Fretboard
Movable scale fingerings · pp. 6–23
The book's movable fingerings cover eleven scales in all twelve keys, and the neck is drawn in the book's orientation so the shape on screen matches the shape on the page.
Practice tools
These are small practice tools for jazz guitar, built for my students. Each one is a single page with no setup, made to open on a phone in the practice room.
Most of them come from my Jazz Guitar Technique Handbook, which is a free PDF, and are listed here in chapter order, with the page references. Each tool works on its own, but it is more useful with the book open beside it. The last group stands apart from the book.
Scales
Scale practice
Scale Practice 101 · pp. 61–64
Pick a key, a concept and a tier, and the walkthrough turns the chapter's instructions into exercises you step through one at a time.
Arpeggios
Arpeggio practice
Arpeggio Practice · pp. 76–78
Browse the full shape library by root finger or from any root you click, then work through the book's three practice approaches.
Chord voicings
Shell voicing builder
Shell Voicings 101 · pp. 45–51
Build shell voicings by rule and mobilize the top strings, then comp them through the book's progressions and tunes with nearest-position voice leading.
Inversion drill
Drop-2 and Drop-3 · pp. 52–59 · key study p. 82
Drill drop-2 and drop-3 inversions on every string set: up the neck, through the key studies, and through the leadsheet changes.
Voice-leading trainer
Nearest-inversion voice leading · p. 79
Resolve each chord to the nearest inversion instead of jumping back to root position. The trainer shows you the path, reveals it beat by beat, or makes you choose it chord by chord.
Quartal voicings
Quartal Harmony · retroactive chapter
Stack fourths on every degree of the key and one shape serves many chords. The tool covers the catalogue, the modal labels, the chord-symbol method, ii–V–I sets with half-step planing, and two tunes.
Triad voicings
Triads · pp. 39–43 · Exploring Triads p. 81
The closed and open triads on every string set match the diagrams in the book, and the Ex. 8 key study and a tiered drill run from those same shapes. A fourth tab puts a major triad over all twelve bass notes and names the result.
Charleston
Rhythmic Considerations · pp. 83–84
The rhythms are sorted into five families, and you either read them from notation and play along with the click or hear one and name it.
Stand-alone tools
Enclosures
The engine builds each enclosure from a key, a chord tone and a family rather than showing you a page of finished ones. It covers goal notes, the three types and the five families, and access points through the 13th.
Line ladder
This generates improvisation lines for any instrument: you name the concepts, it runs them through a progression, smooths them rung by rung and engraves transposed parts.
2 & 4
The click lands on beats 2 and 4, then fades out bar by bar so your inner clock does the work.
Chartwright
Type lyrics with the changes above them and the spacing adjusts itself, so each chord sits over the syllable it belongs to.
Composition assignments
These are the prompts I give composition students, and a few carry a small tool that generates seed material: tone rows, invented pentatonics, alphabet melodies and displaced rhythms.