About Me

I’m Kyle Smith – a jazz guitar player and music educator based in Portland Oregon, and I’m here to help you learn to play jazz guitar.

I built this website to be a free source of quality information that will be helpful as you learn jazz guitar. You’ll find everything you need to help you in your journey – free lessons, helpful diagrams, and simple, direct answers to your questions as you learn.

Why Listen to Me?

I’ve helped tons of students get better at playing guitar. Between private lessons, jazz camps, workshops, and presentations to other music educators, I’ve actually lost count of how many students I’ve worked with.

My specialty has always been teaching jazz guitar, especially: 

  • Getting you up and running as soon as possible
  • Helping you improve your existing skills and build new ones
  • Getting you performance-ready
A picture of me, smiling, happy to answer any questions you have about jazz and guitar.

Performance ready means different things to different people

  • Jamming with a backing track
  • Playing jazz tunes on guitar by yourself
  • Getting together with friends to play songs
  • Auditioning for a group or a college program

Whatever “performance ready” looks like for you, I’ll help you get there.

My masters degree in jazz showed me a lot about how to break down complicated jazz concepts for people like you. My degree was actually Jazz Pedagogy – which is a fancy word for studying “how to teach.”

I’ve dug deep into how great players approach the guitar in jazz – through private lessons with the best players I could find, courses and workshops, and every jazz guitar (or guitar) book I could get my hands on.

Seriously, I bought way too many books while I was in college.

I spent years refining the methods of my own teachers, testing ideas on myself and my students, and creating a systematic approach to teaching jazz guitar as simply as possible.

All with the goal of helping you learn better, faster, and with fewer speed bumps along the way.

I’ll show you the simplest, most direct approaches to improving your jazz guitar playing, using:

  • Everyday language you can actually understand
  • Skills you can use today
  • Practice strategies to save you time and frustration

I’ll give you everything you need for playing great jazz guitar… and nothing you don’t.

This site is 100% FREE

I want to help you learn jazz guitar, and make it easy for you to get the right information.

I’m covering the bases for all of the fundamentals: 

  • Chords
  • Scales
  • Arpeggios
  • Theory
  • Improvisation

And anything else you might need to know about. I’m always working on new material, and testing out new ideas.

Learning works best when you get involved.

If there’s something you want to know about, just ask me on the Q&A page. You can also email me here.

If there’s a feature you think would be cool to have on the site, let me know about it and I’ll make it happen.

Dive in

The best thing to do if you’re interested in learning jazz guitar is to get started… so grab your guitar, pick a lesson, and dive in!
Let me know if you have any questions or need help along the way!