I want to start by saying thanks to Marc-Andre Seguin for inviting me to publish a guest post about on his very cool and informative jazz guitar website.

One of the most often asked questions I get from my students, readers, and guitarists around the world, and of all stages of development is, "How do I develop motives in my solos so that I play more melodic and less scalular?"

Learning to build jazz guitar improvisation off of a motive is a great skill to have as a player. If you can learn to focus on one idea for a long period of time while keeping the audience's attention and building energy in your lines, then when you do step off into a more technical idea such as a long scale run or chromatic substitution, the contrast is much more powerful and ear-grabbing than if you just played longer, scale-based lines throughout your jazz guitar improvisation.

In this article we will learn how to choose a good motive for development in your jazz guitar improvisation, as well as learn three different ways to vary a motive in your solo, providing you with enough variations to keep your line interesting as you focus on one idea for a chorus or more in your solos.