The Master Arpeggio System for Jazz Improvisation: V2.0 Expanded Edition for Electric Guitar

By Dennis Roberts

Guitarists: Get on the Path to Musical Fluency

"Dennis Roberts' . . . approach follows a conceptual straight line that finds the shortest distance to musical fluency." — Award-winning jazz guitarist Alex Goodman (Foreword)

"A clear and concise point of view that will be helpful to guitarists whether you're just starting out or an experienced improviser." — David Goodrich (multi-instrumentalist, performer, and guitar instructor)

Improvisation is the art of composing in the moment with freedom of expression.

Do you feel like you're learning non-stop and getting nowhere, trying to put all the vast theory and exercises together to make it work and sound great, but your jazz lines are still not coming together and you're constantly overthinking when you really just want to play?
The Master Arpeggio System for Jazz Improvisation (MAS4JI) teach you just 10 master arpeggios and how to use them in 10 simple steps to help you generate endless jazz lines for massive gains with minimal effort.
Learn how to improvise using triads and arpeggios, target tones and voice leading, quartal arpeggios, pentatonic scales, superimposition, chromaticism, side-slipping, tri-tone substitution, and more without all the endless exercises and complex music theory using an innovative method that's easy to learn and apply.
Play with your intuition without the high costs of tuition; MAS4JI is designed to fast-track guitarists to playing and improvising sophisticated jazz lines as fast as possible using simplicity to generate complexity.
So much time and effort can be invested in the intensive learning process with relatively little results. MAS4JI is the shortcut through the forest that you can take without wandering down the wrong path and getting lost.
MAS4JI is versatile and can be easily applied to blues, rock, metal, progressive, fusion, and jam band playing styles to bring new dimensions of expression to your solos!

Remember, the music came first and all the analysis and theory came later to describe what's happening. The Master Arpeggio System for Jazz Improvisation distills the intricate language of jazz lines into one you can speak comfortably so you can play now, think later.

This expanded second edition adds helpful new material, including a new chapter that applies all the techniques to a 24 bar solo over a 12 bar jazz blues, tying everything together and preparing you to expand your playing in new directions..Prepare to visualize your fretboard in a new way and let you

• Language: English
• Publisher: MAS4JI.com
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987256633

Book preview

The Master Arpeggio System for Jazz Improvisation V2.0 Expanded Edition

Second Edition

Copyright © 2022 by Dennis Roberts

ISBN: 979-8-9872566-0-2 (paperback) Amazon

ISBN: 979-8-9872566-1-9 (ebook) Amazon

ISBN: 979-8-9872566-3-3 (ebook) Lulu

Formatting done by Trisha Fuentes

Cover design by Rachel Bostwick

Cover art: Md.Shafique Mahmud, designermdshafi at Fiverr.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States

Published by MAS4JI.com

Bennington, VT

For a link to download audio examples and for all

correspondence, please contact the author at

[e-mail] or [e-mail]

or look up MAS4JI or author’s name on

SoundCloud

Foreword

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line

Dennis Roberts’ approach follows a clear path that develops the ability to speak and understand the musical language. The Master Arpeggio System for Jazz Improvisation is a system that, bit by bit, incrementally teaches us how to organize our musical thoughts. By guiding the process in such an organized manner, we never lose clarity of focus and are able to work smarter, not harder. Moreover, we are able to learn quickly and effectively in a fashion that allows us to fully internalize our material of study. His approach follows a conceptual straight line that finds the shortest distance to musical fluency.

There is endless musical content to learn; this boundlessness is overwhelming, and it is easy for our process to become scattered and inefficient. Dennis understands the importance of organizing our approach to learning. By devising a system that is grounded in fundamental concepts, he has found a way to approach learning in a clear manner that guides us through understanding the musical language.

To speak fluently and naturally, we do not fixate on underlying components of language during the process of speech. Likewise, to improvise fluently, we must be able to tacitly understand musical mechanics while actively creating sound. Dennis’ system catalogs key concepts in a manner that can be understood quickly, retained, and drawn upon automatically to make music. This book refines our understanding of essential musical topics so that we can create informed music as freely as possible.

Organization of our learning process is integral to our success. Unfortunately, it is often overlooked and can become a hindrance to our development. Fortunately, Dennis Roberts understands this and has created a straight line that guides us towards musical fluency.

Alex Goodman

Montreux Jazz Festival International Guitar Competition,1st Prize and Audience Choice Award Winner 2014; JUNO nominee Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year https://www.alexgoodmanmusic.com/

Introduction

Improvisation is the art of spontaneous composition. In jazz, this spontaneous composition uses a variety of techniques that give the jazz language its unique sound and style. However, when learning to speak this language, things can get very academic, full of musician jargon and music education vernacular that can quickly become overwhelming and leave the new jazz guitarist overthinking their every move. On the other end of the spectrum, improvisation can also get very philosophical and esoteric, spoken of in abstract terms like an insider secret.

It’s all too easy to get bogged down in endless exercises as we try to learn the jazz alphabet so we can form sentences and paragraphs using this seemingly complex (at first glance) language. You hear about target tones, guide tones and voice leading, superimposing triads, arpeggios and scales, quartal arpeggios, chromaticism and so much more. Studying these exhaustive subjects can become a labor-intensive journey through a seemingly endless maze where the goal is often elusive.

The book you’re holding in your hand presents a very unique and innovative approach, almost a quick start method for improvising jazz and fusion style lines. Very significantly, this is not a book on how to play jazz. It does not teach you how to solo in the specific styles of bebop, hard bop, post-bop or any other kind of bop. Instead, it’s a flexible method that teaches you how to access the general jazz language without all the jargon and vernacular by using some simple diagrams, brief explanations, and demonstrations of the ideas being presented. I strive to put potentially unfamiliar terms in italics so the student can look them up on their own to better understand what we’re learning, but I keep these to a minimum.

Again, this book is about improvising, the true heart of jazz and fusion. It’s about learning how to generate great sounding lines in the moment, almost out of thin air, based on a method that, once learned, allows you to use the sounds professional jazz musicians use without having