Guitar Harmony Basics with Tom Lippincott

Esteemed jazz guitarist Tom Lippincott is the Florida representative for Modern Guitar Harmony and, as such, has made a 4 part video series about guitar harmony basics.

Tom’s first video for Modern Guitar Harmony ‘Mick Goodrick Cycles Lesson’ (linked below) has done extremely well having been viewed over 16,000 times on Youtube at time of writing.

Some people who viewed the video were a little confused as some theoretical knowledge is required to follow the video.

Hence this 4 part guitar harmony series.

Guitar Harmony Basics Part 1

The C Major Scale

The first basic guitar harmony video starts with the C major scale.

Tom explains exactly what the C major scale is and how to play the scale on the neck. This is done with the help of some cool graphics of the keyboard as well as scale examples noted in sheet music and tablature.

The major scale formula is also covered allowing you to create and play your own major scale in any key that you choose.

Major Scale Intervals

In the second part of the video Tom discusses the building blocks of all music, intervals!

Intervals make up all scales, all chords. In essence intervals make up all the things that you play apart from rhythm.

A great tip is to sing the intervals as you play them. This trains the ear to hear music more effectively. Start by singing the intervals slowly and patiently. Over time your ear will open up like a beautiful flower. Just stick with it!

Finally there’s a short discussion about sharps, flats, accidentals and why flats are important if you want to play jazz music.

You can watch part 1 of the Tom Lippincott Guitar Harmony Basics video series here (subsequent videos will be added each week).

Guitar Harmony Basics Part 2

Part 2 of Tom’s 4 part guitar harmony basics series is all about transposition!

In this second video you learn how to transpose the C major scale from the first video into different keys.

You will learn how both the Cycle of Fourths and Cycle of Fifths work and how to apply them when practising scales or when transposing.

The benefits to knowing the cycle of fifths and fourths are huge so get started on learning them straight away!

Tom also gives a great tip for learning the notes on the fretboard which is so very important.

Guitar Harmony Basics Part 3

So far you have been playing single notes but in Guitar Harmony Basics part 3 you will learn all about ‘dyads’, ‘double stops’ which are two names given to playing two notes at the same time.

You will learn how to move these intervals through a scale so that you can make your own music out of them.

You will then learn how to construct triads from the major scale. In addition to the major minor and diminished triads you will also learn about augmented and suspended triads.

Finally you will learn how to map these triads all over the fretboard.

Guitar Harmony Basics Part 4

In part 4 of Guitar Harmony Basics you will learn triad inversions in both theory and practise.

You start by finding C major triad inversions all over the guitar neck before converting these triads into other types of triads.

Mick Goodrick Cycles Lesson

If you have worked your way through the above guitar harmony videos then Tom’s Mick Goodrick Cycles lesson video should be of great interest to you as it is basically the next step.

In this video Tom moves triads and chords in cycles. This means that they might move from one chord to the next in alphabetical order (cycle 2) such as the A chord moves to Bm which moves to C#m which moves to D etc.

Cycle 7 is cycle 2 played backwards so we move from the A chord to G#dim to F#m to E etc.

Learning cycles, and applying them to tunes or your own compositions, is a great way to find new sounds and improve the range of your playing.

For the next steps after the Goodrick Cycles video be sure to check out Tom’s lessons on Mike’s Masterclass which are linked to below.