Essential Chord Knowledge

 

The Basics

If you are new to jazz and unsure where to start, try my 12 basic jazz chords to get you started.

This covers playing the following chord types with roots on E, A and D strings:

  • Major 7

  • Minor 7

  • Dominant 7th

  • Minor7b5

Accompanying video lesson:

 
 
 

Learn the notes of your chords

Learning and playing the shapes is a start. Knowing the notes and intervals of those chords is a great step to take towards improving both your fretboard and harmonic knowledge. Below is a video to help you get started with learning the notes in chords.

Resources from this lesson are here:

 
 

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Common Chord Progressions

There are a few really common chord progressions that you want to be aware of. With the most important being:

  • The major 251

  • Minor 251

  • 1625

Below are some videos to help you with learning and committing these to memory. The resources are also below:

 
 
 

Drop Voicings

Drop chord voicings are a great way to expand your chord vocabulary, especially when you start getting into the inversions. The following PDFs are the drop voicings for the key of C.

The colour coding works as follows:

Red= Root position

Black = 1st inversion/3rd in bass

Orange= 2nd inversion/5th in bass

Blue= 3rd inversion/7th in bass