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Jazz Guitar for the Rest of Us…
Or “How to play simple but effective jazz
chords on a classical guitar tuned as a bass!” This is
the short story of my relationship with the instrument I always come back to
: my guitar. Cheap, acoustic, sensitive, expressive, this instrument has made
it possible for most amateur musicians to develop their sense of “vertical”
music, i.e., the art of playing simple chords while singing lyrics : after practicing a tenth of chords (which
takes a few months at worst, and some finger pain), most folk or rock songs
can be musically outlined. |
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Now if,
like me, you feel attracted by the rich harmonies and rhythms of jazz, you probably
have opened someday one of those Real Books, full of jazz standards, and
measured the step between jazz and folk harmonies (not to mention rhythms):
the number of chords rises quickly, and most chords require various
fingerings to deliver the right sound at the right place. Examining Jazz guitar
players does not help much: their hands seem to wander all around the neck,
with no real stable chord shape… (and the fact that they wonderfully
improvise makes it harder to understand what chords they are playing). The
most motivated and gifted of us have taken courses with a jazz guitar teacher
and learnt how to deliver jazz standards. The rest of us (including me) have
bitterly been left aside; they listen to jazz but keep playing (and
progressively enriching) their old folk songs. If you feel life has
decided to push you in this second category, this web page is for you. My own (short) story, in case it
helps
(skip this if you are eager to play jazz
guitar) My mother
offered me my first guitar when I was eleven. It was a cheap but effective
classic guitar, and it is still the one I play most. With no musician (nor
any real music education) in my family, I had to find inspiration outside.
School camps helped a lot (Jean-Marie Herzet, if you read these notes, I
thank you again for having organized them!). This is where I learnt
fingerings for most simple chards such as C, F, G, D, A, E, B and some of
their relative minors, plus some simple variants for Dominant 7th
chords. Life was simple: one chord – one fingering. Comping with the right
hand came quickly. I could not play “barré” chords, though (those chord
fingerings for which your index presses the neck on all six strings). I was
probably too young for that. Some years later (even though I had stopped
playing the guitar for months), I noticed I could do it. It did not help a
lot though : the 10-15 chords I already knew were enough for what I played. I have to
pass many aspects of my relationship to music here, since they are not
directly related to jazz guitar. I took some music theory courses, imagined I
could become a piano player (it took me 3 years of classical piano courses,
and 2 years of jazz piano to understand that I was wrong), and …
progressively lost tracks with music playing. I was
thirty when I spent a year in the NYC area for my work. I
precisely came back to (playing) music when a friend of mine decided he would
buy a saxophone at Sam Ash’s. He was not really a saxophone player, but had
taken a few courses with a musician. Believe it or not, it had never hit me that
playing music was so simple: you take a few courses, buy an instrument, and
continue to take courses until you can practice by yourself. Until there,
“serious” music appeared to me as an academic world, with graduations, years
of study and submission to official course contents. (The Belgian musical
education is indeed very imprinted with this idea that the goal of music
courses is to produce professional musicians, leaving most of them on the
side at some point. A large number of
my friends who graduated in this system simply don’t play music any longer.
What a mess!) I had
seen an elegant double bass at Sam Ash’s, and could never pass by without
putting fingers on it… I therefore decided I would take courses, to see if
the instrument could fit me. My first
course was very encouraging for me, and I came back to Playing
the bass is simple (although as with any instrument it can be tremendously
difficult, depending on the level you want to reach). It forces you to learn
how to find roots quickly on the neck, and how to go from roots to their 5ths
and 3rds and 7ths, etc. The fact that the bass has 4 chords tuned in fourths
(E A D G as the first four strings of a guitar) helps a lot: the same
interval strictly corresponds to the same movement, whatever the root you
start from. Another
friend of mine, I later
bought a six strings bass, and a book by Alain Caron on how to play it.
Basically, nothing changes, since the last 2 strings are tuned in fourths too
(C F, instead of the B E on a guitar). Caron introduces chords on the 6
strings bass, although these do not use all 6 strings: the specific tuning of
a guitar makes it easy to produce usual chords on 6 strings with 5
fingers…while you would need 7 fingers (and a very flexible hand) to do this
on a bass. The chords he mentions are the ones I had found (there is no
mystery behind this: these chords are very obvious). The last
step towards “jazz guitar for the rest of us” was achieved when I decided I
would tune my guitar as a 6 strings bass (E A D G C F). Although the whole
operation strictly takes 30 seconds, it took me months and quite some mental
energy before I could decide this was THE way I would tune my guitar. I have
never regretted it so far. Here we
go To have
maximum chances of experiencing easy jazz guitar for the rest of us, you
should : ·
Have a classic acoustic guitar
at hand (folk guitars will be harder to play, given I’ll introduce all
“barré” chords), or an electric guitar. ·
Have some practice of “barré”
chords, for which the index presses all 6 strings on the neck, on a single
fret. If you never did this, start practicing one chord below, for a few minutes
every day. Do not despair: it comes (maybe you should not be too young,
though… you need strength in your fingers). ·
Know where to find notes on the
upper 3 strings of you neck : D||---|-E-|-F-|---|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|-F-| I hope
you have accumulated, from the previous section, the energy required to
perform a very symbolic action on your guitar : tune its last 2 strings a
half step up (C F) from their usual tuning (B E). It won’t break your strings
and should do no harm to you neck (but in the very unlikely case this would
happen, I take no responsibility for it!). Once this
is done, learn the chord fingerings on the chart below, which can be
applied to any root, wherever you take it on the 3 upper strings! When
practicing these chords, think of a root, put the index on the
fret of the root (the ‘1’ on the chart) and the other 2 or 3 fingers
according to the chart. To play the chord, pick ONLY the 4 strings
involved (the root and the 3 next strings) with your right hand. Never
play all strings (- you’ll need to the “rest of us” society, and set your
guitar back to its original tuning to do this :).
Jazz-for-the-rest-of-us
chord chart (the root is shown on the 1st string, but can be put
in practice anywhere on the first three strings). Start
with the Major chord (shown as M or D
in Real Books), then the minor one (shown as m or -), then the Dominant 7th
one (7). These are the good old folk song chords. Then see how simple it is
to produce minor 7th chords (-7), Major 7th chords
(Maj7, M7, or D7),
-7b5 chords (also shown as f7
in books), diminished (dim7 or °7) chords, and augmented (aug7 or +7) chords.
When
practicing these chords, it is good to keep thinking of which notes they are
composed of (see the chard again) : ·
String 1 is for the root ·
String 2 for the b5th, 5th,
#5th, or 6th ·
String 3 for the b7th, 7th, sometimes
for repeating the root (when neither
the 7th nor the b7th is expected), or for b9th or 9th ·
String 4 is for the b3rd, or 3rd
Knowing
this will make it even simpler for you to remember chord fingerings, and let
you expand these 8 basic chords easily yourself. A 6th chord, for
instance can be obtained easily by taking the 7 chord and moving the 5th
2 frets down (thereby changing it into a 6th). A C9th,
for instance, will be obtained by taking a C Major chord, and shifting the
finger on the 3rd string 2 frets down, so as to change it from a
root into a 2nd (i.e., a 9th). You’ll
quickly find that playing the root with the finger on the beat, and then
playing the “harmonic color strings”
makes it possible for you to accompany yourself singing (or whistling,
for the ones who also joined the “singing for the rest of us” society) of
lots of jazz standards. Rhythms will also come quickly. Although
it won’t make you a jazz guitar hero, playing
jazz themes this way should bring a lot of fun (as it does for me). Some
examples Here are
some simple standards you can play this way, with audio. Summertime
(Gershwin) (audio: basic chords audio
with theme) Am7
Bm7 | C6 E7
| Am7 E7 | Am6 Dm7
Dm7/C | Bm7b5 F7
| E7 F7 | E7 Am7 Bm7
| C6 E7 | Am7
E7 | Am6 G13 CMaj7
Am7 | Dm9 E7b9 | Am7 Bm7 | C6
Bm7 Someday
my prince will come (Churchill) (audio: basic
chords audio with theme) BbMaj7 | D7+5 | EbMaj7 |
G7+5 Cm7
| G7+5 | C7
| F7 Dm7
| C#° |
C-7 | F7 Dm7
| C#° |
C-7 | F7 BbMaj7 | D7+5
| EbMaj7 | G7+5 Cm7
| G7+5 |
C7 | F7 Fm7
| Bb7 |
Eb | E° Bb/F
| Cm7/F F7| Bb
| % (notice %
means “same as previous bar”) Round
Midnight (Williams/Monk) (audio: basic chords audio with
theme) This one
looks more difficult, but it you first think of how to play the more special
chords using the ones in the chart, it will come easily. Ebm6
Cm7b5 | Fm7b5 Bb7+5+9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| Bm7 E9 Bbm7 Eb7 Abm7
Db9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| B9 | Bb7b9 Ebm6
Cm7b5 | Fm7b5 Bb7+5+9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| Bm7 E9 Bbm7 Eb7 Abm7
Db9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| B9 | Bb7b9 Cm7b5
F7b9 | Bb7 | Cm7b5 F7b9 | Bb7 Abm7
Db7 GbMaj7| B9 Bb7 | Eb9
Db9 | B9 Bb7 Ebm6
Cm7b5 | Fm7b5 Bb7+5+9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| Bm7 E9 Bbm7 Eb7 Abm7
Db9 | Ebm7 Ab9
| B9 | Bb7b9 Some
others Wonderful
world (Weiss/Thiele)
(audio with theme) The Way
You Look Tonight (Benett) (audio with theme) Uskudar
(Turkish traditional) (audio with theme) Letter
From Home (Metheny) (audio with theme) Refinements
You may sometimes
have to cheat a bit on the previous chart, especially when the chord line
requires a different bass then the root of the chord. This is usually
mentioned as Chord/Bass in books (as in the 5th bar of Summertime).
You’ll often be able to finger the chord and add a remaining finger (yes, you
do have one more than needed since all the chords in the chart use 4
fingers!) so as to change the root into the required bass. If not, just play
the chord. It is also
possible to play the same chords with strings 1 3 4 5 (even 6, which is then
a high echo to the root), using a “barré” just a half note down from the root
(a “flat root”), which implies you use your index on the bar just below the
“barré” for changing this flat root into the actual root. The “barré” then
makes it possible to play useful chords with only one or two additional
fingers. I have used this in the first bars of “Summertime” to get a
more open chord. A dead
end? Joining
the “rest-of-us” society does by no means imply you’ll remain a minimal but
efficient jazz guitar player: the jazz chords we’ve seen here are used in
regular jazz guitar, on the four top strings. Jazz guitarists, however, can
also use more “open” fingerings, which cover a broader frequency range and
sound more pleasant. January
2005 |
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