Jazz Guitar Comping Lesson

Solution:first reflex is to try and learn more jazz guitar chord shapes. Which does not work, by the way ... it leads to more confusion.

So, in this lesson, we'll build chords from the top down, starting with the melody note (on the higher strings). In five steps, we'll have a complete, swinging and beautiful comping study on the blues in Bb.A great place to start if you wish to comp like the pros. :-)

This is somewhat of an unconventional guide to jazz guitar comping since we'll be taking a detour. As described above won't be thinking purely in terms of chords. Memorizing tons of new jazz chords often leads to confusion.

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This is where I step in as an instructor. To make comping and jazz harmony work we need a different approach. We'll start to examine chords from a melodic perspective. So let's start with a simple melody on the top strings and harmonize a selection of tasty chords under it, then activate the rhythms.

By the end of this post, you'll be playing acomplete, beautiful and swinging jazz guitar comping study on the blues in B flat. In five concrete steps you will become a different musician and realize how few shapes you really need in order to make comping sound way better.

Please take a quick look at the first page of thePDF file . We have the basic chord structure for the basic blues in B flat, as played by jazz musicians.

Jazz Guitar Comping Lesson

You can hear this in the backing track and with drums and bass only playing three choruses of the blues in B flat. It's usually best to think of the twelve bar blues as three sections of four bars.

And the last four, they contain the II-V-Icadence. If all of this is completely unfamiliar to you, please find further information in the blues section of the website.

Looking at a PDF now in step one, we have the skeleton of the top note melody line we'll use to construct the comping on the blues. Notice that this line is based around the first and fifth degrees of most of the chords in the form.

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Let's start using some chords! Notice that what we find in step two, there's just chords with basic barre idea, with a top note as the highest pitch in the chord. Basic barres are the ones you find in your first guitar lessons.

Step two was pretty boring and not very jazz sounding. Now, let's modify the barre chords to add even more interesting jazz chords. Before you attempt the chords in step 3, let's look review some of the chord shapes we'll be using. They're all

First, here's how we play the B flat seven chord, the B flat chord. It has a nine in it and it has no root.

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We'll also use the same shape in bar eight for the G seven chord. It's the same shape but three frets lower.

Then there's also the B flat thirteen that we'll play in bar four and eleven here. The tonic of the chord is on the top string.

Great, so now that we have some interesting chords, we need some interesting rhythms to activate the comping. As you probably already know, rhythms and groove are really the true driving force of jazz music.

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Once again, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing! In step four most our fancy jazz chords from the previous step have been activated by playing them as an anticipation taking place on the beat

We also have added one more melody note right before each of the ones found in steps 1-2-3 above, just look at the sheet music.Be careful though, we do this for the first eight bars, but the last four bars have a slightly different rhythm and timing.

The aim is to create a contrast and interest. Since we don't need any new chords, I recommend practicing this step 4 along with the video. Here it is:

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Now for the last piece of the puzzle, step five we'll be adding the nice chromatic chords to ornament around what we had in the previous step.

Now I don't want to over complicate things in this lesson and explain every single chord shape in a comping study. Since you already know how I got there, you already have a big picture idea of the use of the harmony on the blues, on this B flat blues.

Note to each melody note. Then lastly here, in this step 5, we're adding nice harmonic frills around the basic chords of the blues. It's crucial that you see the forest before the trees and don't try to analyze every chord shape in a classical music theory sense. The added chords are play for

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In conclusion, I strongly believe that this way of working with chords is pretty much the only jazz guitar comping resource you'll ever need. Try to replicate the process on tunes you're already familiar with. Build yourself an easy melody, put chords under it. Then ornament the melody, and ornament the chords. Surprise yourself!“What are good comping rhythms?” and “can you make a video on standard comping rhythms?” are probably the two most common questions on my channel. This lesson is giving you an exercise to help you improvise or compose endless amounts of great comping rhythms.

Instead of making a set of comping rhythms I decided to make this exercise so you can add some rhythms to your vocabulary. When you are comping it is a big part of the job to listen to the soloist and the rest of the band and fit in what they are doing.

The idea in this lesson is to teach you three rhythms that you can use and combine to make a lot more rhythms. I have used a blues in F as a chord progression to try the rhythms out. This chord progression is well know and has a lot of different chords we can take the rhythms through.

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Since the point of this lesson is to work on playing stroing rhythms it makes sense to keep the voicings more simple so we can focus on the rhythms.

The voicings I used in the demonstrations are simple rootless shells, consisting of 3rd and 7th for each of the chords. The voicings areshown here below.

The rhythm in example 1 are played in two variations of the first rhythm: Playing the chord on the 1 and on the 3. The 2 variations I have used is to start with just playing on the one, and then moving to playing one and three.

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To add some more variation the first place we can add another rhythm. This one consists of two 8th notes. Example 3 has two variations on it.

If we use the new rhythm and the previous rhythm as material to comp through a blues chorus we have the example shown here below:

The example in the previous part of the lesson is already beginning to sound good. Because we are always starting on the beat we miss a rhythm that does not start on the beat. Adding this and some variations gives us these rhythms:

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With the combinations of these three rhythms we can comp quite varied and start to develop a big vocabulary of solid comping rhythms.

Getting these rhythms into your playing doesn’t have to require a lot of work. If you can comp these at a medium tempo with 2&4. In the beginning it is probably better to stick with simpler progressions like the blues or a turnaround. Start with the first rhythms and add the rest along the way!

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me viaInstagram, TwitterGoogle+ or Facebookto keep up to date with new lessons, concerts and releases.Rhythm is much more important than notes. This is very true for jazz and certainly for comping. The easiest way to learn some new rhythms for your comping is to come up with some small riffs and practice playing those through a chord progression. In this jazz rhythm guitar lesson, I am going to show you 5 great variations on some great Comping rhythms and how they sound through a Blues In F.

If you want to practice them with me then you can go to the second examples via the link in the description of this video. I’ll talk a little about that later. This way of really thinking in rhythms as phrases are really important because you can’t think about the notes, you have to hear them.

If you want to check out more material that you can use for both soloing and comping on an F blues then have a look at this Study Guide: F Blues Study Guide

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Instead of using the voicings that I use

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