Simple Jazz Chords for Guitar
To explore the vast world of a different musical style, you always need a good starting point.
A starting point in the sense of: How do I even begin?
In Classical Music, it’s about reading sheet music.
In Rock and Metal, you should look at riffs and licks to learn the techniques.
In Jazz, besides arpeggios for improvisation, the key focus is on II-V-I voicings.
Even though we have already looked at II-V-I voicings, shell voicings, voice leading, and Drop2 chords, it is still quite difficult to internalize all of these and apply them effectively.
So let’s start from scratch and, for now, ignore voicings altogether.
Jazz Chords
A typical Real Book lead sheet looks something like this:
Autumn Leaves
Since we don’t want to strum like an elephant using barre or open chords, we first need to understand all the chord symbols.
With these chords alone, you could theoretically already accompany the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.”
However, since we want to focus more on voicings, we can modify the chords by adding tensions (notes that are allowed alongside the chord tones and sound quite nice! :P) to improve the overall sound:
The green-marked notes show that even though the chord changes, the high note stays in the same place as in the previous chord.
Here’s another example:
All Of Me
The “standard” jazz chords for the first two lines would look similar to the previous example:
With adjusted voicings, incorporating the tensions of the chords, it would look something like this:
All Jazz Chords for Guitar
Here’s a list of all jazz chords for guitar.
By “all,” I mean: Major7, Dominant7, Minor7, and Minor7b5 — each with the root note on both the E and A strings.
With this, you’ll have a solid repertoire of jazz chords, which you can expand and modify with voicings.
