Theory and Harmony in A Minor

Hello GMC! Welcome to a final lesson regarding Jazz in A minor series. This lesson is part 5 of the series regarding Jazz and approach I use over this type of Jazz/Pop/Rock/Blues harmony. Here we will focus on Theory and Harmony behind the chord progression as well as scales, modes, pentatonics and arpeggios from root.

The key of this piece is A minor, and around that A minor I use modal harmony. Modal harmony is a concept that allows you to take specific mode of the scale and create chord progression around it as well as melodies. In this piece I used a combination of modal harmonies (that is possible - yes) and ended up with what you hear today.
This piece will be a little bit harder to improvise over but the things mentioned in previous 4 parts of series will help you in conjunction with this (most important) part.

For the solo I used Scales, Modes and Arpeggios. Also this solo is a guide how you should approach difficult piece or any new piece that you encounter and want to improvise with. This is very basic approach but very effective. In future series we will apply this approach a lot.

This lesson is meant to teach you how to analyze piece of music or any given chord and find your way around it. It might be a little advance lesson but don't be afraid, tackle it and if you have any questions please do let me know.



When you finish this lesson hopefully you would have captured and mastered some of the following techniques:

- Alternate picking

- Economy picking

- Sweep picking

- Straight rhythm

- Better knowledge of notes on your fretboard

- Scales, Arpeggios and Modes in one octave from any note

- Using arpeggios in solos

- Using modes in solos

- Using scales in solos

- String skipping etc


Equipment I used for recording my sound was: Custom built guitar (G. Papazoglou) with Pod X3 live going directly to computer.

Take your time studying whole series and feel free to jump between all of them by using related lessons link. Hope you guys will learn a lot from this lesson and whole series.

I look forward hearing from you all about it!


Pedja