These 8 chord forms are certainly the most used in jazz, as much as you will find them in many pieces! These forms of chords will allow you to address a lot of classical jazz and compose your own songs. Conceived in the early 1930s, the electric guitar became a necessity as jazz musicians sought. That said, you do not need to be a virtuoso to learn to play jazz! But it’s not always easy to know where to start in this huge world of jazz.ĭo not panic, we have grouped for you the 8 forms of chords that must be known in priority to play jazz! Of course, you will find other forms of chords, but if you know these 8 forms, you will already have an excellent base! The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of electric guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed 'jazz'.The jazz-type guitar was born as a result of using electric amplification to increase the volume of conventional acoustic guitars.

We will come across the idea of omitting the root and/or 5th of a chord again in later lessons, when we discuss Rootless Chord Voicings and Bud Powell Voicings.Jazz on the guitar, which is a very vast and relatively technical style, be it rhythm, dexterity, velocity … In short, this is not the simplest style to start the guitar. Bud also added a root note to shell chords to establish the tonality of the chord (CMaj7 = C E B). This is because Bebop solos are fast and complex, so the chords had to be simple and sparse to stay out of the soloist’s way. In Practiceīebop pianists (circa 1940’s) like Bud Powell used shell chords when accompanying themselves or a soloist. We will explore this further in the next lesson on Chord Substitution. If the next shell chord is B & E (CMaj7) then the prior chord was a G7 whereas if the next shell chord is B♭ & F (G♭Maj7) then the prior chord was a D♭7. And the only way to know whether the shell chord is a G7 or a D♭7 is to look at the next shell chord. For example, playing B & F could be a G7 (3rd & 7th) or D♭7 (7th & 3rd).

Playing two notes could indicate a number of different shell chords. By playing so few notes you ‘create space’ for the soloist (or your right hand) to play a faster and more harmonically complex improvisation. A solo is less likely to clash with the harmony if the harmony has fewer notes.Ī topic we will run into many times in the course of these lessons is that of Chord Ambiguity. Shell chords, because you are playing so few notes, are ambiguous.It sounds harmonically strong because you’re emphasising only the two most important notes.As I mentioned above, they are simple – after all, you’re only playing 2 notes.Playing shell chords has the following advantages: This is one of the advantages of shell chords – their simplicity. Only one note needs to move to get from Dm7 to G7 and to get from G7 to CMaj7. Notice how smoothly each chord transitions to the next. Playing a II-V-I in the key of C Major using shell chords would look as follows:

Any chord voicing should generally include the 3rd and the 7th of the chord without these the chord will sound incomplete. Shell chords are important because they represent the minimum harmonic material (i.e. This is called a shell chord (because it’s only the shell of the whole chord). C7 – as just E & B♭ (a tritone interval).Well, it’s possible to omit the less important notes (root & 5th) from a chord and only play the guide tones (3rd & 7th) and still retain the original ‘feel’ of the chords. We also learned that each main type of 7th chord has a particular ‘feel’. For example, a CMaj13 chord and a C13 chord (both of which you will come across in practice) both implicitly omit the ♮11 because it is an unavailable tension or avoid note. It’s common practice to omit any unavailable tensions from a chord. In Jazz you don’t always need to play every single note in a chord. The 9th, 11th, and 13th (called Tensions) are even less important.The root and the 5th of a chord are relatively less important.The 3rd and 7th of a chord (called Guide Tones) are the most harmonically important notes because they establish the quality of the chord (i.e.In the previous lesson on Available Tensions, we established that not all notes in a chord are of equal importance.

Jazz guitar chord dictionary pdf