Spending hours every day memorizing chord shapes is pointless if you still can’t turn them into music.

Jazz guitar is not just about learning more shapes or inversions.

So in this video, I’ll show you the 3 things you’re probably missing that turn the chords you already know into real jazz, exactly what to practice instead of memorizing more voicings, and how to add rhythm, melody, and movement to your comping, so you’re not just learning chords; you’re learning how to use them.

Maybe you’ve worked hard on difficult chords like this, but they still don’t connect or lock in with the groove:

Instead, you can use simple chords to make it swing and actually sound like music:

I call it the PASS method, and it is also how Joe Pass works with chords. Step by step, you’ll build the comping skills you’re missing — the flow, rhythm and melody that bring simple chords to life.

#1 Practical Chords

The first part is about keeping the chords Practical — because simple also means flexible, and easy to get to sound good.

The problem with the big four- and five-note grips is they lock you in. You’re so busy fretting them cleanly that you can’t also pay attention to rhythm and melody. Starting with simple voicings fixes that:

As Joe Pass put it:

“You must think about the chords in the most simple possible form”

The voicings you want to start with are shell voicings. There’s a good chance you already know them.

For a Jazz Blues in C, if you focus on the first part, you can start with a simple C7 shell voicing like this:

C, the root is on the 6th string here, then the 7th and the 3rd.

This is the first type of shell voicing.

We also need an F7:

This is the other variation of shell voicings where the root is on the 5th string and then you have the 3rd and the 7th on the middle string set.

The rest of the video will show you how to add rhythm, melody, and color to these, but you can already do a lot just with these basic voicings:

Now that you have a simple foundation with the shell voicings. Let me show you how easy it is to turn 1 chord into 10 variations — instead of learning 10 separate grips.

#2 Adding Melody

A is for adding melody. I think this is an underrated skill in comping, but nailing it will make your comping sound 100x better.

And, in case you haven’t heard that expression before, comping is what we call playing chords behind a soloist in jazz, a short version of accompanying.

A common mistake that I see with students is that they over-emphasize theory and voice-leading, which blocks them from playing anything that sounds like music or being able to listen to what is happening in the band while they are playing chords.

Thinking in melody fixes that.

To make it easier to add melodic lines to your chords, you want to play rootless voicings, and there is a simple way to do that as well.

It is common to think from the root to find chords on the neck. That makes it easy to quickly find the chord you need.

Take the C7:

Here’s the chord

You want to get used to think this full chord, but only play the two top notes:

And of course the same goes for the F7:

Like that, rootless chords are still easy to find.

If you are playing in a band with a bass player, you pretty much never need to play the root, and now that you have even simpler chords, it is pretty easy to add notes. Let’s start with a single string:

The reduced C7 is this:

And the if you add notes on the B-string you get these 3 new variations:

Before I show you how this sounds, let’s do the same with the F7:

This is the basic 2-note shell, then you can anchor everything to that and add these 3 variations:

With this, you can easily play complete chord solo phrases, which is exactly how a lot of Joe Pass’s chord solos work:

But what is even more powerful, you can also create small riffs that turn comping into a story, and notice how the diagrams only show the chord I am thinking:

The next step is to add the top string, E. It will give you even more variations and make it easier to play melodies,  just using a single chord.

For C7, you already have the B-string so now you add two notes on the high E:

So you get a C and a D.

For the F7, there are 3 notes, even if the last one is a bit of a stretch:

And now you can create longer melodies while comping, like this riff:

If you want to go over these examples at your own pace so it is easier to get them into your playing, you can download the free PDF with all the examples so you don’t need to memorize these off the video. There’s a link in the description.

So far, I have demonstrated these with rootless voicings, but you’ll probably also want to use them in chord melody settings or, like Joe Pass playing behind Ella Fitzgerald, comping in a duo with a singer.

The P.A.S.S. method is great for this as well. Let me show you.

#3 Splitting The Chords

Playing all of this when you’re in a band with a bass player is one thing — but splitting the chord actually works even better for solo guitar or duos, because the bass note covers the low end a bass player would normally give you.

The idea is simple: play a clear, complete shell viocing on beat 1 so the harmony is obvious, then break it up and get melodic inside the bar.

If you listen to how Joe Pass comps behind Ella Fitzgerald, it’s often about using shells at the beginning of the bar to be clear, then splitting it up and using rootless voicings inside the bar. It also connects the chord to the melody naturally.

A turnaround might sound like this:

This is all coming from a basic I VI II V in C major, and the voicings are based on these shell voicings:

Show ex 15 sheet music and add diagrams from ex 16 under each chord to show the connection to the shell voicing

What happens is:

Cmaj7 shell, then rootless version with melody on the B string.

A7: shell with a top-note melody, #9, b9, then just the bass note (gives the melody room)

Dm7: First bass, then 2-note shell and a melody note

G7: first G7 with added A, then rootless with a b9 leading down to

Cmaj7, which is a shell voicing with an added 5th melody note.

So you can use the bass note or the 3-note shell as your starting point on beat 1, then add melody and fills inside the bar with rootless chords that are easier to play.

On a Cmaj7 that makes this a lot easier:

First you have the shell, then rootless voicings with melody on B string, finally a triplet with C and D as melody notes on the E-string.

And this is all coming from thinking the basic Cmaj7 and then we have these rootless variations of it: rootless chords with G, A , C and D in the melody.`

Joe Pass was just thinking simple chords. He did not think 5 different chords; he just thought Cmaj7.

If you want to go deeper on this — adding rhythm, melody, and extensions to these shell voicings — My Jazz Chord Craftsmanship course walks you through exactly that. The link is in the description.

The last part of the P.A.S.S. method might be the easiest of all, and it adds smooth movement to your chords that sounds way harder than it is.

#4 Sliding Into Chords

Often chromatic chords and devices like that quickly get associated with very dense and difficult music theory, but most of the time you don’t need any of that.

Instead, you can work visually on the fretboard and get some beautiful tension-release movement in your comping.

All you do is: think about the chord you’re on — for example the C7 in the C blues we used earlier — and slide into it from a fret above

or below.

No theory books, no overthinking. Just moving your fingers and listening.

I am not thinking about what the passing chords are, just going back from a fret next to the chord I want to play. In this case, the simple C7, that is what I think.

And this gets you a great flowing sound in your comping. Here’s a bit of the C blues:

So you can see how I slide into the chords from above and below to get some very smooth movement, even with these basic voicings. Sliding into C from below, and going to F7 by sliding down. Back to C7 sliding up across the barline.

It is SO simple, and you can use this for richer voicings and rootless voicings as well:

Don’t forget that you can download the PDF of these examples so it is easy to get this into your playing. The link is in the description

That’s the P.A.S.S. method: Practical chords, Add melody, Split the chord, and Sliding into chords. Keep it simple, just like Joe Pass — one chord, not a hundred grips, and all the music you can find inside it.

The ONLY 5 Chord Progressions You Need To Play Jazz (Nobody Teaches This)`

Now you can make your chords sound great — but there’s one more thing that makes jazz easy: actually understanding the progressions you’re looking at on the chart.

Because most songs aren’t 30 different chords. They’re just five patterns that show up again and again.

Check out this video where I break them all down — it’ll make learning songs 10x faster.

Learn Jazz – Make Music

The ONLY 5 Chord Progressions You Need To Play Jazz (That Nobody Teaches)

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