When comping sounds great then it is actually not because of the chords you are playing. It is more about all the other things that you do with them that makes it work. Things like rhythm, chord movement, and melodies. This video will l help you get started developing your comping so that you don’t get stuck just playing chords and wondering why it doesn’t really work.
#1 The Easy Guitar Trick for Chords
One of the main things that you need to include in anything you play is tension and release. That is the way you make things interesting to listen to and keep people listening.
In this case, this is something that you can add to your comping in a very easy way on guitar, and it sounds both natural and pretty hip. But
at the beginning of this example, I am just using the basic 3rd and 7th voicings on the chord but as you can see this works just as well with chords with more extensions.
The principle is really simple; you create tension by moving the chord up or down a half step and then resolve the tension by moving back.
And this works great for the 3rd and 7th shells but is equally useful for larger chord voicings.
Let’s have a look at how you can use tension and release in a different way to make things flow a lot better
Comping in a band
One of the things that I learned a lot from with comping was focusing on being together with the drummer, so really trying to play clear ideas and react to what was happening especially on the snare so that it really becomes like a single instrument backing up the soloist! Of course, this doesn’t really work with a backing track as I use in this video.
#2 Give It Direction and Energy
One of the things that I love about Bebop is how the solo lines flow through the changes and are always moving towards the next chord.
And this is actually built into the harmony, so the chord progressions are really pushing forward which is not always what we focus on when playing the chords.
But it is really useful to always think ahead and try to work on ways to move to the next chord. There are 3 things you can use to get that forward motion.
In the first bar, I am using a melody that is ending clearly on the Eb7 which is helping things to move along.
The next two bars are setting up a rhythm and then in bar 4 playing the 3& really creates tension that wants to resolve on the next downbeat which pulls us to the Eb7
Bar 6 is first a bit of movement with the Edim chord and then a chromatic passing chord on beat 4 that resolves back into Bb7 and in that way adds energy and tension.
So I am using:
- Melody
- Rhythm
- Chromatic Passing Chords
to create a comp that is moving forward, and working on these things with the forward motion in mind can help you get that into your playing.
#3 The Most Important Rhythm To Learn
Jazz is about rhythm, and If you think about it you probably already know that the rhythms that are important are the syncopated rhythms, the off-beats.
One way of really using this in your comping is to work on playing anticipated chords, something often associated with Red Garland, the piano player in the 1st Miles Davis Quintet
Practicing to use this in your comping is something you can do by only focusing on that by setting a metronome to 2&4 and play a vamp, like this:
And once you are familiar with this exercise then you can start to work on using it on the Blues like this
Rhythm is probably the strongest ingredient in comping, or in Jazz in general, and this last exercise is also the one that will improve your comping the most.
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