The mark of a great guitar solo, as they say, is that you can hear the song’s independent harmony throughout.
Our demonstration takes places over the common ii V I jazz chord progression in Bb. Naturally, a Bb scale will fit al 3 chords, but doesn’t broadcast the harmony. Creating lines within and around the arpeggios of each chord gives lines in which you can hear the changes.
This gives the following arpeggios: Cmin7, F7 and Bbmaj7.
Ex.1 To reduce things down further, we can focus on the 3rd and 7th of each chord as a vehicle for highlighting the changes.
Using our ii V I in Bb, the 3rds and 7ths would be: Bb & Eb, A & Eb, D & A.
Ex.2 Approaching each note in an arpeggio from one fret below is another valuable way to create interesting jazz guitar lines.
Ex.3 A less chromatic idea for creating melodic arpeggio lines and jazz guitar licks is to approach each note in the arpeggio from the scale tone above it, e.g. - C E G B, as an arpeggio would be approached from D, F, A and C.