Do not think that jazz is all about fancy scales and exotic notes: no, the first thing you need is the plain major scale, and you need to know it well.

The C major scale is the starting point. Learn the scale, practice it, and play it over some backing chords. There are many ways to play the scale, we cover a few of them here in Parts 1-3. Playing the scale comfortably and being able to 'play around' with it, is the starting point of improvisation, that is IF you want to play creatively, and not use the same licks all the time.
So why do I stress this so much: scales are THE BASIS. if you want to make a good start, playing them fluently will pay off many times over during your whole learning process! 

Even great jazz musicians who learned everything by ear, and don't know any theory, know how to find the notes in any key or scale with ease. Which means they actually do know and can play all of the scales effortlessly!!

Basic backing chord tracks are below. You can play them directly in your browser, or you can download them and play them with any media player.

Note: you may find different ways to play the scales in terms of fingering elsewhere, so is there a 'best' way? Not really. The approach here is to keep fingers on consecutive frets at almost all times. If you have big hands or long fingers, you can use more stretching, some might prefer that, but the approach given here can be used by anyone.

Multi-language support https://youtu.be/yfZm_akEMGE

Video Index

00:38 Pentatonic Scales

01:53 Getting started with C Major

02:28 Demonstrating the C Scale (fast)

02:41 C Scale Improvisation

03:55 C Major Scale - Form nr 1

06:18 Backing Chords

07:09 Playing the scale over backing chords

07:47 Scale in half notes

08:13 Scale in eigth notes

08:53 Start slow! Then build slowly towards faster tempo.

08:56 Make sure you keep articulating the notes well!