When it comes down to it, I really love playing jazz guitar. Playing jazz guitar is fun, challenging, and rewarding all at the same time.

Playing jazz gives you a way to express yourself musically, explore your creativity, and enhance your knowledge of music theory and the guitar fretboard.

I've been hooked on jazz guitar ever since I found out there was a band at school that I could play guitar in. I joined the jazz band and have been playing jazz ever since.

While at first learning jazz guitar was just a way to get to play guitar at school, it soon became a lifelong study of this amazing style of music.

When you're new to jazz, it can seem like there is a ton of learning that you need to do before you even start to play jazz guitar. (Let alone playing entire songs!)

This isn't necessarily true - Learning how to play jazz guitar requires the same basic guitar playing skills as any other style of music.

​If you take it one step at a time, you can absolutely learn how to play jazz guitar - you just have to learn to apply your guitar playing skills to this great style of music.

Arpeggio patterns are a useful skill for any guitar player.

​These patterns help you outline chords in your solos, improve your technical skills, and can help you master the guitar fretboard as you learn them.

Dominant 7th is the full name of a chord quality that you are probably already familiar with, whether you realize it or not.

A G dominant 7th chord symbol would be G7.

​Most of us have learned these simply as "7th chords" - I'm going to be a little more specific in this lesson because there are different types of "7th chords" that you might learn later on.

With arpeggio patterns, you are playing the notes from a chord  one at a time - almost like a scale pattern.

If you play a G7 arpeggio, you are playing a G7 chord in a way that you can use for playing melodies, riffs, or guitar solos.

These arpeggio patterns will challenge your fingers to move in new ways, adding a new layer to your technical skills and abilities.

By playing these arpeggio patterns from different starting notes on each string, you can play in any key, anywhere on the guitar fretboard.

Dominant 7th arpeggio patterns are found in many musical styles, including jazz, rock, blues, country, and other popular styles. No matter what kind of music you want to play, these arpeggio patterns will come in handy.

Major 7th arpeggios are an important skill for any jazz guitar player to have.

Practicing these arpeggio patterns will help you improve your technique in both hands, develop ideas for improvisation, and learn the notes on the guitar neck.

You are also training your ears and fingers to find notes that are a part of the major 7th chord - so when you see one written on the page (or recognize the sound when you hear it), your fingers know what to do already.