soloing

• Why do my solos sound like scales?The intermediate plateau, diagnosed: the right scale describes nothing — chord tones on the strong beats do, heard as A/B audio.
• What jazz lines are made ofThe four cells underneath the lick books — chord tones, connectors, approaches, enclosures — each played over its chord.

The practice method

• A 20-minute jazz guitar practice routineTwenty minutes that compound: warm up, review what is due, one new thing, play it in time.
• How to practice jazz guitar without a guitarThe commute, the hotel room: what still works when the instrument is gone, and the one test that rules out most of the usual advice.
• How long does it take to learn jazz guitar?Honest ranges for every milestone at thirty minutes a day — and why hours predict more than years.

Practice pages

• Progressions to practiceNot articles but drills: the ii–V–I major and minor, the twelve-bar jazz blues, the bird blues, the turnaround, rhythm changes, the Coltrane cycle — each with voice-led fingerings and a band that loops them in any key.

Reference

• Jazz guitar terms, definedThe vocabulary the rest of the library uses — voicings, chord qualities, progressions, forms, and the words called out on a bandstand — a sentence or two each.
• Chords, quality by qualityReference pages that take one chord quality at a time — every drop-2 shape of it, playable, re-fingered for whichever root you pick.

New pieces are added as the library grows — the Drop2 app is where the shapes in them get drilled, by ear.