Its all in the Chords
Playing jazz is all about chords. Understand the chords and you are more than halfway to understanding what's happening in jazz. So lets look at some chords and see what's happening and make them sound jazzy.
I'll use the tune 'Autumn Leaves' as our example as its a great sounding tune and a lot of what we learn here can be used straight away on other tunes. First things first, try and get hold of several recordings of Autumn Leaves and listen to it several times. Try to get to the point where you can sing the melody and hear the chord changes.
Now try this as our first exercise.
Am |
D |
G |
C |
B |
B |
Em |
Em |
Play the chords in open position. Each chord is one bar of 4 beats. 1,2,3,4. For each bar just play a simple down stroke. We'll look at the rhythm later.
OK pleasant but not exactly jazz. Well the reason for that is each of the chords only has 3 notes in it. What we need to do is add in another note to make a 4 note chord to make it a bit more interesting. So the chord chart looks like this.
Am7 |
D9 |
Gma7 |
Cma7 |
F#m7b5 |
B9 |
Em9 |
Em9 |
Stop don't run away and hide now. I promise you its a lot easier than it at first looks. You'll notice that in bar 5 I've also used an F sharp m7b5. Jazz players often add in some extra chords. These are called substitutions. Again it makes the music more interesting.
OK how do we play these chords. On the next page you will find some chord boxes showing the chord shapes. Now if your used to playing open or barré chords the first thing that you will notice is to play these jazz chord shapes you need to change your hand position. I've added some photo's so you can see how to play them. There is a really good reason why jazz players do this. I guess that like many people if you've tried to play barré chords all evening you will quickly realize that your hand can soon start to ache. If it feels a little odd at first persevere with it, you soon feel very comfortable and want to play all your chords like this, It also opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities for playing up and down the neck combined with walking bass lines, but more of that later.
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