Jazz Guitar Fretboard Navigation

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Develop a fingerboard facility that spans all styles—from Bach to bebop!

This book fuses the great navigational conception of the classical guitar tradition with the improvisational, on-the-fly, solo content/language of the modern jazz guitarist, to create an overall fingerboard concept that is flexible and rich. The result is a comprehensive approach to the guitar fingerboard that combines vertical orientations mixed with side-to-side and diagonal phrasing. Each Bach/bebop pair of arrangements presents similar fingering concepts so that you can see how they are applicable across styles. This will ultimately lead to a continuity in fingering concepts that you can apply to all guitar traditions. The accompanying online recordings include demonstration and play-along tracks, including guitar duets and jazz combos. Traditional fingering and tablature included.

You will learn to:

Organize and perform diverse musical content on the guitar using a variety of fingerboard navigation concepts
Visualize, organize, and incorporate implied harmonies, movable scale forms, and other musical vocabulary resulting in improved linear fingering techniques to help you solo, organize pieces, and read music on the guitar.
Discover contemporary guitar technique concepts like non-sequential fingerings, three-finger phrasing, chord tone outlining, and interval-based fingerings.
Implement navigational movement across string sets, using movable position fragments, as well as lateral, and diagonal orientation on the fingerboard.
Perform arrangements of five Bach preludes and fugues (as duets) and five bebop tunes (guitar, drums, bass, keyboards), coordinated in related pairs to help you see similar techniques at work across different musical styles

“There’s no doubt that the studies in this book will open up a huge world of musical possibilities. They employ both linear and intervallic techniques, enabling the student to move over the entire fingerboard comfortably, while developing a sense of melody and training the ear. Mark’s recordings here, notably, are great examples of ‘how good it can get.’”

—Gene Bertoncini, Guitarist, Educator, Author, Recording Artist

“Mark’s book will introduce you to mind-expanding concepts that will take you deep into the never-ending sea of guitar possibilities, as his previous work has inspired me! It will enlighten your musical journey with new ideas—in the tradition of books written by the Berklee guitar faculty, such as William Leavitt.”

—Ray Herndon, Guitarist (Lyle Lovett)

“Mark White’s inventiveness and gig-smarts put him in a special class of jazz educators; the evidence is in the success of his many prominent students. This new publication clearly identifies the DNA link between Bach and bebop, and will certainly help guitarists identify a more melodic approach to improvising more consequential ideas.”

—Howard Paul, CEO/President of Benedetto Guitars, Jazz Recording Artist/Clinician

“The ability to navigate the fretboard on the guitar is the single most challenging—and important—aspect of playing well, regardless of style. As a student of Mark’s for many years, I found his knowledge of instrument unparalleled. I am confident that if you follow the ideas he puts forth in this book, you will develop a better sense of the guitar, and will see the fretboard open up before your eyes.”

—Wayne Sermon, Guitarist (Imagine Dragons)