Good Jazz Chords

[arp]

We have all kinds of opportunites in creating great sounding chord structures and variations. The guitar is a fascinating instrument. We have more than one position in which to play the same chord or inversion and we can play a complete chord structure all in one position. As with improv.
Open voicing and droning open notes if used effectively really can bring out some wonderful sounds. The trick is to plan your work beforehand . At least that's how I do it. It seems to work for me. I can never work nearly as effectively with jazz if I try and ad lib.
Besides I usually always vary my rythmic treatment and phrasing etc which helps to free me up.

[mahayana]

Hi, just got here. I will play through your ideas. I have hundreds of chord ideas, wondered how you would post these without chord diagrams. The numbers look pretty straightforward, I'll try it.

Have any of you done chord-melody? It's hard to be rhythmic, sounds bad when recorded (at least mine do, hah). I hope this place will pick up a bit, still haven't seen one response. I know, I know, good things are worth waitin for and all that.

Thought you should know someone is getting into your stuff. Peace.

[mahayana]

Frankly, if you're like me and just played through all the chords above, you probably are wondering what arp was talking about in the last post. You don't need any scale theories to learn a chord. Come on! It's not that hard to plop your fingers down in a shape and hit the strings.

You do need to know something to play when you read the name of a chord if you're playing rhythm. And it's cool to be able to name some chord you come across or make up yourself. Do you know how to do this? Like Daniel above wrote

Ex:
1) 5X555X (Am7)
to 4X455X
to 4X444X (Abm7)

but he didn't know what his passing chord was called. You gotta write out the notes of the Am7 chord to figure it out.

You've got AXGCEX there on the 5th fret. Follow?

An Am7 has the notes ACEG, G being the flat7 (just called 7).
So, when Dan lowered the note on string 6 he got Ab, when he lowered the note on string 4 he got Gb.

His passing chord is AbXGbCEX. You see that? He lowered the A on the 6 string, and the G on the 4th. Since G was already the flat7 of the chord, Gb is the 6th. So what he made up was an Am6 with an Ab in the bass. This is written Am6/Ab

If that seemed confusing, look for another thread called What Those Weird Numbers Mean. I'm going to start it right now, since there isn't a basic jazz chord lesson in this forum. Yet anyway! It's simple, really.

[jazzalta]

"Have any of you done chord-melody? It's hard to be rhythmic, sounds bad when recorded..."

Acutally, I find the rubatto of my chord melodys frees me from rhythmic structure, and helps my ideas to flow. And I usually incorportate variations on the 2nd or 3rd chorus' (ala swing, key change or stricter meter). And just recently I'm trying to use more "space" and occasional sustain. Solo chord melody is my passion and it's through the great recorded examples that I can experiment and find my own voice.

[mahayana]

Here's a few "borrowed" from the "Joe Pass Guitar Chords" book (Mel Bay, 1986). Neat little 24 page book of chord ideas, all in the key of C, no chord names given.

3X3200 3X3100 3X3210 3X0430

X2323X X23133 X23233 X43455

[mahayana]

I still like the idea of this thread, even though it has different subjects mixed in. There are lots of good jazz chords all over the forum now, some good chord-melodies, and examples of chord-phrases like the two above.

I'm a lot like JA, solo chord-melody of standards is what I love to play. It's funny how wonderful other peoples' recordings sound compared to my own rhythmically-free versions, maybe some of them will smooth out in time.

Anyway, a lot of what I do is comping, so I'll put some rhythm chord pairs over in that section. I'm still curious about what folks play, favorite chords for subs and endings, that kind of thing.

[oldtimer3739]

Hmmmm, It is very hard to define "good jazz chords" because all chords can be jazz chords! It depends more on how you use the chords together. Ie, how are they used in a song to enhance or support the melody of the tune. For instance, if you have 2 bars of G Major (boring!), you can spice up the sound by substituting some chords from from the harmonized Gmajor scale. (/Gmaj 7 - A-7/ B-7 - A-7 /)

[scraggo]

C maj9 #11: X 3 2 4 3 2
the Jim Hall Chord...F maj7 b5 b13: X 8 9 9 10 9
(beware: both of these are barre chords)

[philroberts]

Good jazz chords?? The term you're using is a little weird. A chord is a vertical stack of 3 or more notes, triads. Typically triads receiving another note, another third, are called 7th chords. 7th chords are used alot in Blues, R&B, Gospel, Brazilian, Pop music and yes, Jazz. A good jazz chord is the right chord of the moment, appropriate to the harmony. One can almost never think of a chord as an isolated sound other than maybe that Microsoft sign in Chord you hear when an error occurs. Chords are tonalities that have life & energy & purpose. As musicians, we learn to operate in the realm of tonal manipulators. No isolated single sound makes much sense all by itself. It's all relational interelated & also highly subjective.

[rachard1583]

Sometimes people will say "learn every chord everywhere". These people are very generous with your time! All these people are doing is giving you a homework pile-on.

Havana Jazz Festival

[travisgrimes]

Here is an ebook filled with awesome jazz chords.

jazzadvocator.blogspot.com/