Hi welcome to today's lesson playing "Arpeggios" over major 7 chords, minor 7 chords and dominant chords. A seasoned jazz player will have an arsenal of techniques to make any standard scale sound more musical. I'm going to start off by focusing on one of these techniques today called "the Chromatic Approach". And the Chromatic approach is performed by playing a arpeggio starting from half step below the root, half step below the 3rd, half step below 5th and the 7th of the scale. Another great approach used by several jazz players ( including one of my favorites - Al Dimeola) is starting a major scale from the note above and going back to the previous note, (for example: let's say we have a major scale so instead of starting directly from the root we would start from second note in the scale, moving back to the root, 3rd note moving back to the 2nd, 4th to the 3rd, 5th to the 4th and so on...


Make sure to practice both of these techniques on each string, starting from the first position and moving up in the fretboard.


Another Scale / arpeggio that works well with Minor 7 chords is the Dorian scale (the second mode of the Ionian or Major scale). Make sure to combine both techniques with arpeggios and also the Dorian scale.






Other embellished scales for dominant chords, used by Mike Stern, John Coltrane...