It is easy to get lost in difficult Jazz chords that you don’t have control over and can’t use when you are playing, and that means that you are not really getting anything out of them, so in this video, I am going to show you a set of easy jazz chords and then show you how much you can do with it and how you can really play pieces with them.
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If you are trying to learn to play Jazz Guitar and especially comping songs then you have probably already found out that it is not only about knowing the right chords, there is a lot more to it.
In this video, I am going to show you how I comp a slow medium jazz blues. I have transcribed a chorus and I will go over the chords but I will also show you how I play the chords and make the comp more interesting by using melodies, arpeggios and other tricks to color the chords. In fact, it may surprise you how rarely I “just” play a chord.
The Blues Transcription
Let’s first check out my comping with the transcription, then I will break down 5 of the techniques I use to make it sound more like a piece of music and more interesting.
The next thing to do is to have an overview of the voicings. If I play through the blues with just the chords because that is the backdrop for what I am doing.
Just the chords
After that, I am going to talk about how I am using melodies and fills, inner-voices and arpeggiation to make it come alive and I am going to give you some easier examples to work with.
As you can see most of the voicings are really simple and for the most part chords you probably know already.
If there is a chord that you don’t recognize then try to play or imagine playing the root under it.
bar 1 Bb789,13) magic chord
bar 6 Edim
bar 8 Dø G7 – It is a II V, and the movement is done by moving the 7th(C) of Dø down to the 3rd(B) on G7(b9)
Melody is more important than voice-leading
The first two bars are more about the melody I am playing than connecting the chords. I am using the chords to fill in around the melody.
The first chord is just a color, after that, you get this melody and on the long note in bar 2 I add the rest of the chord but I arpeggiate the chord to create a little extra movement.
The same type of thing is happening on the Eb7 moving to Edim. First the chord, then a melody that takes me to a G, and under that, I add the rest of the chord.
Playing Jazz Chords One Note at The Time
In the previous example, you could see how I arpeggiate the chords and in that way get more movement out of a single chord.
This is something that I use quite a lot. Two examples in this blues are bar3:
and bar 7
Both are using the same basic Bb7 voicing and the notes are spread out across the bar.
In bar 6 I do this as well, but here I am adding an extra note while arpeggiating and in that way starting to have two melodic layers, something that I use to create almost a counterpoint in another place.
Notice how I actually use voice leading to go from the Edim to the Bb7 even though it is hidden by the way I play Bb7
Electric Counterpoint (in a Jazz Blues)
In bar 8 we have this fragment:
Here I play a sustained F as the melody on Dø, and then add the rest of the notes and that turns into a second melody under the F that yields the G7(b9) voicing. This is an example of adding the chord tones in arpeggiating and that gradually takes on its own meaning as a melody and I treat it like that as well, not just as an arpeggio.
Grab what is easy to get by
Being efficient is important when you comp, also because you need to be ready to react to what is happening around you.
One of the ways I use block chords in comping is to just change the melody and keep the same chord which is what I am doing in bar 9 on the Cm7.
Improvising with the harmony
Since you are improvising when you comp then you can also change the chords a bit. The final turnaround has two examples of this. The 2nd chord is written out as a Db7, though you would expect a G7 there I play (and think) Db7
Whenever you have a dominant chord that resolves then you can choose to use the tritone substitute. That is what I am doing here. And added bonus is that the Db is the #9 of Bb which makes it sound like a harmonized blue note. That is also why I have that note at the top of the chord. In Music context is everything.
In the last bar, I am also changing the harmony, but I am doing so by delaying the F7. II V cadences are very flexible and you can often get away with leaving out one of the chords or as I do in this case, leave the F7 until beat 4 and then use it almost as a chromatic leading chord for the Bb7 in the next chorus. The quarter note triplet rhythm also adds extra energy by being a sort of tension against the groove.
Learn some amazing drop2 voicings
The majority of chords that I use in this video are drop-2 voicings, and a lot of the other ones can easily be seen as derived from drop2 by being drop2 without a root note for example. So studying drop2 voicings and being flexible with them is very useful if you want to be good at comping and free to choose what to play.
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Triads and triad based chords are fantastic jazz voicings! In this lesson, I am going to show you how you can get started with some triad voicings from what you already know and then go over 5 levels of how you can play some great sounding comping ideas using these voicings.
This is something I use all the time myself, and if you check out the Chord solos of Joe Pass he is also using this all the time.
Take The A-Train – Basic set of chords
Let’s start with taking the A-part on Take The A-train and play that with a set of chords that you already know:
Triad-based voicings
If we play these without the root then you have these voicings:
Converting the Jazz voicings and doing great things
I am going to show you two important things about these voicings:
#1 There are more melody options. You can change the top note and give us some options:
#2 All the voicings are triads
Cmaj7 without C is E G B = Em
D7 without D is F# A C = F#dim
Dm7 without D is F A C = F major
G7(b9) without G is (in this voicing) F Ab B = F dim
A7(b9) without A is Gdim = G Bb C#
Top-Note Melodies and Some Jazz Rhythm
First, you should look at the chords and find another melody note for each one. (this is powerful because you can make start making riffs and making things sound a lot more interesting.
Using Inversions of the triads
Since all the voicings are triads then you can also use the inversions of these triads. If you use the inversions as well then you have some options similar to this:
Chromatic melodies & Inner-voice movement
Of course, it is possible to use movement in the other voices, not only the melody. In fact, that is what I am doing on the D7 above.
The example below takes that a bit further.
I am also using some chromatic movement in the melodies most clearly in the top note melodies on the D7 and G7 chords, and in the inner voice melody on the Cmaj7.
Altering the voicings for more modern jazz sounds
And beyond changing the top note you can also experiment with changing notes inside the chord and in that way create some new voicings.
In the example below on the D7, you will see one such voicing. The first voicing on G7 is a similar construction.
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You need to check out a lot of different jazz chords and voicings when you want to learn Jazz, and you need them for comping and for chord melody arrangements.
In this lesson, I am going to show you some techniques that can really help you get more out of your voicings so that you don’t have to spend too much time practicing chords and help you use one voicing that you already know to create a ton of other chords that you then don’t need to practice as much.
A little music theory can really save you a lot of time!
I am going to do this in 3 parts – first look at finding similar voicings, then change the voicing and finally what other chords we can use this voicing for.
This is all about using what you practice as much as possible and getting the most out of what you have learned.
Part 1 – Connect the voicing to all the other things you know.
Let’s keep it a little practical. Let’s say you have learned a shiny new voicing like this Drop2 voicing for a C7(9).
It’s a drop2 voicing, but if we forget that and just look at it and associate it with other types of voicings then something great happens:
Below, you can see that it is coming from this voicing (bar2) and that it is also related to this voicing (bar3)
The reason that I am saying this is that it is important to tie see how the chord has different components from other voicings that we know.
That makes it easier to use it with other chords and for examplie having C-D top note melody.
Another thing that is good to notice is that it is related to this Drop3, this triad or this shell voicing.
We are just taking a look at how it works and finding things we can do with it.
Right now we can make a melody like this with what we just discovered:
or a comping riff like this:
Part 2 – Change The Voicing – Make a New Jazz Chord
This is really an important way to look at how to come up with more sounds and really explore what we can do with a chord.
To keep it a bit practical I am not going to change the 3rd and 7th of the chord because then we have a completely different type of chord and open up for a lot more information, that is possible and you should experiment with it, but my video would get too long.
If we explore changing the 2nd highest note, the G, then we have these chords:
So, of course, you need to understand where you want to use the chords to figure out what fits. A blues in C with C7(9,b13) chords may not be the sound you want (or are hired to play)
We can do the same with the top note:
And I am not going to go over the different combinations of this, but that can be fun to explore as well!
Part 3 – Using this voicing for other Jazz chords
Now we have connected the chord to a ton of other voicings and made a lot of variations on it.
If you look at the notes that are in the C7(9) voicing we have Bb,E, G and D.
If you order these in different ways we have:
E G Bb D which is Em7(b5) or You can look at it as G Bb D E which is a Gm6
So this means that the original voicing could be used like this:
These are two of the obvious choices, but you could also go through this in a systematic way and just check out what these notes are against any root.
They could work as a Bb6(#11) or F#7alt. Thinking of notes against a root is something that is also very useful for soloing!
If you use the chord as an F#7alt then you have this: Example 8
Connect the chords don’t just remember separate things
This way of thinking about voicings where you are looking at it not only within a system but also really connecting to other types of chords and voicings is a very good practice for developing and making your vocabulary more useable. If you want to see another video where I talk about this then check out this video where I am going over a 3 level process of creating and using jazz chords.
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
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.
Flexible voicings like triads are very practical to add to your jazz blues chords. We can do a lot with Triads and they are fairly easy to play and move around. This video is taking a look at how we construct 3 note voicings for a jazz blues and then adding a triad voicing that fills a gap on the fretboard.
From there I show how you can take that thorugh a chorus and develop it into another similar type of chord which also gives us a complete set of voicings on the blues.
3-Note Jazz Blues Chords
Most of us use triad chords coming out of the chords that we already use but without a root, so for F7 we end up with these two voicings: F7 + F9 as seen in example 1 here below:
They work really well, but there is a long gap from rootless F9 to F7.
Constructing another voicing to close the gap
If we look at the F7 chord then a basic F7 is an F root and an A diminished triad and we can use that triad as a voicing as well.
A C Eb and that sort of bridges the gap between the two.
If I use a bit of voice- leading I can comp through a blues using this type of voicing as shown in the example 2:
The F7 is here the A dim triad: A C Eb. On the Bb7 this is voicelead into Ab C D which works as a Bb7(9). Then back to F7 and going to a F7(b13) : A Db Eb.
In bar 5 the chord is again the Bb7(9): Ab C D. The B dim is easy to create changing the C in to a B, so Bdim: Ab B D. This moves up chromatically to the F7: A C Eb. The D7(b9) is achieved by moving up the entire voicing so that the top note is an F#: C Eb F#.
The Gm7 is the upper-structure: Bb major triad: Bb D F. This is turned into a C7(9) by lowering the F: C7(9) Bb D E. The F7 is the original voicing and the last C7 is the C7(b9) version of the other voicings: Bb Db E.
Another voicing to check out!
There is one more voicing that we can check out from the previous example.
The 2nd chord on Bb7 is this Bb7(9): Ab C D. If this is transposed to F7(9): Eb G A
This can be turned into a complete other chorus:
In example 3 I have a shift from the D7(b13) down to a Gm7 chord that is a 1st inversion Bb major triad. This is one way of doing this, but another way would be to really aim for getting smooth voice-leading:
This is a bigger stretch but also a very smooth moving chord progression.
Harmonizing the F7 scale based on the 3 voicings
A cornerstone in my vision on comping is that the top note melody has to make sense. To make this possible it is very important to also be able to play the entire scale with a chord sound.
This lesson started with two 3 note voicings that I then added a 3rd voicing to, and using these 3 chord voicings you can harmonize the F7 scale as shown here below:
3-note flexibility and voice-leading
The flexibility and the fact that you can easily be quite free when working with 3-note chords is probably a huge part of why I use these voicings so much. I hope you can use this material to get more out of your comping and make it easier to play some solid ideas in your comp and in your solos.
Get the PDF!
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
