You Don’t Need 100 Jazz Chords. You Need This Simple System
Knowing more jazz chords won’t make you sound better. And yet most players are drowning in chords that they want to memorize but could never use in a song.
So in this video, I’ll show you the Joe Pass System and how he used it to turn simple 3-note chords into great-sounding comping, chord melody, and even chord solos.
Here’s the mistake most players make — they treat chords like a collection. They find a voicing they like, they memorize the shape, but that way of learning makes it almost impossible to connect chords when you’re playing. Everything is isolated grip after isolated grip.
Joe Pass did something completely different. And once you see it, you’ll know how to get much more out of your chords.
We will use an example from this book:
Think about the first time you learned a jazz chord. Maybe it was a C7 with a 13th, and you memorized it as a single grip.
Learning grips is fine for campfire chords, but in jazz, chords aren’t static. They move. You’re constantly shifting notes, adding little melodies, creating motion between the chords. And you can’t do any of that if all you know is the grip — you need to understand what’s actually inside the chord.
Chords aren’t locked to specific extensions either. One moment you might play the 13th, the next you might play something else.
That’s the freedom Jazz gives you while playing chords — the chord is a starting point, not a fixed shape.
The problem is that most players learn a voicing system — Drop 2 voicings, shell voicings, diatonic inversions — and then stay inside it. The system becomes a prison. Joe Pass didn’t think in systems. He thought in music. And that’s exactly what we’re going to look at.
Joe Pass’s Flexible Jazz Chords
Before I moved to the Netherlands, back when I was still living in Copenhagen and studying with Morten Kargaard,
He gave me a Joe Pass solo transcription to learn. I’d already worked through Drop 2 and Drop 3 voicings, so I was excited — but I was also trying to figure out how to build my own chord solos at the time.
That’s when I noticed something. Joe wasn’t playing static grips or sticking to one voicing system. In several places, he was taking a single chord and transforming it — shifting it into completely different voicings to make music.
In the second chorus of the Blues solo, he plays this phrase on a Bb7 chord.
Check out how many different shapes he gets out of a just single chord:
If you break it down, he starts with a triad, moves to a three-part quartal voicing, and then uses a couple of Drop 2 voicings. It’s all Bb7 —but the way he moves through it creates melodic motion that keeps the line alive.
The logic is actually different.
A little bit later, he plays this:
He starts with a shell voicing outlining a D7alt, then moves to a Drop 2. Different shapes, but it’s still one chord — he’s just playing different parts of it.
For the D7:
And for the G7:
That’s when it clicked. Joe Pass was doing two things: mixing voicing types and using variations of the same basic chord. Once I saw that, everything got a lot easier.
So let’s take a simple Cmaj7 and look at how YOU can do the same thing.
Connection #1 – Shell-voicings -> Drop3
One of the easiest connections to make is between shell voicings and Drop 3 chords. Here’s how it works:
If you take a simple shell voicing like this:
And add a G on the B string, it transforms into a Drop 3 voicing:
Just one note. But now you have two different shapes to move between — and that movement is what creates the melodic motion in your comping. Check out how that sounds in context:
But here’s the cool part — it doesn’t stop at adding notes. You can also create connections by removing notes.
And don’t worry, you don’t need to learn all these phrases by heart off the video.
If you want to go over the examples at your own pace, you can grab the free PDF of the examples.
You can download that here: https://mailchi.mp/jenslarsen/g050o5kjb6
Connection #2 Drop3 -> Triads
Removing notes doesn’t just make the chord flexible and easier to play — it’s actually one of the easiest ways to break out of fixed positions on the neck.
Take this Drop 3 voicing for Cmaj7:
If you remove the root — the C — you’re left with this:
It’s still a rootless Cmaj7, but it’s also an E minor triad in second inversion. And because it’s a triad, you have three inversions to work with — all the same notes, just in different positions:
You can add the root back in the bass just to hear how these triads function as Cmaj7 chords:
Here’s how that sounds in a comping context:
This triad connection becomes especially powerful when you take it into chord soloing. Here’s what that looks like on a Bb blues using a Bb7 chord.
We’ll start with a D diminished triad as the upper structure. Add a G on the B string and you get a simple three-note voicing for Bb7(13) — and that leads naturally into another inversion of the same D diminished triad:
Notice how I’m also splitting up the Bb7 shell voicing to create movement underneath:
This way of opening up and connecting chords so they become easier to make music with is also what I cover in my Jazz Chord Craftsmanship course.
If you want to learn to play melodies and improvise with chords while comping through standards, then join us in the jazz chord craftsmanship. There’s a link in the video description.
Let’s get back to the vertical connection because Joe Pass also linked this to drop2 voicings.
Connection #3 Triads -> Drop2
At its core, this is fretboard visualization — thinking of one chord, but having several ways to play it. This is where it starts to get really powerful
And you’ll see exactly what I mean when we get to the Joe Pass lick in a moment.
Check out how simple this is.
You have the root position, the shell voicing, which becomes the Drop 3, which becomes a triad. And if you take that triad and start adding notes on the high E string, you get a Drop 2 voicing.
So from one chord, you now have a whole connected system of shapes.
Here’s how that sounds as a Cmaj7 version of the Joe Pass lick from earlier:
Whether you’re comping or playing a chord solo, that gives you a lot to work with in one position. But for this to work across the whole fretboard, you’ll also need to be comfortable with the shell voicing rooted on the 5th string. And once you have that, the two systems connect in a way that gives you real freedom across the fretboard — and starts to sound like the real thing.
The “Other” Shell voicing
Let’s look at the same system starting from the other shell voicing — this time on G7, in the same area of the neck. There’s one small challenge here, but it actually shows you something interesting about how the system works.
Here’s the G7:
And just like before, you can add a note to get a G7(9). I usually call these shell-derived voicings, though there’s no real standard name for them. You can also remove the root, but unlike the Cmaj7, that doesn’t give you a clean triad. You could call it a major b5 triad,
But that description breaks down pretty quickly when you move it through the scale:
None of these works as traditional triads — but that doesn’t matter. The voicing still functions beautifully as a rootless G7(9), and you can add a note on the high E string to turn it into a Drop 2 voicing. So the system still holds
It just looks a little different on this string set.
Here’s the full set of voicings for G7:
Now let’s put Cmaj7 and G7 together and hear what this system actually sounds like in a real progression.
Joe Pass’ Freedom Formula
There’s one thing Joe Pass does that ties everything in this video together — and this is it. Everything stems from the simple, basic version of the chord. You think the simple chord — and whatever you add is just a variation of it.
In a basic II V I, the chords you’re thinking might look like this:
But you don’t have to play them as full shapes. Leave out the bass note, play the rootless version, and suddenly you have room to move with melody and rhythm, in any direction you want:
And this isn’t just for chord solos. In a band setting, where the bass player has the root covered, this approach is exactly how you comp without getting in the way — while still creating real movement. Turning the chord symbols into music. Here’s what that sounds like:
Remember that you can download the examples in the free PDFso you don’t need to memorize them here.
Get the PDF here: https://mailchi.mp/jenslarsen/g050o5kjb6
The Ultimate Jazz Guitar Skill?
And if you want to hear this system in action on a real song, I break down a full Autumn Leaves chord melody arrangement in this video.
Chord melody is where all of this starts to feel like real jazz — you’ve got the groove, the melody, the harmony, it’s all there! And it’s a lot of fun to play.
Check it out!
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