jazz guitar shed

with Dylan Kay

Chords – It’s Not What You Know

his article is not about learning lots of learning new ones. The secret is to apply new up to the next note in the scale to create the new chord shapes. For that, you could chords to songs you are learning. So, if you’ve next chord. You’ll learn new ways of playing Tcheck out any number of books – Jon learnt a great new way of playing the chords for other chords in the key, and it’ll also help you Damian’s Chord Factory is a great start, and a II V I from listening to Keith Jarrett, then apply in learning your scales along the strings rather books by Ted Greene, Chuck Wayne, Mick it in different keys and use it in standards that than just across them. Goodrick and Scott Henderson are just a few you’re working on. You could also write your Voice-leading. How do you know which others that spring to mind. own compositions using some new chords chord shape to use? Voice-leading is a key You might then approach developing your you’ve learnt. principle in creating smooth chord movements chord vocabulary the same way most people Chord synonyms. Find as many ways as you – moving to the next chord with the minimum work on soloing vocabulary – by transcribing can to use a particular chord. Remember that movement. The simplest way to begin this great players. These might be other guitar any chord structure you play could potentially process is just to look at the movement of the

players (Pat Metheny, Mick Goodrick, Kurt have one of 12 root notes. Part of the trick to top note of each the chords. In Exercise 2A, Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder, the list goes on). expanding your chord vocabulary is to find the top note remains the same, whilst there But don’t forget to transcribe piano players as many uses as possible for the chords you is descending movement in the top notes of (Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hanock, Chick Corea, Brad already know, and to continue this exploration. Exercise 2B. Mehldau etc). Even if you can’t play every note, A simple A minor chord, for instance, could be Remember, learning new chord shapes is getting the essence of what they’re doing will part of Fmaj7, D9 or G13sus (amongst many just one step in the process. I hope this article do huge things for your chord vocabulary. other things). has given you a few more ideas about practising All of which is very well, but it’s what you do Use scales. It’s great practice to take any new and developing your chord vocabulary. with the chords that counts, and that’s the idea voicing that you learn through scales along behind this article. the neck. See Exercise 1 for a Cmaj7 voicing Dylan Kay is a professional guitarist and Application. There are a lot of chords to that is then played through the C major scale teacher based in Auckland. He can be contacted learn. In fact, I hope that you’ll never stop – for each of the four strings in the voicing, go through his website www.dylankay.co.nz.

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