Harmony · Melody · Technique · Improvisation
Don't just learn the licks.
Speak the language.
Explore 323 books, studies, and video masterclasses on modern jazz guitar by Hristo Vitchev—an award-winning international recording artist, composer, and educator recognized in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Poll in the Rising Star Guitar category.
The Collections
Two ways through the instrument.
Everything is organised the way a guitarist actually thinks — what the hands do harmonically, and what the ear does melodically.
Harmonic Concepts
Modern voicing techniques and chordal construction, harmonic substitution, re-harmonization, chord-melody arrangement — everything to do with harmonic navigation on the instrument.
Melodic Concepts
Ideas and concepts that unlock the guitar as a melodic instrument — technical studies and etudes, modern improvisation, phrasing and melodic vocabulary development.
Hot off the press
The newest studies.
Fresh material, added continuously — many of them free.
Mini-lessons · about a minute each
Pentatonic Encounters of The Fourth Kind
Intervallic Encounters: of the fourth & fifth kind
SpreadVentures: ii V I VI
The latest release
Pentatonic Target Tone Designs Part 2
“Moving Targets” expands upon the enclosure and target-tone concepts introduced in the first volume and explores how these ideas can be moved fluidly throughout the fretboard using the minor pentatonic scale as a flexible melodic…
$11
Where to start
Not a list. A route.
Each area of study has an order that works — where every study builds on what the one before it established. Here are two of them.
Harmonic Concepts
Modern Voicings & Contrapuntal Studies
This is the chord side of the instrument: how voicings are built, how they move, and how separate voices move against each other. It is harmony you play, not harmony you analyze.
From one voicing to two moving voices
Voicings for every chord type, and the descending chromatic ii-V-I that shows how they connect — the vocabulary the rest of the route is built from.
The same vocabulary written out as music: eight etudes that work voice-leading and the left hand at once, so the shapes are learned in motion rather than in isolation.
Twelve harmonic etudes over a single 12-bar minor blues — one form, held long enough that the harmony has somewhere to go, with a track to play it against.
The hinge of the route. A chord played as an unwinding line, where one shape starts behaving like two voices moving apart — on video, so you can see the hand do it.
Melodic Concepts
Modern Melodic Phrasing & Vocabulary
This area is about the raw material of modern jazz lines - motifs, groupings and chromatic ornaments. The work is turning that material into phrases you can play over changes.
From one interval to playing outside
Triadic helixes over ii-V7-I-VI7 at speed. One device, small enough to hear working, and the quickest way to feel how this material behaves under tempo.
One interval — the fourth — taken as the unit everything is built from, then combined with seconds and thirds across the whole neck. The largest vocabulary here.
Tension now, not just vocabulary: tritone relationships moved through dominant, minor and major harmony to pull a line off its centre and bring it back.
A whole phrasing idiom rather than a device — Jonathan Kreisberg’s melodic language taken apart into ideas you can actually practise.
The collection
Thirty years of writing it down.
Harmony, melody, technique and everything between — 323 publications and still counting.
Now showing
And every one of them was filmed.
323 video masterclasses and mini-lessons. Whatever passes behind the phone is what plays on it — hover to hold it still.
HARMONIC /the-sau-rus #15
View this publication →Deep dives
The bigger studies.
Six collections built volume by volume over years — full methods, video masterclasses and multi-volume series, for when you want to live inside one idea for a while.
Chromatic Methenyisms
The Chromatic Methenyisms series explores the chromatic melodic ornamentation vocabulary, rhythmic phrasing, articulation, and melodic architecture associated with Pat Metheny’s improvisational language. Through carefully crafted studies, extensive video masterclasses, and backing tracks, each volume helps modern jazz guitarists internalize these concepts and transform them into their own unique voice.
Harmonic /the-sau-rus
The Harmonic Thesaurus series is a comprehensive exploration of modern jazz harmony, featuring an expansive collection of sophisticated chord voicings, harmonic movements, and practical applications for the contemporary guitarist. Through carefully organized studies and musical examples, each volume helps players expand their harmonic vocabulary and develop a richer, more personal approach to composition, accompaniment, and improvisation.
Short Chordversations
The Short Chordversations series presents compact yet deeply creative explorations of modern jazz harmony, transforming concepts such as harmonic density, voice leading, contrary motion, and melodic continuity into practical guitar studies. Each installment combines written material, detailed video instruction, and backing tracks to help guitarists expand their chordal vocabulary, technique, and harmonic imagination.
Modal Quadrangulation
The Modal Quadrangulation series explores the interval of a fourth as the central building block for creating modern, angular melodic phrases, combining quartal structures with diatonic seconds and thirds across the entire fretboard. Through carefully designed studies, etudes, video instruction, and backing tracks, each installment helps guitarists expand their melodic vocabulary while developing fluid fretboard navigation, finger independence, stamina, and improvisational freedom.
Triad Quilt
The Triad Quilt series transforms diatonic add9 triads into a rich source of modern melodic vocabulary, using distinctive four-note sequences and interwoven triadic patterns to create fluid, harmonically colorful lines across the entire fretboard. Through progressive exercises, practical phrases, challenging etudes, video masterclasses, and backing tracks, the series helps guitarists strengthen their technique, finger independence, fretboard fluency, and ability to navigate everything from ii–V–I progressions to fast, non-functional harmonic landscapes.
Point of Encounter
The Point of Encounter series explores the art of two-voice counterpoint on the guitar, bringing independent melodic lines together to create dynamic, piano-inspired harmonic textures and more expressive comping. Through progressive warm-ups, contrapuntal studies, and practical applications over major and minor ii–V–I progressions, the series helps guitarists develop voice separation, finger independence, coordination, and a more fluid command of polyphonic playing.
Open strings
78 studies, free.
Press nothing, start here. A quarter of the catalog costs nothing at all — so a wrong guess costs you nothing either.
See it played
Every study comes with video.
All 323 of them — Hristo at the guitar, playing the material before you read a word about it.
Pentatonic Lift: ii–V–I… but different
CHROMATIC METHENYISMS
Counter Culture: Harmonic Contrapuntal Motion Ideas
“Vitchev's sophisticated and adventurous work is imbued with shimmering harmonies and lyrical improvisations.”
JazzTimes
“Vitchev's multihued compositions are like impressionistic sound paintings.”
JAZZIZ
“One of the best kept secrets in jazz today. He is the epitome of sonic gold.”
Critical Jazz
Your jazz guitar assistant
Not sure where to start?
Ask Lyra. She knows all 323 publications inside out — tell her your level and what you're working on, and she'll point you to exactly the right studies.
About the author
Hristo Vitchev
Referred to by the media as one of the newest and most innovative voices in modern jazz guitar and recognized in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Poll in the Rising Star Guitar category. Originally from Bulgaria and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he combines classical, modern jazz, folk and avant-garde hues — ten albums as a leader, four as co-leader, and more than 323 books and studies on modern jazz guitar.