This lesson is one chorus of simple jazz blues comping and then talk about a skeleton voicing + a few variations and some ideas for variations. I also discuss a few secret tricks that most people don’t think about with chords but that work really well to play more complicated phrases or embellish comping and chord solos
One of the most important types of voicings you want to have in your vocabulary if you want to play jazz, blues or R&B is the drop2 voicing. In this video I am going show you a simple way to apply Drop2 chords to a 12-bar Jazz Bues with just a few voicings and som variations that are easy to get into your playing.
Along the way I am also going to cover some some phrasing and rhythm ideas to really lay down the groove, and a few secret tricks that most people don’t think about with chords but that work really well to play more complicated phrases or embellish comping and chord solos
Drop2 chords are in many ways the go to voicing that you need when comping in a mainstream or hardbop jazz style.
If you want to look into more Drop2 Voicing ideas then you can also check that section of my Jazz Chord Study Guide
The big take away from this lesson
The most important thing to learn from this is that instead of learning a million separate voicings it makes a lot more sense to learn one voicing and realize that a lot of other voicings are variations of that basic voicing.
When you are comping you are not thinking about voice-leading or extensions as much as you are thinking about the melody that is in the top note of the voicing and the overall sound of voicing.
The Jazz Blues Comping Chorus
Here below is the chorus that I play in the video. I suggest you check it out in the video.
A good way to use this lesson is to go through the voicings in the examples below and then return to this first example and recognize what is going on.
The Bb7 Drop2 voicing and it’s variations
Instead of having a focus on the inversions of the drop-2 voicing it is much more useful to think about how to create melodies.
Here below is shown a very basic Bb7 chord and then followed by a few variations that are helping you have different options for creating melodies with this chord in this area of the neck.
The Eb7 voicing
This example here shows some of the common Eb7 chord variations in this position of the neck. Notice that there are not that many, but in the end you don’t really need a lot. If you try to play a complicated melody in your comp it will most likely be way to busy (and get you fired)
Bb7 altered dominant Drop2
The Bb7alt chord in bar 4 is there to pull towards the Eb7 in bar 5. Some options for that voicing is shown here below.
The final II V Cadence in bar 9 and 10
The cadence is a II V in Bb major, so Cm7 F7. I chose to use F7alt to have another altered dominant.
Secret trick #1 – Chromatic Passing Chords
When moving from one chord to the next then it can be useful to add a chromatic passing chord and then just sliding that into the next chord. This is surprisingly easy and creates a lot of movement in your comp (or chord solo…)
This is one of the few things that is easier on guitar compared to piano.
I do this quite a few times in the chorus: Bar 1 with a slide and Bar 10 without a slide.
If you want to check out more ideas on chord soloing and using chromatic ideas then check out this lesson: Best exercise for jazz guitar chord solos!
Secret trick #2 – Using Pull-offs in Comping
A great way to play faster phrases in a comping situation where you have a top-note melody that moves a lot (like an 8th note triplet) is to use legato. I especially like using pull-offs for this,
You can see examples of this in bars 5,9 and 12.
More Blues Comping
If you want to see further examples of comping and also expanding this beyond the drop2 voicings then check out this WebStore lesson:
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