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“Chord Language”
Part 1
Welcome to my new and exciting lesson
page! In the upcoming months I’m
going to focus on “chord language”. We’ll
look at a few different types of chords and shapes and with each lesson, add a
few more, building on the material we’ve covered.
The key here is to look at it like learning a new language.
You can communicate much easier at first when you work with a few useful
ideas and idioms. It amazes me how people can expect to expand their chord
vocabulary with a book of 10,000 chords! Those
books are great as a reference, but many of those chords turn out to be
impractical, painful, or just don’t sound good for jazz.
I’ve narrowed it down to a group of comfortable shapes and we’ll work
through them in a way that’s easy digest and comprehend.
Let’s
start out with dominant 7th’s (V7s).
Fig. 1 shows four inversions of G7.
To make things a little more interesting, substitute the 9th
for the root in each voicing. This
results in fig. 2. By using some
standard substitutions, these eight voicing can go a long way.
Remember…V7s can resolve up a perfect 4th (V7~I), down a
half step (bII7~I), and up a whole step (bVII7~I).
I’ve worked those resolutions into the following voice-led example over
a 12-bar blues in F (fig.3 “Right On Cue”).
The notes on the staff represent the lead voice in each chord.
I’ve used a common riff comping style, but feel free to make it swing
anyway you like…
Right
on Cue (fig.3 in PDF)
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