Do you spend hours practicing new chord grips, but your comping still sounds flat and lifeless? I used to waste hours practicing inversions every day, but once I started practicing these 3 exercises, I could play Jazz chords with real flow and groove. In this video, I will show you the 3 exercises that helped not just me, but also hundreds of my students turn simple chords into real jazz comping with rhythm, melody, and groove.
The Exercise Nobody Does
If you’re anything like me, sometimes you just want to sit back and enjoy those rich jazz chords. There’s something magical about the way the voicings flow and fill the room with color.
But if all you do is play beautiful shapes, your comping gets VERY boring, VERY fast. Jazz isn’t only about playing pretty chords; it needs rhythm and movement. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. As Joe Pass puts it:
“First of all: Don’t play any big 6-string chords, play inside chords!”
So let’s throw away the big shapes and focus on what really matters: Connecting the rhythm and the harmony in the music!
One of the most game-changing exercises for me is surprisingly simple: take a song you like and comp it, with the metronome on 2 and 4.
Why do this? To start with, it’s actually fun—you get to mess around with the chords and harmony, and you are not only practicing inversions, you’re making music. I’ll show you exactly how to get started with this in a bit.
It shouldn’t be a surprise: the best way to get better at comping is to actually spend part of your practice time comping! Nobody ever became great at Tennis only spending time running around the court and doing warm-ups. If that is all you do, you’ll end up frustrated!
So you can practice some inversions and diatonic chords, but that should not be the only thing you do. If you actually play music, you work on making the chords sound good, and you have a place to experiment so you don’t screw up in a performance and get fired.
Getting Started: Turn The Chords Into Music
If you’ve never practiced this way before, here are a few steps to get you going—plus some simple tricks that will instantly level up your sound! Start with a song or chord progression you know well; a 12-bar blues in C is perfect.
Level #1 Just Play The Song
The first level: is Just play the song. Turn on your metronome and lay down the basic chords—don’t worry about complicated rhythms or difficult voicings.
Just focus on getting the groove across, maybe with a simple Charleston rhythm. As you can see, here, I’m mostly using shell voicings to keep things simple.
Level #2 Easy Chromatic Passing Chords
Want to make it sound more interesting? Try adding chromatic passing chords. The easiest way: just use a chord one fret above or below to approach your target chord, so the chord that is in the song.
Level #3 Chromatic Motion
You can also use passing chords as a way to connect to the next chord—this sounds fantastic on a blues. Check this out:
The great thing about practicing like this is that you can experiment, try new rhythms, riffs melodic ideas. If something sounds off, don’t worry about it, just try again in the next chorus. You don’t need to worry about the soloist firing you.
So, once you’re comfortable turning chords into music, let’s look at a practical way to think about chords that will make your comping even more flexible and musical.
A Better Way To Think About Chords And Chord Voicings
Let’s be honest: Most of us—myself included—don’t always think about chord voicings in a way that actually makes them easy to use. And it’s not really our fault! The way chords are usually taught (and even the way I sometimes teach them) splits everything into neat little boxes: shell voicings, drop2s, upper-structure triads, and so on.
But here’s the problem with that: When you practice chords in these isolated categories, you end up running diatonic chords or inversions with just ONE type of voicing.
That’s not how real music works! When you actually play, you’re mixing and matching different voicings all the time—whatever fits the sound and the groove of what you’re playing.
So if you want your comping to sound musical and flexible, you need to break out of those boxes. Start thinking about voicings as tools you can combine and connect, not just categories to memorize.
In a moment, I’ll show you a practical way to start mixing voicings it will make it 10x easier to make music while comping, but let’s first look at how to connect voicings visually on the fretboard.
Chords Across, Not Along the Neck
Let’s clear something up: When you’re comping, you do NOT need to think, “Okay, this is a C7… but actually it’s an Eø Drop2 inversion with the flat five in the bass and an 11th instead of the 3rd.”
Nobody thinks like that. It makes it impossible to play music
Here’s a much better approach—one that’s actually practical and will level up your comping right away.
Try this out: This exercise is about exploring the neck and connecting chord shapes across different types, instead of just running up and down one voicing family. It’s about discovering how your favorite chords are already linked, right under your fingers.
Most of us navigate the neck by thinking of the root of the chord and finding that on the two lowest strings,so E and A
If you are looking for a C7 then you have a shell voicing in the 3rd fret here:
and in the 8th fret, here
Let’s connect this one to some other chords that you probably know! Notice how adding the G on the B string makes it a Drop3 voicing,
and you also have the C7(13) Drop3 within reach,
And these all work together if you are playing a blues in C!
You can even add one more string, and then you are playing Drop2 voicing with a bass note
and there are variations of this as well:
The trick is to think of all these as versions of your C7 shell voicing.
Sometimes, it’s even practical to leave out the root and just play a two-note shell
then add notes for triad
or Drop2 voicings—whatever fits the groove.
Don’t get lost in theory or endless labels.
Mixing Full and Rootless Voicings
When you see a C7 chord, don’t just picture one grip—see a whole range of options.
If you only stick to a single shape, you’ll end up boxed in, and your comping will sound static. But if you think in terms of flexible voicings, you can add moving voices, melodies, and rhythm to your playing—without worrying about jumping to some unfamiliar part of the neck every time the chord changes. This approach solves a lot of problems and keeps you rooted in the shapes you already know, while expanding what you can actually play.
Here’s the really practical part:
You can mix rootless voicings with full, complete chords. In fact, this is one of the best ways to comp—especially if you’re playing in a duo or doing chord melody. Start by stating the basic shell voicing, or a simple variation, and then feel free to move or embellish before you switch to the next chord. You’re not chained to the root every time!
For example, on a blues, you might start with a shell voicing,
then add or subtract notes for color,
or slip into a rootless voicing to let the bass or melody breathe.
Here’s how that could sound:
Let’s explore how to improve rhythm and also get rid of a myth about comping patterns!
Music is Like a Language
Let’s talk about rhythm—not just as a technical skill, but as a language. Because playing more interesting rhythms in your comping isn’t really about memorizing a hundred “comping patterns”. In fact, similar to chord voicings, zooming out and focusing on just a few key rhythms in a tune is usually the easiest and most effective way to level up your comping.
Think of it like building a sentence: If each bar of your comping is a word, what matters is the meaning of the sentence, not just the individual words.
You wouldn’t want your solo to come out as “My Solo is Loquacious”—even if “loquacious” sounds fancy, it’s probably not what you meant!
Sometimes, adding too many complicated rhythms is like throwing in random big words—it can turn your message into nonsense.
Here’s the good news: Working on this is way easier than you might think. Try thinking in terms of call-and-response. Start by repeating a rhythm for a few bars and then finish the phrase with a different rhythm as your conclusion.
When you repeat a rhythm as a riff, you give the soloist something solid to play against, and you give the band a groove to lock in with. Plus, you can practice this on any song—try coming up with different “conclusions” for your rhythmic sentences. This way, you train your ear to hear how rhythms interact and build a natural musical flow.
Maybe the next 4 bars could have a different conclusion:
By using the rhythms you already know and working with them in this call-and-response way, you’ll naturally come up with more ideas—and your comping will sound way more musical and conversational.
You can even do this every other bar for a more open, interactive feel:
If you learn rhythms (or any musical idea) in the context where you actually want to use them, you’ll improve much faster—and skip a ton of useless, technical, or theoretical work. It’s all about making your comping speak, not just saying fancy words you’ve learned by heart.
Just Play Simple Chords!
One guitarist who really understood the power of simplicity was Joe Pass. Sure, his playing could get incredibly complex, but his approach to jazz chords? It was all about making things simple and musical. And honestly, that’s the direction you want to go—focus on clarity and groove, not just flashy shapes.
If you want to see how Joe Pass makes chords and progressions simple, check out this video. And trust me, Joe definitely has a point! Simple is easier and faster, but also makes you play better
Check it out! Learn Jazz Make Music!
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