If you love old standards like Autumn Leaves and Moonglow, but always thought only advanced guitarists could play jazz, you'll love Fred's easy-to-play jazz chord solos. In this lesson, you'll learn six timeless tunes from start to finish: how to play backup while you sing them, and how to play a beautiful chordmelody solo/instrumental for each song.

The tunes are arranged for beginners, with very few difficult chords. Fred plays and sings each song, then goes over the tricky spots in each tune before playing it slower, on a split screen with close-ups of both hands. Best of all, you can read all six arrangements (tablature, music and chord grids) in the booklet that comes with this lesson as a PDF file on the DVD. Chord soloing (playing the melody and chords at the same time) is a very complete and satisfying guitar style. This lesson will get you started and Fred's relaxed teaching style makes it easy.

Titles include: Autumn Leaves, Moonglow, Gee Baby Ain't I good To You, Til There Was You, Young At Heart and In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.

106 Minutes • Level 2 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: By beginners, he doesn't mean absolute beginners at guitar, but closer to advanced beginners, which is where I would put myself. While he says that the arrangements are primarily first position chords, you will need to know some barre chord shapes as well. Still, I think these are probably pretty simple arrangements as jazz standards go, but they sound wonderful to my ear. Now, I'm still working on the first song (What a Wonderful World) in the companion DVD to this one, Jazz Chord Solos for Beginners. But I plan on tackling Autumn Leaves next. I've been working on it for a month, and I think it will take me another month before I can play it well enough for the girls I go with. If you are an advanced beginner, then you can play these arrangements, if you take the time and put in the effort. Intermediate players will probably find a lot easier. In either case, this DVD is a bargain. – Patrick D. Dinsmore/Amazon Customer Review