When studying jazz guitar, we often begin by exploring the Dorian mode when soloing over m7 chords. But, while that is a great first-choice scale, we often stop there with our explorations of m7 chord vocabulary. One of the mostly widely used scales besides Dorian to solo over m7 chords is the melodic minor scale, which is built like a Dorian but with a natural rather than a b7 note.

Jerry Garcia is best known as the lead guitar player and primary singer/songwriter of the Grateful Dead. Though they are regarded as pioneers of the “jam band” genre that rose to prominence in the late Sixties, the Grateful Dead, unlike many of their counterculture contemporaries, never faltered with the changing times.

I often get asked about what gear I use in the studio. I have addressed this topic in my column in the past. However, a new guitar has been added to the bunch, Combined with my somewhat-new Line 6 Pod HD500 multi-effects processor, it has made my studio life happier than ever! I'm talking about the Line 6 JTV-89 modeling guitar combined with the HD500.

Let me start this blog post by saying I don't think we've ever been more excited as a band as we were entering the studio to track this new album. I think the two biggest factors for this were how long we had waited since releasing our last album and how long we spent working on the songs this time around.