guitar chords

This lesson provides a chord study with tab of the Latin jazz tune Armando's rumba by Chick Corea based on the Latin Real Book version in C minor. Here below you'll find guitar tabs corresponding to the four main parts of the tune (A-B-C-D).

The chords used in this arrangement are mostly seventh chords as min7, maj7, dim7 and dom7 (drop 2, drop 3 and rootless voicings) including basic triads (min, aug) and altered dominant chords (7#9, 7b13).

Dominant 7 chords are surely the most important to know when you want to try your hand at jazz guitar. These chords are very present in jazz and blues tunes, that's why it is crucial to know them at your fingertips.This quick lesson show 28 dominant 7 guitar shapes based on drop 2, drop 3 and drop 2-4 voicings. 

After You've Gone is a pop song composed in 1918 by Turner Layton. This blog post provides an easy walking bass lines and chords arrangement with tabs for guitar.

Jazz guitar chord voicings present a real challenge for beginners. Many guitarists think they need to know a lot of complicated chords with unpronounceable names to play jazz. But, the truth is that jazz guitar chords are based on easy shapes that you can move anywhere on the guitar neck.

These basic chords are divided into several distinct qualities (minor 7 , major 7 , dimininished 7 , half-diminished, dominant 7). They can be altered or enriched with extra tones as explains in this tutorial.

By studying the basic chord voicing shapes in this lesson you will understand how jazz chords are built, how to play them on guitar and how to apply them to any jazz standard or chord progression.

This chart show the main shapes for playing diminished triads on guitar. Get more triad positions in the related PDF "126 Triad Chord Shapes".

Minor triads for guitar. Cheat sheet for students and teachers. Get more shapes by downloading the related PDF.

This infographic show the main major triad positions on the guitar neck. Get more triad shapes with this PDF.

How to Play a Jazz Intros and Endings on Guitar?

There are mutliple ways of taking an intro or ending a jazz tune, the truth is that you can play whatever you want.

You can start from the V of the key, simply play the last 4 or 8 bars of the tune, try to incorporate a turnaroud and its several variations, the list is long....

You''ll find in this lesson 10 jazz guitar progressions with tabs, standard notation and audio files that work both as intros and endings for any jazz standards in C major.

Altough all these exercises are in the key of C major, it is possible and very important to transpose them in any key. 

This guitar lesson explains what is m7b5 chord, how to play it on guitar and how to apply it in common harmonic contexts as major and minor II-V-I progressions.

Tetrad chords (aka four-note chords) represent the backbone of jazz harmony. It is common to extend them with extra tones. These other notes form the upper structure of a chord which includes the 9th, 11th and 13th.

Adding extensions to chords help to get off the beaten tracks and provides some new harmonic colors to your playing (chord soloing, comping, and arrangement).

This lesson provides useful extended major 7th chord shapes to apply to your playing.

Major 6 and minor 6 chords are often used in place of major 7 and minor 7 chords when comping over jazz standards. That's why it is very important to be able to play them on the guitar neck. There are two main types of chords that contains a sixth, M6 and m6. These chords are made up of 4 notes and built with the interval patterns :

• R-3-5-6 for the major 6 chords.
• R-b3-5-6 for the minor 6 chords.

In this post you will see how to play these major 6 and minor 6 chords (root and inverted positions) using 24 guitar diagrams and voicing charts.

The origin of the "so what chord" name would be due to its use by the jazz pianist Bill Evans in the modal tune "So what" by Miles Davis.

This is a cool and modern sounding chord voicing often used as an alternative to quartal voicings. It is built with a fourth chord on the bottom (3 perfect fourths stacked) and a major third added on the top. 

This particular chord was originally played on a piano, but it is quite interesting to play it on the guitar to support rhythmically and harmonically a soloist over a modal tune.

This jazz guitar rhythm lesson with tabs and diagrams provides you some interesting ideas of comping inspired by McCoy Tyner's playing on "impressions" by John Coltrane. 

"There Will Never Be Another You" is a popular song by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (lyrics). It is one of the most known jazz standards and an indispensable study for any jazz guitarist. This jazz guitar comping lesson provides you different chord voicings (drop 2, inverted, rootless and extended chords) on the top four strings of the guitar to comp over this jazz tune. By the way, it will also give you some new ideas to support harmonically a soloist. Indeed, you may even try to apply these chord voicings to the tunes you are used to playing.

What is Quartal Harmony?

To enrich and modernize the harmonization of a piece it is common to use fourth chords. They can replace some original chords to bring more melodic freedom into improvisation and more tension in harmony.

Since the late 1950s, harmony in fourths has played a very important role in the development of modern jazz. Musicians and composers have used a lot the quartal harmony.

Among them, the great American pianist McCoy Tyner, who, is a master in the art of playing quartal chords. Mike Stern, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Bill Evans and Kurt Rosewinkel have also used this technique. 

In this lesson with tabs and shapes, we will see how to build chords in fourths, how to harmonize the major scale with and how to use them in comping.