Jazz Chords

[Matt Wildman]

Hey guys! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on here. I realized the other day that I need to improve my knowledge of jazz. Specifically for guitar. I could use google but this will be a better alternative I think. Drop some good jazz chords in the comments for me to learn. I know my sevenths but Im sure there’s a bunch I don’t know. Jazz on

 

[idssdi]

m6, major 6, minor (maj7), m7b5, C7#9 am there are some more.

 

[Firsty Lasty]

9th chords can be adventurous, because they're five notes and you probably have 4 fingers. They're common in piano music because pianists get to cheat and use all of their fingers.

I thought of something you might find interesting. First, look at this ordinary chord:

506650. It's an Amaj7. I play the low note with my thumb and the "665" with ring,pinky,middle as if I was playing a C#m barre chord.

It sounds good, but not really jazzy. Here's your homework: experiment with altering it by playing different nearby notes. Move your fingers around to nearby locations and see what you like. Just discover what the chord sounds like if you play one or two frets up or down on different strings. You'll have to adjust your hand/finger position as you go, of course. If you find yourself muting out the low E string or the high e string that's perfectly fine. The purpose of putting theory aside and just putting your fingers places is to allow yourself the freedom to really listen to many different harmonies without pre-judging them by their names.

For clarity, here are some examples of what you might try while exploring the D string:

503650
504650
505650
506650 (original)
507650
x08650
x09650, also try 009655

Yes I'm totally flexing my big reach with that last one, but imo it is a very pleasing chord.

 

[Chris Johnston]

There's some great one's suggested already! so I'm going to show you how to build them yourself instead - this should really cement your knowledge of them

If you know how to build your seventh chords you can continue to stack in thirds to get all your upper extensions which make them sound 'Jazzier' :

I'll use Cmaj7 as an example
So you've stacked all the way up to C-E-G-B (Cmaj7) right? What happens if you go up another third from B? You get: C-E-G-B-D - This is a C Maj9 chord (because you've went and added the 9th degree of the C Major scale to the Maj7 chord)

You could go further again and you'd arrive at C-E-G-B-D-F: Which is a CMaj11 chord (because you've added the 11th note of the C Major Scale to the chord.

About now you'll realize how difficult it is to fret 6 notes on the Guitar to make the full chord, which is why most guitarists leave out the 5th and the 9th in a Maj11 - But you would still call it a Maj11 chord - (As long as that Maj7th is in there it's a Maj something'th )

The last stop on your upper extensions (diatonically) is adding the 13 (A) Which would give you Cmaj13 - a super Jazzy sounding chord!

You can do this process with your Minor 7th chords & Dominant 7th chords as well and you get for example: Cmin9, Cmin11, Cmin13, C9, C11, C13 etc

You can find diagrams of everything I've explained and more here: https://www.jazzguitarlessons.net/blog/jazz-guitar-chord-chart-beginners

Apologies if that was a bit wordy but hope it helps! Any Q's don't hesitate to ask

 

[Matt Wildman]

Thanks guys I appreciate it! I just want to really dive down into the genre a bit more and incorporate it into my personal playing style. I’ll definitely take a look at those chords and try to get them down, may take a while tho, I’ve got lots of learning to do in this genre