Comping is one of the most fun parts of playing Jazz, but comping with both a piano and a guitar is incredibly difficult and the source of many frustrations!
In this video, I visit Aimee Nolte and we have a long and difficult conversion about comping, and we also play some music but most of that is on Aimee’s channel.
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
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When it comes to comping then you have lots of books and online lessons on learning chord voicings, and voice-leading, but when it comes to turning that into something that really works then there is really not a lot of advice available.
But there is actually a place to get some inspiration and strategies for developing your comping, which is what I want to show you here.
Probably a lot of you are now thinking that this is about rhythms, and that is sort of true but it is actually more than that, and I am 99% sure that your solos will also benefit from looking at things from this perspective, because there are things in this that can really open up your playing in other ways as well.
A Blues with some Basic Ingredients
For this lesson, I am going to use a simple C blues as an example, and since this is not about using incredibly fancy chord voicings, the most chromatic voice-leading tricks or the hippest extensions then I am going to just use two different melody notes for each chord. Extensions and voicings are nice too, but that is not the focus right now and they will just become distractions that take away from what you should focus on, and I think you will see why.
The chords are kept pretty minimal but it is still more than enough to make some good music.
I will show you 3 types of exercises so that you can actually get your chords to sound like comping, and maybe open up how you think about phrasing and rhythm in general.
#1 Longer Phrases
When you focus on voicings and voice-leading then it is about either what notes you put together or how you get to the next chord in the song.
Of course, both of these things are important, but you can also see that when you focus on that then you are zoomed in and at most looking one bar ahead, and you are almost never playing a song with two bars, there is a whole form.
I don’t know about you, but the people in the rhythm section that I usually admire the most are actually the drummers. That is where the groove and the interaction are both clearly present and where the dynamics of the song are being created. A part of that is probably also that the musician that I really have to connect with when I am comping is the drummer, and for a drummer it is not about voice-leading or extensions, so how do they practice?
Rhythm is melody!
Where most guitar examples are one or two bar rhythms then drummers tend to do exercises that are over longer parts of the song, and working on something that is a combination of different patterns. An exercise might look like this:
Very often then the entire groove is not written out so it is assumed that the ride cymbal is being played, here the highhat is included, but what you want to focus on here is the snare drum rhythm, the rest is not important, you essentially want to read it as if it looks like this:
And this rhythm you can use as a comping pattern on guitar.
If you apply it to the first 4 bars of the Blues then you get:
The big advantage here is that you are starting to hear the rhythm as a melody, and phrases that are not just on a single chord but are a part of a longer sentence with a repeated part and a conclusion.
So phrases that contain smaller parts which fit together. That sounds like something that could be useful for other things than comping?
Thinking in 4 and 8-bar phrases
A side-note to this is that it makes a lot of sense to work on thinking of bar 4 as a conclusion, as the end of the sentence. That is also how our sense of form works, we feel things in groups of 4 or 8 bars and the more you play like that the better you feel that which will later eventually make you a lot stronger and more free.
There is an interview with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter where they talk about how they feel the 12-bar blues as groups of bars together so that a Blues chorus is essentially a 3/4 bar. If you start feeling the form like that then you get a lot of freedom to do stuff in between which of course also describes how they often played.
Of course you want to take a 4-bar pattern like this and go through the whole blues form as well, but let’s move on to how you level this up to get some great comping rhythms going!
The method and exercises that I am showing you here was not how I learned to comp, but I sort of wish it was, because it would have made it a lot easier, and I have seen this work really well for my students. The way I learned was by being around great drummers and having the good fortune to be told about how comping worked as an interaction between drums and guitar, or drums and piano. What I am showing you here will help you listen to yourself to play something that makes sense and tells a story but it will also help you play natural phrases that a drummer can work with so that if you listen to each other then you can also connect and make music together.
#2 Making Your Own Phrases
You can of course start checking out Jazz Drumming lessons on comping to find more patterns like this, that is a great thing to do, and please leave a comment if you have some good resources like books or online lessons, but you can also start creating your own by taking the rhythms you already know, or listening to drummers that are great at this like Philly Joe Jones or Jimmy Cobb and take phrases from them and combine that with what you already know.
The important thing is that you take a step back and worry less about what extensions moving from the 9th to the b13, and instead try to play some strong melodic rhythms, some phrases that last 4 or 8 bars and make sense like that. Often listening to big band can be very useful for this, because you have the right types of simple melodies and strong rhythms in there.
If you start with the previous example but then change it up then you can get something like this for the next 4 bars of the blues, with the same format of a repeating figure and a phrase to end it all:
But you can also introduce more variation, for example going back to the original motif like now also changing or developing one of the repeats:
And really what you are doing making these is developing your ability to hear rhythms that make sense, and also listen to whether the rhythms you put together make sense as a melody for you.
How Wes Uses This In Solos
Another thing is that this can really open up is your soloing: Maybe take a listen to your solos and ask yourself how often they have phrases that last 4 bars with a beginning, a middle and an end? Maybe taking some time to think like this and incorporating that into your solos could be useful as well, there could be a video in that, et me know! The king of this is Wes! If you listen to how Wes improvises then you can certainly hear repeating patterns and motivic development.
Green = Call – Red = Response
You Can’t Practice Comping
Very often when I do a video on comping then I get a comment that tells me that comping is about interaction and therefore you can’t practice it. In my experience, that is not true, and the next exercise is actually about interacting but you are playing alone. Besides that, then there are so many skills involved with comping that you have plenty to work on even without interacting with a soloist and a rhythm section. Simply because you need to Play the chords, keep time, make sure that what you end up with makes sense and has the right colors, and the easier that is and the more freedom you have and it will be the easier to listen to what is going on around you. You also don’t only practice soling with a band, but there you have to interact as well, I hope you do at least…
#3 Call-response
Until now it has been about written exercises and composing, but you can also start to incorporate improvisation so that you can work on hearing the rhythms in real time and get it to fit together while creating phrases, and this exercise can also be incredibly powerful for solos, but I will show you that in a bit.
An easy way to do that is to start with the layout from the written exercise, and in fact this is also about interacting because you play the written part and then treat that as a call which you then respond to with the next phrase which is your response. A chart using the first one-bar rhythm would look like this:
and with that you can pick a comfortable tempo and then start to fill in the empty bars and see what you come up with. You listen and then you play what fits with that.
If you get stuck then you can also stop and try to explore it out of time
As I said then this is also a very useful exercise if you are working on getting your solo phrases to go from licks next to each other and become more of a coherent story.
A simple version of that could be something like this where I repeat a first phrase and then develop material that is a response:
And your solos can also really improve from working on this:
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I am sure you have looked at a chart with jazz chords and asked yourself, why do they play a m7(11) chord or how come that is a (b9b13) dominant? And if you ask, you get an answer which is very often a scale, like altered dominant or diminished scale, so no information that tells you that much about the choice of chord.
How do you get to that point where you can take a basic chord progression and then turn it into a piece of music with a flow of beautiful harmony? You hear it all the time but if you look at transcriptions then you are probably left wondering why is that m7(11) or how come that is dominant with a b13, and if you try to play that then it doesn’t fit together.
Instead of solving difficult music theory equations then you need to work on something else, let’s look at that process.
Get The Basic Harmony Down
For this I am going to use the beginning of All The Things You Are As An Example and built it up from the foundation.
The first thing you want to do is to just get the basic chords into your system, into your ears, and you can add a bit of rhythm to it. In the end, that is anyway more important than the notes:
I am keeping the chords sort of close to each other so it doesn’t sound like a huge jump moving from one chord to the next.
These are all pretty basic chords, and you probably know them already, so we want to start doing more to them in terms of adding color and also making the voicings fit together and tell a story.
Advanced Harmony: The First Step
Next, you want to turn them into rootless voicings. That way the voicings become a lot more flexible and you have more room to change things around, add notes and play melodies.
Melody Is More Important Than Harmony
As you will see, the secret to getting comping to sound great is not knowing the most difficult exotic voicings, it is about being able to make music with them, and already with these 3-note voicings that actually becomes a lot easier.
The big difference here is that it is not about thinking vertical chords, it is about tying the whole thing together with melody making how you play the chords into something that is a musical statement and not a bunch of notes next to another bunch of notes, because that is not how music works.
So you can practice making simple step-wise melodies like this and use different voicings to get it to work
And with this then you can hear other colors in the chords, but the whole thing works because the chords connect with a melody.
Practicing playing through chord progressions and making these simple stepwise top-note melodies is one of the best ways to explore harmony and make it into something practical that you can use because you are working on a song
I am sure you also recognize these chords as rootless versions of chords you already know:
First, you want to open up how you use the melody, and then we can go over some more advanced approaches to make the way you play chords more interesting.
Let The Melody Lead It
If you start thinking of the way you play chords as a slow chord solo or chord melody and not worry too much about extensions then it is easier to get the whole thing to sound good and you will anyway start finding the extensions but you can get them into your playing much more naturally.
For the first Fm7 chord it is already reduced to the Ab major triad, and you can add a lot of sounds and easily play melodies by just grabbing the notes around it that work with the chord, so more chord tones, and common extensions. In fact, you can just try stuff out and see what your ear tells you and then figure out what it is later.
and you can do the same for the Bbm7:
And don’t think about the Fm7 or Bbm7 variations as separate chords, you should think of them as stuff you can use when you want to use the basic Fm7 or Bbm7 voicing.
So if it says Fm7 Bbm7 you can play melodies like this:
or maybe even hint at another song:
This is about connecting material and making it flexible not about learning a bunch of chords that you can’t put together.
With this approach and an extra trick that I will get to, you can already do something like this:
You want to notice that I am using the techniques that I just covered and then there are two places where I add some extra chord voicings:
On the Eb7 the first chord is this triad voicing which is a very smooth transition coming from the Bbm7, and on the Abmaj7 I am also adding this shell voicing to transition to Dbmaj7.
So once you start to explore different ways of playing the basic chord then it is also a good idea to be aware of the chords around it, because It is all about finding practical ways to play the chords.
You also want to notice that the melodies are there to sit behind a soloist so you mostly use step-wise movement and try not to steal the attention from the soloist, unless you want to get fired, then you can just bring out your spiciest reharmonizations, and you might be gone before the 2nd set.
Start Using MORE Chords
The next steps are not nearly as important for how well you play the chords, they are more like icing on the cake where you can add some extra chords to take you to the next chord
In this example the chords that are added are written out as secondary tritone substitutions, so to go from Fm7 to Bbm7 I add a B7, and an E7 is helping the transition to Eb7.
This is a great thing to mess around with, but you do need to watch out that it doesn’t start clashing too much with whoever you are playing behind.
Another way you can add passing chords is using chromatic chords like this:
Here you have Am7 as an approach to Bbm7, and Amaj7 taking you to Abmaj7.
Often just thinking in chromatic passing chords on the guitar is a lot easier because it can be done visually and you don’t have to overthink what is going on.
Move The Other Voices
You can also take the chords and not only use the melody but build it with more layers which can open up for some amazing things, but it does come at a cost
The feel of this type of playing works better if you are a little less active rhythmically and it works better with sustained chords which makes it a little less useful for getting the groove across, but it is a great sound for the beginning of a song or with a soloist that leaves a lot of space.
The Fm7 moves the lowest voice down to the Ab on the Bbm7 and I am also introducing an Eb7 altered that is resolved to a single Eb on the Abmaj7. Under the sustained Eb there is room to move the chords a bit and this concept is also used on both Dbmaj7 and Cmaj7.
An Amazing Exercise For Jazz Chords (And Your Playing In General)
It is incredibly important that you work with jazz chords on a song and get better at putting them together as music. Another way to work on this skill is to also work on making chord melody arrangements of songs, so taking a melody and turning it into a harmonized piece that you can play as a solo guitar piece. If you check out this video then you can see how this will teach you a lot not only about harmony but also about melody, and open up how you think about Jazz chords and how you use them in your playing!
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Why would you want to play a Jazz Blues just using triads?
When you have one triad per chord then that is only 3 notes:
That It is easy to remember
It helps you play better melodies and use more creative rhythms and
It is an amazing foundation for more complicated lines.
And finally, It also kind of fun to mess around with.
What is a Jazz Blues?
Let’s take a blues in C. If you take a simple 12 bar blues, the kind that would make ZZ top proud, then that would be these chords:
For a Jazz Blues then there are a few other chords in there, the II V, a dim chord, and some short II V’s:
To keep it simple let’s reduce it to one chord per bar and turn some of the quick II V’s into a single dominant>
Let’s keep it really easy:
For the C7 you can use a C major triad, like this one:
and then you can play solid phrases like this:
The next thing we need to figure out is what to play on the F7, but you probably already know this F7(9) chord:
and the top part of this F7 chord is a Cm triad, so for the F7 you can use a Cm triad.
and you already have a line on the F7, just change one note in the C7 line.
With these two triads you can cover the first two bars of the solo:
This idea of playing a C major and then a Cm phrase on the first two bars is a really great way to connect melodies and is something you’ll hear Parker do ALL THE TIME.
Triads For Altered Dominants
The next chord in the progression that you need a triad for is C7alt.
One way that you often play a chord like this is this C7(b9b13):
Here you have a Dbm triad as the top part of the chord, and that will work very well:
And because it is really close to the C major and the Cm triads then it is easy to make some strong melodies:
The Bonus of Limitation
Notice how you are really using the limitation of 3 notes to get a lot more creative with rhythm and melody. This is something I always liked about limitation exercises: Limiting yourself with one thing actually opens up more options with all the other things that you are not limiting. You will also see another nice side effect once we get to the II V in a few bars.
That Damned Diminished
Now we have the F#dim chord,
and here I will just take a triad in the chord: Eb dim, which is F#dim without the C.
And you can use that in a lick like this:
Notice that you can create the lick by moving the melody on the F7 and play the same melody on the F#dim, and again that also just ties those two phrases in a musical way.
A Scary Altered Chord
Before going on to the II V then there is one difficult-looking chord to deal with that isn’t really that difficult: A7alt.
You can use the same trick as with the C7alt. A7alt could be played like this:
So you have a Bbm triad at the top of this chord, and that triad is going to be a great fit for the chord. You can play that like this:
And then you can create lines like this:
II V Hacking with Triads
Let’s use a hack for the II V Since they are so common in Jazz then it makes sense to figure out these two chords at the same time and make sure the two triads really fit together.
One way you could play the chords would be this:
For the Dm7 that gives you an F major triad and the G7(b9) is an F diminished triad.
And these two fit together very well so they are easy to make lines with and also to create some motivic melodies. Something like this:
What you want to practice with material like this is really just being able to play more rhythmical and clear melodies. It is also a great way to really start getting those nice syncopated rhythms into your solos.
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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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Just learning the chords is not enough to really play something that sounds like real Jazz Comping, and you need to develop more than just finding some chord voicings.
In this video, I am going to take an easy Jazz Standard, and then show you how you can start with basic chords and step by step develop your comping, improvise with the chords, and lay down the harmony so that it sounds beautiful and interesting.
Level 1 – Basic Chords
Perdido is a great and very easy Jazz Standard to work on if you are new to playing Jazz, and as you will see, it is a good chord progression to develop some very solid comping skills.
If you play through an A part with a basic set of chords then you only need these basic chord voicings
And making this a little more interesting is pretty simple.
Splitting The Voicings In Two
What I am doing here is just adding some rhythms and splitting up the chord voicings in a bass part and a chord part.
Thinking of the chords as two layers like this is actually a really essential way of thinking of grooves, even if it is not that clear in Jazz.
This is of course also what happens with a walking bass and chords where there are clearly two active layers
Let’s have a look at what you can do the chord voicings to start comping with them
Level 2 – Rootless chords and melodies
The first thing to do is to take the basic voicings from example 1 and then turn them into rootless voicings by leaving out the bass note, like this:
And you can take the 3-note voicings in example 4 and try some different melody notes here as well:
You can also start adding melody notes on the top string:
In this way, you also have some small melodic exercises for the chords and that is going to be really useful for the next section when this has to be turned into comping.
Level 3 – Comping
With this material, you can now start to make short melodies and riffs and comp through an A-part. First I’ll show you how that sounds and then talk about how you practice playing like this
As you can see these are small melodies with a few notes on each chord, so you want to keep it really simple so it doesn’t get in the way.
Notice how I am not writing any extensions here because we are improvising with the chords and they are changing all the time, so it is better to just write the basic chord.
Develop Your Comping Rhythms
If you want to develop your own vocabulary then you could start with a single chord and just play simple two note melodies.
You can then take this to the song and start developing your comping.
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Learning jazz is often mostly about playing 8th note lines, but if you listen to amazing musicians like Charlie Parker then you can hear that he doesn’t only play dense 8th note lines. He also plays very interesting rhythms. So we need to learn to hear rhythms like that.
In this video, I am going to go over an exercise that you can apply to the songs that you play and help develop your ability to play much more interesting solos with more inspired rhythmical ideas.
Developing Rhythmical ideas
The exercise I am using in this lesson is reducing the amount of notes that you use and in that open up to give more attention to the rhythm.
To have a progression to work on I am using the A-part of Take the A-train which is fairly simple. You can, of course, choose any song you like, but make sure that you choose one with not too many chords. Try to also pick one that you know very well.
The chords of the A-train A-part is shown here below:
The Three Notes
Let’s first find three notes for the chords. I am treating the II V as one chord.
If you can see figure out where I got the three notes from then leave a comment on this post 🙂
Rhythm #1
The first rhythm is shown here below. The note on the 4th beat helps it drive it forward. The 2& also helps a lot with adding some “jazz feel” to the rhythm.
First play the rhythm with just one note to get it into your system.
Applying Rhythm #1 to The Chord Progression
A way to improvise through the progression with the 3 notes could look or sound like this. When you work with the rhythm try to keep improvising until it becomes really easy to improvise. That way you have really internalized the rhythm and it is more likely to show up in your playing.
Rhythm #2
This rhythm is actually just a basic syncopation, but at the same time also a very important rhythm to be familiar with in Jazz.
Using Rhythm #2 in a Jazz Solo
As you can see I am starting to mix up the rhythms so that I am not only using one rhythm. In many ways I am using the rhythms to help create a sense of Call-Response in the solo.
Rhythm #3
More complicated rhythms work as well. This one is a lot less clear and can also help you develop your ability to feel off beats more precisely.
Rhythm #3 – Mixing it all up
This 8 bar examples uses Rhythm #3 but I am also mixing it up quite a bit with the previous rhythms. I think this also illustrates how much variation is available like this using more interesting rhythms and a smaller set of notes.
Rhythm is much more important than notes. This is very true for jazz and certainly for comping. The easiest way to learn some new rhythms for your comping is to come up with some small riffs and practice playing those through a chord progression. In this jazz rhythm guitar lesson, I am going to show you 5 great variations on some great Comping rhythms and how they sound through a Blues In F.
If you want to practice them with me then you can go to the second examples via the link in the description of this video. I’ll talk a little about that later. This way of really thinking in rhythms as phrases are really important because you can’t think about the notes, you have to hear them.
If you want to check out more material that you can use for both soloing and comping on an F blues then have a look at this Study Guide: F Blues Study Guide
The Shell-Voicings
Instead of using the voicings that I use in the example you can also simplify that part by using shell voicings. In the end this is much more about rhythm than it is about the chord voicings so that will still teach you the most important part of the material in this lesson.
Practice with the video!
In this video I have added the count-off to the perfromances so if you want to play the rhythms together with me then you can do that. If you are a Patron of the channel then you can also download the mp3 backing track via my Patreon Page
The Shell-voicings are shown here below.
You can go through these voicings and use them while practicing the rhythms in the 5 exercises.
#1 Charleston Rhythm
The Charleston rhythm is a great place to start! It is in many ways the most simple rhythm that has it all. It clearly shows the chords by stating that on the 1 and the groove and swing feel is clear from the 2& that follows it.
If you are playing with people you don’t know: When in doubt, Charleston!
#2 Pulling Forward
This rhythm is a little more busy. Here the goal is to state the groove with the first two 8th notes and then use the 3& to really pull the song forward. The 3& sound adds tension or energy and the following chord on the 1 resolves that tension.
#3 Clear Groove
This example is a little busy if you play it too much, especially if the tempo is higher than a slow medium.
It is however a complete groove and a way of laying down the harmony and the groove in a very clear way. This can work as a a great solid background for a soloist, but for some it may also get in the way.
#4 Up-Beat Energy
This rhythm is a little lighter and a great way to break things up a little. It is important to be able to play comping rhythms that are not on the 1st beat all the time.
#5 Leave it to Bass and Drums
Another exercise is to play rhythms starting on beat 2. This exercise helps you feel(or think) the first beat and then play on the 2nd. Internalizing the rhythm and the meter like this is really useful for your overall timing and time-feel.
Get more ideas for comping
If you want to expand your comping and check out some more ideas then check out this lesson in my WebStore:
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Most of the time advice on Jazz Guitar Comping is about what chords to play and not how to play them. This one is about how to actually Practice Comping.
Comping is important, but since it is about playing behind somebody else it can be difficult to practice on your own. So how do you work on it? In this video I am going to show you a few ways to work on your comping and a list of things to think about when it comes to listening to your own comp.
Ways to Practice Jazz Guitar Comping
The old method: Metronome 2&4 play some comp think about how you want it to sound and imagine the band playing with you.
This is the most important thing to practice and you want to be able to do this well, but there are other ways where you can try to work on it.
One of the ways that take advantage of some of the things we have available in this more modern tools like recording yourself and using backing tracks. I also discuss some of the things that you can learn and think about when doing this.
The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen
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Most of the time when you think about comping you are concerned with the chords, voicings and rhythms you are using. Those are of course important but there are also other things to consider when Comping and playing chord melody that can really transform how your chords sound.
This video is going over 4 examples of ways to play chords that can help you add something new to how you sound when you are comping or making a chord melody.
The importance of comping
In my experience, being a jazz guitarist you spend a lot more time playing chords than soloing and that skill is something you want to take as far as you can!
Content:
0:00 Intro — Sounds better if you break a few rules
