In this video guitar lesson we'll be talking about jazz guitar comping.
Comping is improvising chords to support a soloist rhythmically and harmonically.
We'll be using the jazz standard There Will Never Be Another You for this lesson. First have a look at this video of me playing the lesson. The guitar tabs, chord charts and explanation are below.
For those of you that don't have Band in a Box, I made an mp3 of the backing track, so you can practice this lesson:
You can download the audio of the video as an mp3 here (right click with your mouse and select Save Target As...): There Will Never Be Another You Mp3
Here's the guitar chord chart with the voicings used in this comping study. Most of them are pretty basic, but I omitted the bass note a lot of times so they might look a bit different:
And here are the guitar tabs for There Will Never Be Another You (to print the tablature, download this .pdf file: There Will Never Be Another You).
Some clarification about what I'm playing in this comping study (I omitted the obvious):
Bar 3-4: I omit the bass note in these voicings (and most other voicings in this comping lesson). The 1 and the 5 are the least important notes of a chord (when you're playing with a bass instrument). 3 and 7 are the most important notes and tensions make a voicing interesting. This doesn't mean you always have to play tensions, basic chord voicings like the ones in this II V work as well. Find a good balance. Single note lines work good as well, but keep it basic (unless you are filling the gaps in a theme, then you can play a bit more active lines).
Bar 5-6: the lead sheet says Cm7 for these two bars. Something you can do to make that 1 chord a bit more interesting is using the line cliché. The line cliche is a chromatic line going from the 1 of a chord to the 6 and is used quiet often in bebop and Latin music.
Bar 6: I play the Bbm 1 beat early (on the 4). This is called anticipation and can be used to give a tune a bit more drive. You can anticipate a quarter note or a quaver (like the end of bar 13).
Bar 11: this is a basic Gm voicing. Gm is the first substitute for Ebmaj7. It would have been nicer if I had played a Gm7, so the 9 of Ebmaj7 would be in the voicing.
Bar 20: this is a very useful cliche, going from the #9 to the b9 of the dominant chord to the 5 of the target chord.
Bar 28: this basic Bbmaj7 chord voicing is the first substitute for Gm9. The next voicing, Bbmaj7#11 is a substitute for C 13.
Bar 28-31: delaying and anticipating create more interest compared to just playing on the beat.
Bar 32: I play a 6 chord here because it's the end of the chorus. A 6 chord is more stable than a maj7 chord, it's better to play a 6 when a chord requires a tonic sound.
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