Pro jazz guitarists almost never play the big chords. And if you’ve been taught jazz guitar the traditional way, nobody probably told you that.
So in this video, I’ll show you a system of lesser-known chords so you can lay down the groove, comp through the harmony of any song, and add chromatic motion that drives the music forward.
Fix Your Chords!
We all love the sound of rich jazz chords — but if you’ve tried to use them for comping, you already know the problem. They’re difficult to play, they kill your rhythm, and figuring out whether you’ve even have the right chord requires a degree in music theory.
Like this, you’ll never get your chords to groove. But there’s a simpler way to do this — and it actually sounds better. Check this out.
This flows, the chords are easy to play, and even though the chords are simpler, it is not boring.
So let me show you how these actually work — and later how to add the rhythm and movement as well so you sound like that.
Easy Is Better
What you want to use is Shell voicings, simple 3-note chords – root, 3rd, and 7th.
Here’s a Cmaj7 with the root on the 5th string:
You have root, 3rd and 7th.
A shell voicing has the root on the lower string set, and the 3rd and 7th on the middle strings.
That was the version with the root on the 5th string, but there is also one with the root on the 6th string:
Here’s how you get these chords into your ears and fingers fast so you can use them on a real song immediately. The way shell voicings are built makes them naturally connect — so when you move through a song, the chords flow instead of jumping around randomly. You’ll hear that clearly when we put them to use on Autumn Leaves in a moment.
Since I am using Autumn Leaves in this video, let’s look at the diatonic chords of Bb major — diatonic just means the chords built from each note in the scale.
First, the voicings with the root on the 5th string:
And here’s the same thing with the root on the 6th string — I’m starting on F, the lowest note from the Bb major scale on the E string, and the chord there is an F7:
Playing A Song
With these two exercises, it is easy to find the chords for Autumn Leaves. Let’s focus on the first 8 bars. We do need two tweaks along the way.
Here’s the song and the diatonic chords:
First we need a Cm7, then F7 and Bbmaj7.
Can you see how these chords sit right next to each other on the fretboard?
That’s what makes them flow so naturally through the song.
Here I need a D7 because we are going to Gm, but that is just taking the Dm7 and changing the 3rd from major to minor.
The Gm6 is a similar story:
Take the Gm7 and change the 7th to a 6th.
And that gives you this:
That is all it takes. If you are not familiar with the chords then play through them in time to get both the shapes and the song into your ears and fingers.
Having that in your system will help you with the next part — adding rhythm.
It Don’t Mean A Thing
Most players struggle with rhythm because they think about it as an abstract thing you count, not something you hear.
But rhythm is actually melody — and once you hear it that way, everything becomes easier.
Keep in mind that not everybody in a band is playing notes, but we all play rhythm.
Shell voicings have a built-in trick for this: a natural split between the bass note and the chord, which gives you two voices to play with — almost like a snare and a bass drum in a drum kit.
For the first chord, the Cm7, you split it and get 3 different sounds:
Both, the bass and the chord.
Let\s add some rhythm.
Here’s a one-bar pattern. First, just repeat it, to get it into your ears:
Can you hear how much more sense rhythms make if you hear them as a melody?
And then take it through the song. Here are the first 4 bars:
Remember that you don’t have to memorize all of these examples off the video. If you want to practice the chords and these rhythms, you can grab the free PDF and go through the exercises at your own pace. There’s a link in the description.
Like this, you start building a vocabulary of rhythms — and once you have that, you can use them to create even more for your comping.
Let me show you.
Make You Comping Talk
The next challenge is making your rhythms connect. Most players end up just playing chords over the song — there’s no phrase, no conversation, it doesn’t go anywhere.
But if rhythm is melody, then your comping needs to work like a melody as well — phrases that ask a question and answer it.
Here’s how you develop that in two levels.
Let’s say you have a simple rhythm that you already know:
First, you want to train your imagination and ability to hear rhythmic melodies.
The easiest way to develop that is to play rubato first — without worrying about strict time —
so you can focus purely on hearing what comes next.
Start to play the 1-bar pattern like this:
Now stop and try to imagine what might follow that naturally in the F7 bar.
It could be
Or maybe this;
You can move through the song like this, playing the first pattern every other bar and really get an idea about what works as a follow-up.
Think of it as a question and an answer, that makes it easier, and this type of phrasing is called call-response.
The next level is to start working on this in time. Here, the key is to start with simple rhythms since you also have to keep track of the form and the chords.
A good place to start could be this, which also gives you a bit of space to hear the next rhythm, you might as well start easy:
Try to play that rhythm every other bar and then come up with different answers in the bars in between.
Check out how that sounds:
Like this, it becomes easy to build a vocabulary of comping rhythms and connect them through a song — and, still only using 3-note chords.
If you find this video useful and want to dig into more jazz chord stuff then don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, I make new videos on this every week!
You might have noticed I was doing a few more things in the example at the start of the video.
It might be complicated, but it really isn’t.
Let me show you how that works.
Non-Theory Passing Chords
This is all without knowing tons of scales, theory, and substitutions, because it’s almost purely visual.
There are two levels to this: complete chords and single notes. I’ll show you the chords first, and then we can use that to add some single-note tricks.
Let’s start with the basic chords for the 1st few bars:
Now add a bit of rhythm, because that sounded too much like an exercise:
This already works, but let me show you how you can add a bit of extra “chromatic” energy, without any theory. I’ll break down how this works
Here are the first two bars:
For this, passing chords are just chords that are leading into the next chord by moving up or down a fret.
As you can see, I don’t add a name to them, they are just the same chord as the resolution:
Move up to F7
And also just using the matching shape to move down to Bbmaj7.
No theory needed.
You can add this to the next chords as well, but notice how you can also have them inside the bar:
Here, you first have a chord moving down to Ebmaj7, but then in the bar I also add one that resolves back to Ebmaj7 by moving up a fret.
In general, you keep the main chord on beats 1 and 3 and then use passing chords to get to one. That way, the harmony is super clear and you also help the music move along.
What is great about this is that it doesn’t really matter what the passing chord is, as long as it“ has a strong resolution, so you don’t need to know 327 substitutions, you just need to know what chord it is going to.
Be careful with using a passing chord on beat 1, it’s not impossible, but the soloist might not like it.
There’s a lot you can do with passing chords alone — but you can also add single notes movement inside the chord. Let’s look at that.
Next-Level Chromatic Tricks
The first thing you need is one extra shape — the maj6 chord, we usually just call them 6-chords.
In this case, the Bb6 and Eb6 are useful on Autumn Leaves:
Maj7 and maj6 voicings are interchangeable, if you can use one the other one works as well — and that means you can turn that movement into chromatic connection between the two.
You can also move from Cm7 to F7 using one static note and two that slide into place, I really like that sound:
Or go to the Bbmaj7 like this — the outer voices move down a fret while the middle voice moves up.
And here I have this moving down (play) and the middle voice goes up (play).
I love how those resolutions sound.
All of these examples and tricks are in the free PDF — so you can start adding them to any song you’re already playing. Link in the description
And that’s really the point of all of this — you don’t need complicated chords or a degree in music theory to sound like a pro. Simple voicings, musical rhythm, and a bit of movement is all it takes.
Jazz Triads A Super Power
Another place where simple solutions are more powerful is jazz soloing. If you want your solos to have the right feel and phrasing — the two things that actually make it sound like jazz — famous artists like Joe Pass and Charlie Parker rely on triads. In this next video, I break down how you can use the same tricks to improve your solos, just using simple triads.
Check it out!
Lean Jazz Make Music!
This “Boring” Triad Exercise Will Save You Years! (But Most Ignore It)
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