In this video I am to cover some different types of Jazz Chords and talk about the order you should learn them. I’ll show you the basic idea with the chords and how you can use this order to gradually build a chord vocabulary that you can also make music with.
I don’t focus on the types of voicings, like drop2 drop3, etc. because they are just names, it is more important to chords you can play music with.
Level 1 – A Set For Playing Music and Songs
To play songs and easily find the chords we need one set with the root on the 5th and one set with the root on the 6th string. This is shown in the example here below:
If you are used to finding chords in other genres this is probably how you think about it.
These chords are basic chord sounds, not too many extensions.
- They are Easy to play.
- Similar to the bar chords you already know
- Include the root – full picture of the harmony
- A Complete set of chords
Why start with these:
- You can play the song alone and hear the harmony.
- Works well in a duo
- Easy to add extensions and develop
- Easy to turn into very flexible rootless voicings
Level 2 – Rootless voicings for Bands and Flexibility
Now you can play the chords and to get some more options then the best place to go is to just take the chords from Level 1 and then remove the lowest note: The Root.
The essential exercise is this:
We can now start making the chords more flexible and add melody by changing the top note and even adding an extra higher note as shown below in example 3 for a C7.
Why:
- Works better in a band
- Is much more flexible
- You can play melodic ideas with the chords
Level 3 – Inversions and more melodic options
Now we can start working on inversions, and a good place to start is to take these voicings that we come across while adding notes to the 3-note chords.
The idea of a chord inversion is really just to find the same notes in another order on the neck. The chords we have are called drop2 voicings, and I go over how to make the inversions in the Drop2 lessons in this guide: How To Learn Jazz Chords
If I take the four basic chords and play those inversions then I have this:
How To Learn Using These Chords
Whenever you practice something like this it is very important that you also practice using it in songs. Learning a lot of stuff that you don’t use in music is usually a waste of time and you just forget it again.
Check out some more in ideas with Drop 2 voicings
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