Jazz Guitar Chord Studies: Comping and Complex Chords

The four legs, if you will, of jazz guitar playing are: (1) single-note melody lines based roughly on closed-form, arpeggio chords (covered in a prior post here), (2) single-note "blowing" lines based on modal playing (to be covered in a future post), (3) chordal accompaniment or "comping," that is playing chords behind another instrument, such as a sax, a singer or sprinkling chords within a melody line (covered in this post) and (4) fully harmonized block chord solos (to be covered in a future post). Comping chord forms do not allow for complete voice leading but you can get very close, as I will show in future posts. And, the comping chord forms can be used as a visual aid to running Charlie Christian-style single-note lines (see Jerry Hansen's excellent e-book Charlie Christian: Legends of Jazz Guitar). Since Wes Montgomery started out listening to and learning Charlie Christian solos, it may be that Wes learned the guitar fingerboard this way. In any event, you can get a long way playing jazz guitar with a three-legged stool, that is, modal playing (to be covered in a future post), comping chords and single note lines.

The two chord forms presented above (download the pdf file for reference here) are the G7-form with the root on the low E string and the C7-form with the root on the A or D string. Why can you get so far with these two simple forms? In John Mehegan's words: (1) "Chords of less than a seventh are insufficient for jazz" (p. 11), (2) "Jazz is basically a 'root position' music" (p. 41) and (3) the "sensitive tones" (9, 11, and 13) "… can bring a tonal interest lacking in the root, third, fifth and seventh" (p. 133). John Mehegan was writing about Jazz piano where the left-hand plays the root-position chords and the right-hand plays the improvised arpeggios or modal blowing lines. This isn't possible on guitar (the right hand is busy strumming and the left hand has only four fingers to work with), but the jazz guitarist can get very close to this ideal form of playing as I'll describe in future posts.

The first step in simulating the piano players left hand is to understand how to "grab" any root position chord for accompaniment (either for another instrument of for your own single-note lines). The chord forms pictured above were roughly taken from Chapter II of William Fowler's "Guitar Patterns for Improvisation" (here and here). From the two basic seventh chord forms (G7 and C7) you can derive a large number of jazz chords and provide chordal accompaniment to any jazz chart that has the correct chord symbols for the song.

The problem at this point will be to learn the basic root position chords all over the fingerboard. There are a number of great jazz exercises you will run into on the Internet. The one I like best also helps understand Giant Steps. The exercise starts in some key (I'll pick C), plays a II-V-I progression, changes the I to Im and starts the progression all over again in a key one full step lower (Bb in this case). The first set of changes would be || Dm7 G7 | Cmaj7 (Bb) | Cm7 F7 | Bbmaj7 (Ab)| etc. The entire sequence is:

||: (C) II V | I (Bb) | II V | I (Ab) | II V | I (Gb) | II V | I (E) | II V | I (D) | II V | I (C) :||

And, in twelve measures were back to the key of C again. Coltrane uses I-Im change as a transition into the Giant Steps solo (form Eb to Ebm7 and the key of Db).

In the II-V-I Exercise above (download the pdf file here and the MuseScore mscz file here), I work this set of progressions all over the fretboard using only the root position chords. I've given the fingerings and fingerboard locations. The II-V-I Exercise is based on moving the following form (derived from the graphic above, download the pdf file here) around on the fingerboard starting with the C-maj scale.

To play a four-note open voicing, skip the red dot (which just repeats the 5th). For a five-note, open voicing, just add the fifth. For the broken voicings in the chord table above, skip (x out) the lower 5th and add the upper 5th (red dot). The fingering will be different, but it will be annotated in the I-V-I Exercise when needed.

In the next few posts, I'll take the II-V-I exercise to the tunes Sunny, Autumn Leaves and Giant Steps.  These chord forms will also help to understand Charlie Christian-style single note lines, chord substitutions, enclosures and playing out, so we gain a lot from learning and playing a few chord shapes. You can get a long way in jazz guitar playing with a three-legged stool, that is, single-note lines, modal playing and comping chords. In fact, you could play pretty much like Pat Martino, if you had the facility (a big "if")! On a more modest level, with the chord forms pictured above and arpeggios, you could play a jazz version of Sunny with single note improvising and octaves. You could not play a fully harmonized, block chord, Wes Montgomery style solo sitting on this three legged stool, but then neither did Wes on Sunny.

MORE DETAIL:

The basic G7 chord is played R, 5, 7, 3 whether you start on the E-string, the A-string or the D-string. Right now, let's concentrate on the locations of the root, third, fifth and seventh on the E-string, the fingering would be 1,3,1,2, for the A-string the fingering would be 1,3,1,4 and for the D-string, the fingering would be 1,3,2,4). To play Gm7 or Cm7, you would flat the third. To play either Gmaj7 or Cmaj7, you would raise the 7th.

The chord table above presents the most used forms (you can download the pdf file for reference here). For the songs we've covered so far (Sunny, Autumn Leaves and Giant Steps), you should be able to find all the chords you need and, as we proceed further along, I'll layout the exact fingerings.

EXERCISES

1. Start in the key of B-maj and write out the II-V-I Exercise, copying the C-maj II-V-I Exercise above.
2. Experiment with the "sensitive tones". Try, for example, Bm7 - Eb13 - Abmaj7, the second and third measures of Sunny (here).
3. Try a minor progression starting with D7sus4 - G7+ - Cm7 (measures 8 and 9 in Sunny).
4. Identify all the II-V-I progressions in Autumn Leaves and develop exercises from these progressions.
5. Create your own version of Giant Steps (here) using the following progression ||: (B) II V I (G) II V I (Eb) II V I  (B) II V I (G) II V I (Eb) II V I :|| and fit it into 16 measures.
6. Find your favorite II-V-I Coltrane lines in his Giant Steps solo (here). Try playing the lines and accompanying yourself with quick II-V-I chord changes after the single-note lines.