harmony

Check out the latest video from the YouTube channel. This is a chord melody arrangement for guitar of Duke Ellington's jazz standard "Satin Doll".

This free lesson with tabs is intended for intermediate players who want to practice some drop 2, drop 3 voicings, walking bass lines, chords inversions and substitutions over one of the most popular jazz tune.

Half-diminished chords (aka m7b5) have an especially important place in jazz music. They are generally found in minor 2 5 1 progressions as the ii chord or can be used as substitutions for dominant 7 chords. This blog post provides 28 different shapes based on drop 2, drop 3 and drop 2-4 voicings for playing m7b5 chords on guitar.

This blog post provides 28 positions with intervals to play major seventh chords (maj7) on guitar. Three types of voicings are used : drop 2, drop 3, drop 2-4 and their inversions.

The diagrams are organized this way:

This guitar lesson with tabs and theory is about cluster chord voicings. These are chords in which at least two notes are grouped together in order to create a sort of dissonance.

Cluster chords are sometimes quite difficult to play on guitar but they have a very interesting sound widely used in comtemporary jazz and neo-soul music.

Turnarounds are a section of two or four bars at the end of a tune. Their role is to create a harmonic transition going back to the beginning. They are present in many jazz tunes and are an important part of "rhythm changes" progressions. They are also used to create effective jazz intros and endings.

This lesson with guitar tabs contains 17 exercises to gain a better understanding of the I VI II V variations.

What is a Dyad?

A dyad is a two-note chord, a pair of notes played at the same time. These two notes are separated by an interval. Considering there are different types of intervals, there are therefore different types of dyads.

What's an Interval in Music?

An interval is the distance between two notes. It can be melodic or harmonic.

Is a Dyad can be considered a Chord?

A chord must contain, at a minimum, 3 notes. As its name implies a dyad is made of only two pitches. So, a dyad is considered as being an interval, not a chord.

What's a Diatonic Scale?

A diatonic scale is built with of half and whole steps. The term diatonic comes from the ancient Greece. In western music a diatonic scale is based on five whole steps and two half-steps that can be ordered in many specific ways. The best known is the diatonic major scale based on the formula W - W - H - W - W - W - H which means Whole-Step | Whole-Step | Half-step |  WholeStep | Whole-Step |  Whole-Step | Half-Step.

Dominant 7 chords are one of the most important chords to know, they can be found in many styles of music as blues, funk, pop and of course in jazz music. In this lesson we will see how dominant 7 chords are built and how to play them on guitar using 36 different voicing shapes.

Triads are one of the first harmonic tools to study. They are very useful for comping and chordal enrichment. Learning close and open triad voicings increase your harmonic knowledge and at the same time help you discover your fretboard.

In this lesson you will see the main triad chord shapes including root positions and inversions. You will also find some ideas on how to use triads over a II V I sequence, in order to create interesting melodic movement in your comping.

Dominant seventh chords are the most important features in music, you can find them in many styles of music, especially in blues and, of course, in jazz. In this lesson, you will see how to construct drop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 & 4 dominant seventh chords, what is their harmonic function and how to play them on guitar.

What Are Drop 2-4 Chords?

Drop 2 and 4 chords are created by dropping down an octave the second and fourth note of a seventh chord in close position. They can be very important tools for composition and arrangement. This lesson with diagrams provides useful explanations on how to build and play drop 2 & 4 chords on guitar.

What's a Tetrad ?

A basic chord is built with three notes this is what we call "triad chords" or "triads". Tetrad chords aka "four note-chords" are simply chords containing four notes, “tetra“ is a Greek root meaning four.

This means that tetrads are triads with an additional note, a major seventh or a minor seventh. 

This article will enlighten you on how these tetrad chords are built and how they can be classified.

What's An Altered Dominant Chord?

Altered dominant chords are used to bring tension and an outside flavor to jazz chord progressions. They generally resolved to an inside chord as the I or a substitute as iii or vi.

Altered chords have one or more notes lowered or raised by a half-step, in other words they contain one or more alterations. These alterations can be b9,#9, b5 (#11) and b13 (#5).

They are generally used by jazz musicians, composers and arrangers as substitutions for diatonic chords for adding dissonance and spicing up the harmony.

Mastering triads is necessary for any guitarist who wants to expand his fretboard and theory knowledge.

These chords are not really considered as jazz chords because of their basic sound, but they can be efficient tools for comping and chord soloing. Indeed, the strong point of these chords is the simplicity of learning and playing.

You will find in this guitar lesson 84 ways of playing triads (major, minor, diminished and augmented) using root and inverted voicings in close and open positions.