Modern Guitar

The Modern Guitar Course gives you a clear, step by step path to more expressive playing while strengthening the music theory that powers it. You will connect scales, chords and modes to the fretboard in a practical way so your ideas translate into cleaner phrasing, stronger tone and confident improvisation.

Across a structured sequence of modules, you will begin with essential expression skills and blues vocabulary, move through major and minor scale applications, and learn to solo over real chord changes using arpeggios, voice leading and swing feel. From there you will unlock modal color with Dorian and Mixolydian and learn how the Circle of Fifths shapes progressions and secondary dominants that appear in countless songs. The journey wraps with tasteful reharmonization ideas that expand your harmonic palette.

You will work through musical examples anchored in standards and timeless progressions, including studies on “Autumn Leaves” for changes and “All of Me” for reharmonization practice, so every concept lives on the fretboard and in your ears.

What You’ll Learn

• Expressive tools that add nuance to every phrase, including articulation, bends and vibrato
• How to organize pentatonic and major scale positions across the neck and connect them musically
• Practical harmony: seventh chords, harmonizing the major scale and building progressions
• Improvising over chord changes using arpeggios, voice leading and swing rhythm
• Modal color with Dorian and Mixolydian plus using the Circle of Fifths for secondary dominants
• Reharmonization strategies using dominant movement, minor II V language and melodic minor ideas

Meet Your Instructor

Costas Baltazanis is a composer, producer, guitarist and educator with more than two decades of global performance and teaching experience. A Berklee College of Music graduate in jazz guitar performance and composition, he has recorded on 100 plus albums, led curriculum development and served as Head Director of the Modern and Jazz Music Department at Philippos Nakas Conservatory in Athens. He has performed across the USA and Europe and collaborated with artists including Alex Foster, Arturo Sandoval, David Friedman, Jeff “Tain” Watts, James Genus, Omar Faruk Tekbilek and The Mingus Orchestra. Costas also co founded the world fusion band Iasis and has authored multiple educational books.

Is This Course for You?

This course fits advancing beginners through intermediate guitarists who can play basic scales and chords and want to sound more expressive and modern. If you have tried to memorize shapes without knowing when to use them, you will learn to apply theory directly to solos, comping and songwriting. Jazz, funk, rock and fusion players will all benefit, since the focus is musical concepts you can apply in any style.

What’s Included

• A structured five module syllabus: Blues foundations, Major and minor scale applications, Improvising over chord changes, Modes, and Reharmonization
• Step by step demonstrations with musical examples and clear practice guidelines
• Play studies that apply arpeggios, modal color and reharmonization to real progressions
• Checkpoints that reinforce fretboard mapping, timing, feel and tone
• A practical roadmap that connects theory to expressive, modern guitar playing

Ready to elevate your sound and turn theory into music you can feel on the fretboard? Start learning today.