Playing Jazz Chords is a huge chunk of what you do when we play Jazz on the guitar. It is what we need for comping, chord melody arrangements and, chord solos.
Learning new chord voicings and especially learning to use new chord voicings can be very difficult and often a lot of time is wasted just playing inversions and exercises when that is not how you would playing the chords if you are playing a piece of music.
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Triads and triad based chords are fantastic jazz voicings! In this lesson, I am going to show you how you can get started with some triad voicings from what you already know and then go over 5 levels of how you can play some great sounding comping ideas using these voicings.
This is something I use all the time myself, and if you check out the Chord solos of Joe Pass he is also using this all the time.
Take The A-Train – Basic set of chords
Let’s start with taking the A-part on Take The A-train and play that with a set of chords that you already know:
Triad-based voicings
If we play these without the root then you have these voicings:
Converting the Jazz voicings and doing great things
I am going to show you two important things about these voicings:
#1 There are more melody options. You can change the top note and give us some options:
#2 All the voicings are triads
Cmaj7 without C is E G B = Em
D7 without D is F# A C = F#dim
Dm7 without D is F A C = F major
G7(b9) without G is (in this voicing) F Ab B = F dim
A7(b9) without A is Gdim = G Bb C#
Top-Note Melodies and Some Jazz Rhythm
First, you should look at the chords and find another melody note for each one. (this is powerful because you can make start making riffs and making things sound a lot more interesting.
Using Inversions of the triads
Since all the voicings are triads then you can also use the inversions of these triads. If you use the inversions as well then you have some options similar to this:
Chromatic melodies & Inner-voice movement
Of course, it is possible to use movement in the other voices, not only the melody. In fact, that is what I am doing on the D7 above.
The example below takes that a bit further.
I am also using some chromatic movement in the melodies most clearly in the top note melodies on the D7 and G7 chords, and in the inner voice melody on the Cmaj7.
Altering the voicings for more modern jazz sounds
And beyond changing the top note you can also experiment with changing notes inside the chord and in that way create some new voicings.
In the example below on the D7, you will see one such voicing. The first voicing on G7 is a similar construction.
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Some of the most common ways people tell you to reduce chord progressions are very likely to work against what you hear and the music you are trying to play. You need to apply the right type of harmonic analysis to not end up with complete gibberish when you reduce jazz chord progressions.
In this video, I am going to show you some of the places you can reduce the number of chords and talk about when that is possible.
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If you are learning a Jazz Standard then the analysis is a great tool. It is very useful to know how the chords work and how they sound in the key of the song. But in a Jazz Standards Analysis, you are likely to come across chords that are not just a part of a II V I and more difficult to understand.
This video is on 10 types of chords that are like that and how you learn to recognize and deal with them. It should help you take your harmonic analysis up a level and help make it easy to learn jazz standards quickly.
You need to check out a lot of different jazz chords and voicings when you want to learn Jazz, and you need them for comping and for chord melody arrangements.
In this lesson, I am going to show you some techniques that can really help you get more out of your voicings so that you don’t have to spend too much time practicing chords and help you use one voicing that you already know to create a ton of other chords that you then don’t need to practice as much.
A little music theory can really save you a lot of time!
I am going to do this in 3 parts – first look at finding similar voicings, then change the voicing and finally what other chords we can use this voicing for.
This is all about using what you practice as much as possible and getting the most out of what you have learned.
Part 1 – Connect the voicing to all the other things you know.
Let’s keep it a little practical. Let’s say you have learned a shiny new voicing like this Drop2 voicing for a C7(9).
It’s a drop2 voicing, but if we forget that and just look at it and associate it with other types of voicings then something great happens:
Below, you can see that it is coming from this voicing (bar2) and that it is also related to this voicing (bar3)
The reason that I am saying this is that it is important to tie see how the chord has different components from other voicings that we know.
That makes it easier to use it with other chords and for examplie having C-D top note melody.
Another thing that is good to notice is that it is related to this Drop3, this triad or this shell voicing.
We are just taking a look at how it works and finding things we can do with it.
Right now we can make a melody like this with what we just discovered:
or a comping riff like this:
Part 2 – Change The Voicing – Make a New Jazz Chord
This is really an important way to look at how to come up with more sounds and really explore what we can do with a chord.
To keep it a bit practical I am not going to change the 3rd and 7th of the chord because then we have a completely different type of chord and open up for a lot more information, that is possible and you should experiment with it, but my video would get too long.
If we explore changing the 2nd highest note, the G, then we have these chords:
So, of course, you need to understand where you want to use the chords to figure out what fits. A blues in C with C7(9,b13) chords may not be the sound you want (or are hired to play)
We can do the same with the top note:
And I am not going to go over the different combinations of this, but that can be fun to explore as well!
Part 3 – Using this voicing for other Jazz chords
Now we have connected the chord to a ton of other voicings and made a lot of variations on it.
If you look at the notes that are in the C7(9) voicing we have Bb,E, G and D.
If you order these in different ways we have:
E G Bb D which is Em7(b5) or You can look at it as G Bb D E which is a Gm6
So this means that the original voicing could be used like this:
These are two of the obvious choices, but you could also go through this in a systematic way and just check out what these notes are against any root.
They could work as a Bb6(#11) or F#7alt. Thinking of notes against a root is something that is also very useful for soloing!
If you use the chord as an F#7alt then you have this: Example 8
Connect the chords don’t just remember separate things
This way of thinking about voicings where you are looking at it not only within a system but also really connecting to other types of chords and voicings is a very good practice for developing and making your vocabulary more useable. If you want to see another video where I talk about this then check out this video where I am going over a 3 level process of creating and using jazz chords.
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Reharmonization! I imagine the word itself sets off alarms for some people thinking: “Crazy Music Theory will follow” and there are going to be the weirdest examples of chord substitutions and bass-notes over triads with extensions.
But it isn’t that bad. Reharmonization is a great way to add variation to both your solos and your interpretation of a song, for example in a chord melody arrangement.
In this video I am going to give you some basic reharmonization ideas to use, it is pretty basic and stuff you might know already but not use like this or maybe have played examples off. The video is not going to make you the best arranger of our time but it will give you some things you can put to use in a lot of places and if you are only playing the basic changes all the time then starting to work on improvising with the chords could be just the thing you should do to get to a higher level.
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Most of the time the one thing that holds you back from really understanding Music Theory or using an idea on several different chords is a really simple part of what is going on.
A big part of what having a good overview of music theory is to be able to think in different layers. You can think of the notes you play as individual notes but also as groups of notes like arpeggios, scales or other melodic ideas. But you need the basic overview of the material to be able to do this.
Content:
0:00 Intro – The Basics Are What is Holding You Back
0:21 Three Layers of understanding what is going on
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Learning Jazz is difficult and you want to get it right the first time around so you don’t waste any time. When you learn Jazz Guitar then there are some things that you can keep in mind in terms of how you practice jazz, the type of music or jazz theory that you learn and also what you focus on with your jazz practice.
In this video, I am going to go over 5 mistakes that I see many students make and talk about how to approach learning jazz and practicing in a more efficient and useful way.
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Chord Substitution and Reharmonization are Jazz topics that are very often discussed together but are actually not really the same thing. This video is going to go over how I think while creating new chord progressions and how I use my reharmonization jazz skills to create several chord progressions for the same song.
The emphasis is on how to come up with chords and 5 examples of how to reharmonize a Blues in F. I also talk about how I improvise over the progressions, what to play and why.
If you only think of music as one chord at the time then you are really missing out! Reharmonization is a great example of how that which is another thing I am trying to illustrate in this video.
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All The Things You Are is a great standard that we all need to have in our repertoire. In this video I am going to go over a thorough All The Things You Are Harmonic Analysis. Talking about how the song is constructed with Form, modulations, chord movement and scales for improvisation.
I also dedicate a part of the video to discuss pivot chords and how they work in modulation, and some of the subtleties we loose when we start turning the chords into jazz chords.
Being able to analyze harmony is a huge help in learning jazz standards and becoming a better improviser.
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