BEBOP GUITAR IMPROV SERIES
A Comprehensive, Step-by-Step Approach to Modern Jazz Guitar
BEBOP GUITAR IMPROV SERIES
A Comprehensive, Step-by-Step Approach to Modern Jazz Guitar
The BGIS Courses: Vol 1 & 2
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BGIS Lesson Book VOL 1
The Lesson Books
Bebop’s essential melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements, explained step by step, with 42 etudes across both books, in order of difficulty.
BGIS Workbook VOL 1
The Workbooks
Exercises that develop the Lesson Books’ improvisation concepts in a variety of harmonic contexts.
The Scale & Arpeggio Book
The Scale & Arpeggio Book
The Heptatonic System of Fingering Patterns: vertical and horizontal fingerings for improvising over chord changes. Notation and tab included.
Newest Course:
The Polyphonic Jazz Guitar Series
CHORD MELODY, HARMONY & ARRANGING
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The Lesson Book
The Workbook
The Lesson Book
Functional harmony, reharmonization, and chord-melody arranging: the theory and methods behind a polyphonic approach to jazz guitar.
The Workbook
Etudes and exercises that build harmonic fluency, comping, and arranging skills across the fretboard.
“The Bebop Guitar Improv Series course by Maestro Richie Zellon completely changed the way I understand music today.”
Walter Sá, BRASIL
“By following his process, jazz improvisation is not a prospect but an inevitability.”
Randy Cohen, USA
“…the most complete jazz guitar course I have come across. I have more than twenty courses in my library…”
Massimo Momo, ITALY
The BGIS Courses: Vol 1 & 2
Tell Me More...
Tell Me More...
BGIS Lesson Book VOL 1
The Lesson Books
Bebop’s essential melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements, explained step by step, with 42 etudes across both books, in order of difficulty.
BGIS Workbook VOL 1
The Workbooks
Exercises that develop the Lesson Books’ improvisation concepts in a variety of harmonic contexts.
The Scale & Arpeggio Book
The Scale & Arpeggio Book
The Heptatonic System of Fingering Patterns: vertical and horizontal fingerings for improvising over chord changes. Notation and tab included.
Newest Course:
The Polyphonic Jazz Guitar Series
CHORD MELODY, HARMONY & ARRANGING
Tell Me More...
The Lesson Book
The Workbook
The Lesson Book
Functional harmony, reharmonization, and chord-melody arranging: the theory and methods behind a polyphonic approach to jazz guitar.
The Workbook
Etudes and exercises that build harmonic fluency, comping, and arranging skills across the fretboard.
About the BGIS Course Curriculum
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BGIS Lesson Book VOL 1
BGIS Workbook VOL 1
The Scale & Arpeggio Book
The Arpeggio Frameworks Book
Bebop is a language. Like any language, it has its own melodic grammar, rhythmic syntax, and internal logic, and it has to be learned systematically, not assembled from fragments.
If you’ve worked through jazz guitar methods and still can’t improvise fluently over changes, the problem likely isn’t your playing. Most methods are too superficial, disorganized, or try to compress an entire discipline into a single book or a handful of videos. That’s not a curriculum. It’s an outline. This series was built to solve that problem completely.
It is a complete, two-volume system developed exclusively for linear, single-note jazz improvisation on guitar: hundreds of step-by-step video lessons, 6 books, and downloadable audio and practice files. This is only a brief overview: for full details on each volume, select one of the course buttons above.
Newest Course:
The Polyphonic Jazz Guitar Series
CHORD MELODY, HARMONY & ARRANGING
Tell Me More...
The Lesson Book
The Workbook
Where the Bebop Guitar Improv Series develops single-note improvisation, the Polyphonic Jazz Guitar Series develops the other side of the jazz guitarist’s skills: harmony. It is a separate, complementary course on chord melody arranging and comping.
Volume 1 covers three connected areas: functional harmony, chord studies, and arranging, with a step-by-step procedure for building chord melody arrangements from lead sheets. It includes online video lessons, a Lesson Book, a Workbook, and downloadable MP3 and Band-in-a-Box practice files. This is only a brief overview: for full details, select the course button above.
“The Bebop Guitar Improv Series course by Maestro Richie Zellon completely changed the way I understand music today.”
Walter Sá, BRASIL
“By following his process, jazz improvisation is not a prospect but an inevitability.”
Randy Cohen, USA
“…the most complete jazz guitar course I have come across. I have more than twenty courses in my library…”
Massimo Momo, ITALY
About Richie Zellon
Guitarist, Composer & Music Educator
- Has held teaching positions as professor of jazz guitar at Florida International University (Miami), the University of South Florida (Tampa), and The Music Workshop (Orlando).
- Guest clinician at Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory and various international music schools.
- Graduate of Berklee College of Music; studied privately with Pat Martino, Charlie Banacos, Red Rodney (Charlie Parker Quintet) and composer Edgar Valcárcel (student of Olivier Messiaen).
- Several critically acclaimed albums under his own name; has recorded or performed with Paquito D’Rivera, Dave Liebman, Jerry Bergonzi, Sam Rivers, George Garzone, Danilo Pérez, Jeff Berlin, Abraham Laboriel, Alex Acuña, Ignacio Berroa and others.
- Profiled in several important books such as “The Great Jazz Guitarists” by Scott Yanow, “The Jazz Guitar: Its Evolution, Players and Personalities Since 1900” by Maurice J. Summerfield, “El Diccionario de Latin Jazz” by Nat Chediak, “Caliente: A History of Latin Jazz” by Luc Delanoy and “Jazz Jews” by Michael Gerber.
Student Testimonials
