Often you come across songs where you are comping a static chord for a few bars, and it can get a little boring with just one voicing, not adding energy and movement to the music. This video will give you some tricks to make places like that more interesting and show you how to add some beautiful chords and reharmonizations to your jazz guitar playing.
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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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In this video, I am going to take a simple comping rhythm that you probably already know and show you some different ways that you can develop that and get some new material so that you don’t always play the same rhythms and can start developing your own playing.
Remember:If You Can Comp – You Can Work!
The Most Important Jazz Rhythm Known To Man
Throughout this video I am going to show you how you can mess around with this rhythm and everything is really simple, just playing a II V, but sometimes the rhythm suggests some extra things you can try so there are a few other tricks as well.
As you have probably guessed the first rhythm is just the basic Charleston, if you know only one rhythm, then make it that one.
So this you already know and you should be able to play it on all songs. Actually taking these rhythms through songs is a really good exercise and that goes for all the rhythms in this video.
Adding an Extra note
The first thing we can try is to add an extra note to the charleston
Notice that this rhythm is easier to play but it still sounds great! What you are doing here is adding a note before the 2nd note in the Charleston, but that is of course not the only option.
Syncopated rhythm
and of course, you can also add a note after one of the two notes to get a rhythm like this, which is a basic syncopation.
The way I am going through these examples and coming up with them is really just doing simple things like adding a note here and there or shifting the rhythm as you will see in the next example.
Don’t play on beat 1
The next thing you can try is shifting the entire rhythm.
Here I am moving it an 8th note, so instead of 1 and 2& it becomes 1& and 3. Of course, this works better with really simple rhythms like the one I am using here with only two notes. After this one, I’ll show you a great place to add a chromatic passing chord.
How Do You Practice The Rhythms
The way you get rhythms like this into your playing is probably by repeating them similar to what I do hear and then try to take them through some chord progressions you know like a blues or a standard you are really familiar with.
When you play it like that you really start to hear it and then it will start to pop up in your own comping.
Syncopated Upbeat
This rhythm adds an extra note to the previous shifted rhythm, which makes the first two notes sort of resolve on beat 3. I make that a little more clear by also using a chromatic passing chord to resolve to 3
Using chromatic passing chords on the guitar is often really just about sliding into the chord you want to end on.
The Boogaloo Rhythm
This rhythm is really useful for boogaloo and soul-jazz grooves like Sidewinder and Alligator Boogaloo. It is the original pattern but now shifted an entire quarter note so that it starts on beat 2.
It is the accent pattern that Barry Harris plays on sidewinder and it is a part of what Dr. Lonnie Smith plays on Alligator Boogaloo. These are both songs you want to know by the way.
Chromatic Boogaloo
Here you can add a note as well to have a rhythm like this:
Again I am using the chromatic passing chord on the G7 bar which just slides in place. It can be a little heavy if you make this a groove and have that chromatic note on the 3, but as a comping rhythm among other rhythms, it is fine.
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When you are comping Jazz songs then it is good to also change the textures you play, not always full chords but also fills and small polyphonic ideas. In this lesson, I am going to show you how to use intervals and counterpoint as a way of comping and as a way to add a new sound to the way you play chords. It will help you when you are comping but will also be great in a solo or in a chord melody arrangement.
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Get the PDF!
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Think about how you would feel soloing over your own comping.
That is probably the best way to evaluate how you comp. There are some things that you need to get right if you want to be effective in comping. You don’t want to just play jazz chords while the music is happening. You want to be part of the music. That is what this Jazz Guitar Lesson is all about and if you can comp then you get asked to play at sessions and gigs.
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Rhythm is everything in Jazz and especially comping. Building a solid vocabulary of great Jazz Comping Rhythms is difficult. In this video, I am going to go over 10 examples of comping rhythms to check out.
I play each example 3 times, so you can either use it as inspiration for your own practice or even use the video as a play along and comp together with me.
For each of the rhythms, I have an illustration of how the basic pattern is and a version that is written out with chord voicings to play on guitar.
All the examples are using a turnaround in C major.
Rhythm #1 – Charleston
This first example is the “Charleston rhythm” and is very useful also as a repeating riff.
It has the clarity of the changes with the chord on beat 1 and the syncopation with the chord on the 2&
Rhythm #2 – Shifted Charleston
A variation of the Charleston is this 1 bar pattern where the whole rhythm is shifted an 8th note.
Rhythm #3 – Forward motion with Syncopation
This rhythm uses the tension of the sustained note on the 3& to move the progression forward towards the next chord stated on beat one.
Rhythm #4 – Red Garland
Red Garland is often associated with this way of mostly comping on the anticipated heavy beats: 2& and 4&.
Rhythm #5 – Basic Syncopation
This rhythm is a great way of turning the basic syncopation rhythm into a riff that sits well on top of a swing groove.
Rhythm #6 – Quarter Note Rhythms
Often the focus in comping is too much on all the 8th note upbeats and we forget that you can do a lot with quarter notes as well.
Rhythm #7 – Dotted Quarter notes
Using the dotted quarter note rhythms in jazz comping is very common and very worth incorporating into your vocabulary.
Rhythm #8 – Shifting motif
Another great way to work with rhythm is to shift a motif around. This example is a very basic version of this.
Rhythm #9 – Call-Response phrases
Besides motifs you can also use call-response as a way of generating phrases in your comping.
Rhythm #10 – Anticipated Beat 4
This rhythm is often left out but is very common in a lot of themes (and pretty much all of Salsa), so it is very worthwhile to know and feel comfortable with.
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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.
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In short you want to work on your Jazz Guitar Comping. It is probably what you spend the most time doing when you are playing in a band. It is also one of the best ways to develop your ability to interact with the people you play with which can makes your solos much much more interesting to listen to and add a complete other dimension to it.
There are ways of thinking about comping that will improve how you comp and in this video I am going to talk about how you
Connect with the band
Support the soloist better
Help the song become a musical story
Comping is a difficult art to teach in a lesson because it is about interacting with several people at the same time, but it is also a huge part of what you do as a jazz musician, and for me a big chunk of what I do for a living, both as a sideman and in my own band. It is also something that I love doing because the emphasis is on playing together with other people.
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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
