3 Jazz Chord Exercises That Will Change Your Playing Right Now!

Jazz Chord Skills!

You need to know how to comp, especially if you want to get called for jam sessions and gigs—soloing alone is not going to cut it. But comping can be tricky, especially when it comes to rhythm and making it all sound like real music. In this video, I’ll share advice from famous jazz guitarists and show you 3 powerful exercises to improve your comping because you need to focus on rhythm and telling a story with the chords so you don’t end up sounding like a robot mindlessly playing a chord progression.

#1 Are You Even Practicing Comping?

Rhythm is very important and I’ll get to that, but I think this advice from Peter Bernstein is maybe even more important:

“That’s a huge thing I mean I think the main thing and uh long stress is enough is you have to practice comping You know for every 100 choruses you play are you soloing 99 and Comping once just to make your backing track you solo 99 choruses so your soloing is going to get stronger right because you’re exercising this muscle is going to get really, but the comping muscle is just going to be you just did the one chorus you know so try to play chorus after chorus of comping a tune because the main thing is that you’re going to get bored of playing the same chords very quickly and find some other stuff that’s the best motivation”

This seems obvious, but I am unsure how many people practice comping. I suspect it is often just iReal on and then soloing. When I was studying Jazz, I was often asked about this, and it is a bit surprising that these exercises were not used in the lessons.

2 Comping Exercises

There 2 ways I like to practice comping, one I do daily and one I do sometimes.

The main workout for improving your comping is simple but incredibly effective: put on a metronome set to 2 & 4 and comp through songs. Focus on hearing the groove, making everything connect musically, and keeping it interesting. Peter Bernsteins’s advice about getting bored with your comping is spot on—use that boredom as motivation to come up with new ideas and, of course, start listening to music for inspiration. I’ll return to the topic of listening as a way to learn later.

While you play, you’ll likely find spots where you want to stop and explore new possibilities. That’s great! Take a moment to try out new solutions, then get back to comping through the track to maintain the flow.

Another way I work on comping is by using drum loops.

My favorite app is DrumGeniusbut any drum loop will work. Just keep in mind that iReal Pro may not be ideal for developing a strong swing feel. The benefit of DrumGenius is that you can lock in with the groove of the loop and even react to its accents, making the exercise more dynamic and musical.

Practicing like this is about getting better and more flexible with comping, and it will help open up what you can do with stuff you already know, but how about learning more rhythms? And I also want to talk about why you should not try to ONLY learn chords and comping.

#2 The Most Superficial Exercise I Know (but it still rocks)

If you want to improve your comping rhythms, the first step is to simplify—get rid of other aspects of playing chords so you can focus entirely on rhythm. Limitation is often the key to developing a musical skill, but many students get caught up in voicings, notes, or—god forbid—voice leading while comping. I know it is an unpopular opinion, but thinking about voice-leading while also trying to comp has ruined a LOT of music! Stuff like that is something you think about while practicing.

Here are three exercises to help you focus on rhythm, each building on the previous one. And You should practice them in this order for the best results:

1. Only Rhythm

Start by playing just rhythm, no notes. Mute the strings and concentrate on the groove and rhythmic feel as you play through a song. No notes, just rhythm! In the example, I’ve added a walking bass line to make it easier to hear the progression.

This approach allows you to hear the song’s structure clearly without worrying about the chords.

2. Simplest Chords

Next, add in the simplest chords possible—just the 3rd and 7th of each chord. These two-note shell voicings outline the harmony while keeping things simple. This lets you focus on locking in your rhythm without getting distracted by note choice and sets you up for more advanced comping later.

3. Full Comping

Finally, add more notes to your chords while maintaining rhythmic creativity and precision. This step challenges you to balance harmony and rhythm in a way that sounds natural and keeps the music in there.

Let me know in the comments if you have tried exercises like this or have variations of this type of practice that you think is great!

I have a confession to make. When it comes to soloing, I’ve gained a lot from learning solos by ear and playing along with recordings, something I still do. But I haven’t done this as much with comping—only a few times, to be honest. And I have to admit that when it comes to comping, I’ve always been more inspired by piano players than guitarists. My approach to comping has been less detailed, but it’s still been very useful, and listening to Jazz is ALWAYS useful!

Zooming in too much can make it impossible to understand what is happening. Instead of thinking about which brand of piano is being dropped from the roof, get out of the way so it doesn’t hit you. Transcribing chords note-for-note can be very time-consuming, and often, the exact notes aren’t the most important part of comping. It’s not about whether there’s a b13 on the dominant chord—it’s about the overall phrasing, how it interacts with the other musicians, and how it sits in music.

Rather than getting bogged down in the details, try listening more broadly to what’s happening. I can’t give you long examples here without copyright problems on YouTube, but let’s listen to two recordings to illustrate this approach:

Oscar Peterson – Listen to how much space he leaves when comping for Sonny Stitt and try to also pay attention to the rhythms he uses.

Wynton Kelly –

Another favorite of mine and a master of comping is Wynton Kelly. On ‘Dig Dis’, listen to how he really listens for the gaps in the solo and also creates long phrases that stretch across several bars while comping for Hank Mobley on a Bb blues.

Spending time listening like this can teach you a lot, not necessarily by copying exactly what they play, but by identifying the elements you like and want to incorporate into your own playing. Of course, you can write things out if that helps, but don’t let transcription take up more time than actually comping. As Peter Bernstein pointed out, real work happens when you’re playing, and that takes us to the next exercise category. Here is some great advice from Nir Felder!

#3 Telling A Story

“you’re not just playing chords you’re not thinking of it as you know just feeding chords to soloist you’re thinking of it as you’re playing the song it has melody it has shape it has dynamics it has a story so that’s that’s been a key for me I think to keep the people I play with happy is like they want me there because I make them sound better hopefully they may I make the music sound better the band sound better”

There are great techniques for connecting phrases in music, and the way you think about it is as a melody, just like Nir Felder said. This is also one of the reasons you don’t want to only learn to play chords and comp; you also need to spend time soloing and playing melodies because those skills will improve your comping.

If you want to improve your comping skills, it’s all about listening—especially listening to the most important person for this process: yourself.

I’m joking a bit, of course, but the key to tying together phrases, whether in solos or comping, is listening to the phrase you just played and using it to shape the next one. I’ll first show you how these skills sound in action, and then I’ll give you a way to develop them.

When it comes to comping, rhythm is often melody. A great way to start developing this is by working with riffs—repeating patterns that run through the song, often with variations added at strategic points. Like this:

Here, you can hear a 1-bar pattern being repeated with a conclusion in bar 4. Wynton Kelly does this frequently in his playing. You can also loosen up and be less strict:

This approach allows the melody to evolve naturally while still making the phrases into a story.

Another technique is to think of phrases as conversations, where one phrase responds to the other rather than evolving directly from it. What is usually referred to as Call-response. Thinking like this will give you comping that works but notice how voice-leading is not important and would stop you from playing like this,

or explainer:

Developing the Skills

Since this is all about listening to yourself, a great exercise is to practice out of time. For riff or motivic development, try this:

Play a phrase for a bar, stop, and then think about what might work as the next riff or phrase.

Explainer:

You can start with this:

You can play the same melody on Eb7:

Then try a different option:

Or this variation:

Example 7c – 2 bars

and you can probably hear how the rest of the comping starts to take form:

Practice Efficiently!

Improving your comping is just one piece of the puzzle. There are plenty of other exercises out there, but some of them will waste your time without getting you anywhere. If you want to avoid those and focus on exercises that can truly transform your playing, check out this video where I break down efficient exercises and point out others that waste your time. Don’t spend hours on pointless exercises—focus on what works and start making real progress.

Learn Jazz, Make Music!

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