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Hello, I would like to ask which type of chord structures are better to learn, so one can navigate through the comping of standards with a smooth transition between chords, kind of voice-leading chords ala Howard Morgen.
I have the H. Morgen course "Fingerboard Breakthrough", and I find it really useful, but the problem is that it focus on triads (R+3+5), and then treats the Sevenths as embellishments of those triads. However, as H. Morgen recognizes, and we all know, the 5th are mostly unnecesary, so I tend to think that it would be better to focus directly in learning shell voicings (R+3+7) with diferent inversions, and not "wasting" time in practicing and memorizing the common triads (R+3+5) vocings.
As Sheryl Baileys teaches, the meat and potatoes of comping style are the Shell Voicings, and she goes as far as to say that with only those voicings you can negotiate every jazz standard correctly.
What you guys think about this? Should I spend my time in practicing triads as well as shell, or go straight to the meat and potatoes (shell voicings)?
Any advice or any other book or course where I can dig in this concept? (I also have the great Randy Vincent "Three Note voicings" book).
Thanks in advanced.Last edited by eduardosanz; 12-17-2014 at 02:05 PM.
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12-17-2014 01:59 PM
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I think if you spend time with the first chapter or two of that Vincent book, which as you know concentrate on shell voicings, you will be well rewarded.
Other common voicings include "drop 2" and "drop 3" voicing, which are four note voicings, R-3-5-7. There's a lot about these on the internet:
Drop 2 Chords | Chart, Voicings, Progressions & Exercises (+ PDF)
Drop 3 Chords & Inversions
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I found a nifty lesson by Trefor Owen about using triads for comping, but by "triads" in this context he means chords without the fifth, so they would be 3-note chords with the R, 3 (or b3), and 7 (or b7).
The voicings are easy to play and move around. In fact, the shape of them is so much alike, Trefor Owen says they can all be related to what he calls "the Hendrix chord," a 7#9. Further, the second finger plays the root note in all voicings. (These are E-string root and A-string root chords). He calls this the "locked knuckle" technique. It is very convenient, though it took me some time to getting used to always playing the root with the 2nd finger.
Now, this is for comping, not chord melody. They won't clash with anything a soloist might do and they convey the basic harmony clearly enough. They're a great way to run through the changes of an unfamiliar chart.
Mark Stefani---a member of this forum---calls these 3-note chords without a fifth "short chords."
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Eduardo,
A triad of R, 3rd and 5th does not have to "start" on the root of the chord you are playing!!! For instance if the chord changes of the song are Dmin7 | G7 | Cmaj7| you might play triads over the Dmin7 starting on the 3,5,7 of Dmin7, i.e. FMaj triad (F,A,C = 3,5,7 of Dmin7), or Amin triad (A,C,E, = 5,7,9 of Dmin7), Cmaj triad (C,E,G = 7,9,11 of Dmin7). Make sense? Mix them up with one another, intertwine them. You can do the same thing on all chords, and on Dom7 chords you can do as above starting on the flatted and sharped 5ths and 9ths too.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Well those aren't triads, they're seventh chords regardless of "context". Trefor is self taught. No need to perpetuate his ignorant terminology.
Nothing new here, see Freddie Green.
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Well, Trefor didn't claim it was new. He thought it useful for students and I found it useful. It's not the same thing as Freddie Green voicings----Freddie often played major triads and sixth chords in addition to seventh chords. Also, Freddie's fingerings were not the same. (This can be seen in videos of Freddie playing with Basie.) I love Freddie's playing and have read a lot about it and learned a lot of his favorite voicings. That was years ago. And I still found something very useful in Trefor's approach to comping. Originally Posted by fumblefingers
Here's a vid of him and Andy Hulme doing "Night and Day". (Trefor's the older guy on the right. He takes the second solo.) There's a lot more to his comping here than in the handout of eight basic voicings that I saw, but self-taught or not, he knows what he's doing.
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I'm not that familiar with Morgan other than JJG magazine. I'm not crazy about his playing but that's neither here nor there. If you like him that's great. Originally Posted by eduardosanz
With regards to harmony on the guitar and your original question, the truth is that it's not an either/or situation. You'll need to know quite a few chord voicing approaches.
To be clear, jazz is not a triadic music, although you will use triads quite a bit (like playing Emi instead of CMaj7 to cover a CMaj7 - because your bass player and/or your pianist will play the root, C)
Vincent's book - terrific but it gets pretty advanced. The first two chapters might be a good idea, as was suggested above.
Another book that I have suggested before is by Charlton Johnson - he played in the Basie Band and teaches an approach that is based on Freddie Green's four-to-the-bar comping. He adds 4-note "drop" voicings as well. I think it's easier than Vincent's book - it doesn't go nearly as deep. It's not the end but it's a good place to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Swing-Big-Band...johnson+guitar
James Chirillo with the JALC Orchestra has several nice videos out there on Youtube and his website where he goes into similar topics.
Finally, (not really, there are a lot of sources for this) there is a Truefire course entitled "Jazz Comping Survival Guide" by Fareed Haque, that covers a number of approaches to comping and voicings, depending on the ensemble context - guitar solo, with bass, with piano, with big band etc, etc..
Last edited by fumblefingers; 12-18-2014 at 01:19 AM.
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Got a link to that lesson, Mark? Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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I'd guess that every UK Jazz Guitarist was self taught in Trefor's era, the 1960's and 70's. Originally Posted by fumblefingers
But, full credit for Trefor for being a great promoter of Jazz Guitar in the UK, he's organised so many gigs and workshops for Top USA Jazz guitarists including:
Jack Wilkins
Sheryl Bailey
Paul Bollenback
Mimi Fox
Sid Jacobs
Bruce Forman
Mundell Lowe
Bucky Pizzarelli
John Pisano
Johnny Smith
Al Viola
Steve Herberman
Howard Alden
Anthony Wilson
Corey Christiansen
There's more, but these are the ones I remember...
I say, well done Trefor and thanks.................
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Thanks for all your interesting answers.
I am aware that jazz comping needs diferent approaches for diferent situations. In my personal case, I play mostly by my own (without any bass or piano player), so I need to retain the root in most of my voicings I guess (or at least a note from the 6th or 5th strings in case of inversions) to have a bass voice in my music.
As for the harmony voices, I am not good at great stretches nor with my pinky finger, thats why I rather concentrate in three note voicings most of the time, using my pinky lightly here and there to add some embellishments (9, b9, 13...). I feel that eliminating the 5th of the chord allows me to play a more jazzier chord (including the 7th instead of the 5th) without complicating the fingering of the chord in question.
Any more ideas?
Do you mean jazz is not a triadic music as to R+3+5 vocings, or as to any three-note voicings? By the way, I have too that F. Haque comping video course, but he goes pretty fast to my pace and skills. Originally Posted by fumblefingers
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Originally Posted by eduardosanz
yep. but its not about voicings so much. a triad is a triad regardless of voicing - closed, open, etc.
to get a sense of what chord is being sounded look at the score of music from top to bottom - singer, strings, horns, piano, guitar, bass etc. the chord is the sum total, and its what the ear hears.Last edited by fumblefingers; 12-18-2014 at 09:59 AM.
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Do take a look at those drop two voicings--most are compact and easy to finger, which sounds like what you're looking for. They also sound great! Originally Posted by eduardosanz
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No, I'm afraid not. I can't remember how I ran across it the first time. "Just one of those things...." Originally Posted by jasaco
Someone here takes lessons with him and Trefor has a website from which one can glean a few things about his (basic) approach to comping. If I run across something more, I'll let you know.
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Haha both. Originally Posted by eduardosanz
In the short term, I learned shell voicings first and ended up using for years.
In fact I only got into triads relatively recently, but I use them more often for soloing and upper structure voicings. They are good things too.
Hope that's some help.
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I don't think it's as much about triads being "a waste of time" as just having some simple priorities. If you don't know either one, I would go with shell voicings first. I agree that they are the meat and potatoes. No 5ths... they are just much more simple and basic, but you can build more complexity from them as your foundation.
Also, most people starting out have an irresistible urge to hear the full chord in root position, and it's probably good in the beginning to be able to hear that root movement anyway. Shell voicing satisfy that itch and get you playing simply through changes pretty quickly.
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Triads are the main topic of the earliest jazz guitar chord texts from the '30s such as Eddie Lang's "Fingerboard Harmony" and George Van Eps "Method for Guitar" and in more recent years, players like Kurt Rosenwinkel (a big Van Eps fan) have reinvestigated their properties as a source for polytonal harmonic environments. That said, from the '40s onwards, the jazz guitar 'default' chord type has been the 7th. Chuck Wayne was one of the first to catalogue 7th voicings in all their inversions, pointing out that four-note chords were also ideally suited to the four available fingers.
While knowledge of triads and three-note shell voicings are essential, I'd suggest learning four-note chords early on and simply adding, subtracting or substituting tones where necessary. The method I came up with years ago for systematically learning all the possible 7th chord inversions was, I later found out, identical to that taught by Harry Leahey. His student, Vic Juris takes the same approach in the book "Modern Chords".
As a first step, Leahey advocated learning inversions for the five main 7th chord types - M7, dom7, m7, m7b5 and dim7 - via "The Big Five" string sets: drop 3 voicings from the 6th and 5th strings and drop 2 from the 6th, 5th and 4th strings. The order of chord types is important as the alterations between each chord will be clearly revealed: M7>dom7 (7 to b7), dom7>m7 (3 to b3), m7>m7b5 (5 to b5), m7b5>dim7 (b7 to bb7). Unlike closed position chords, all of these voicings can be easily played in every inversion.
The trick to securing either shell or four-note voicings is to run them through common chord sequences (Leahey, for instance, directed students to start with a I-vi-ii-V progression) and then whole tunes where each chord moves to the next via the closest possible inversion to ensure smooth voice-leading. I like to use the chord sequence for the first eight bars of "Autumn Leaves" for this purpose when teaching as it outlines a major followed by a minor ii-V-I and incorporates all the chord types listed above. Here's a looped, descending version of the sequence with drop 2 voicings from the 4th string:
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Triads are very handy little things. I use them all the time now.
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I think many other players do that as well. Horn players and pianists have always used triads melodically to generate momentum. And many basic technical exercises involve triads (-who doesn't remember C-E-G, D-F-A, E-G-B, F-A-C and so on, then the whole thing in reverse order, then the whole thing in alternating order, up first and then down, ascending and then the same thing descending?) Lots of 'jazz vocabulary' is built on triad runs. (For a simple example, if you're playing "Summertime" in Am, you will likely hear a horn player play the Am, Bm, C and D triads, which treats the Am as the ii chord of G major rather than the vi chord (relative minor) of C. It is easily done and it works.) Originally Posted by christianm77
Of course, using triad pairs is a huge topic nowadays...
But that is not comping. Still, you need to know the triads to use them, even if you don't use them as comping chords.
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Well... in my case, I am afraid the problem is that I only know by heart the notes on 6th and 5th strings, so I need to find and build my chords on those roots strings... Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I am finding pretty useful too the new book by Jim Ferguson "Comping Standards for Jazz Guitar"Last edited by eduardosanz; 12-19-2014 at 11:56 AM.
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It's not that hard to learn the other strings. It will really open up possibilities when you do that.
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I would like to hear more about the Jim Ferguson book, "Comping Standards for Jazz Guitar." I'm familiar with some of his other material but not this new book. Originally Posted by eduardosanz
As for learning the notes on the other strings, the notes on the high E string are the same as the ones on the low E string, so that means you know three of the six (-the two Es and A). You're halfway home!
Try the "D" (the fourth string up from the bottom or the third one down from the top.) The notes are two frets behind the notes of the E string. For example, the low string open is E. The D string at the second fret is E. The D string at the 3rd fret is F, which is what the E string is at the first fret.
You will never regret learning the names of the notes on the other strings---it makes so many things easier for you!
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Mark is right. If you know the 6 and 5 strings notes, you are very close to knowing the entire fretboard. He suggests a way to learn the D string.
Another way is to learn the octave patterns between the 6 and 5 strings and the 4 and 3 strings. For instance, G is third fret on the 6 string and an octave higher at the fifth fret on the 4 string.
Also, you can use the reciprocal relationship between fifths and fourths to learn the notes of fretboard.
Finally, there are the inverses of minor third/major six and major third/minor sixth
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The 4th string root chords are pretty easily learned from relationship to the 6th string. Learning to play chord melody really helps with first 2-3 string notes. Drop 2's get you thinking from top string down as well.
The Warnock pages linked above are good basic stuff, and Reg has a thread with his basic chords for sixth, fifth, fourth string roots. Very basic go-to chords that will get you comping through standards quickly.
I also really like the way Leavitt sequences chords in his Modern Method books. Skip the notation and just do the chords for a while. They're really prioritized by importance or "go-to-ness" for comping standards and by voice leading.
When you focus on one rigid standard for voicing things like drop 2, drop 3, certain string sets etc., you kind of throw voice leading out the window somewhat. It's kind of nice to have an old pro just say "these are good chords to start". They build in complexity with moving inner voices etc. But the basics are up front.
At some point, you have to figure things out on your own with drop 2, drop 3, changing notes to cover your extensions etc., but the idea that "you have to learn it all anyway so why not learn it all in the beginning" is BS IMO.
Learning that is sequenced to motivate you to practice more and get you comping actual tunes sooner will be more "efficient" in the long run then "efficient for efficiency's sake" methodology.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 12-20-2014 at 12:15 PM.
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Link to the Reg sheet I was talking about:
Check out the chords on the sheet attached to post #73.
Drop 3's in root position, 4 basic chord types, from roots on 6th, 5th and 4th strings. These are just basic, solid starting point from which to build other things on.
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There's definitely different schools of thought in terms of guitar harmony. It really depends on what you like to hear.
Bebop players (like Sheryl) are bigger fans of shell voicings and adding color tones afterwards. This comes out of the style of line playing, where the lines are built off chord tones and everything else are colors. This is useful for you if you like to hear 7-3 resolutions in your comping.
More "swing' guitarists, guys like Bucky Pizzarelli and George Van Eps, that style of playing, they're more into the triads and 6th chords. George especially was really big into triadic movement in chords and voice leading. This style sounds more accessible and less dissonant, mainly because they're using the chords as the function that they serve.
Some guys like a lot more denser harmony and prefer to use bigger shapes and superimpositions of 7th chords and all the above. Ben Monder is big into this, and has his students learn every possible inversion of every chord quality of a 1357 chord, then has them use these as shapes to superimpose over different roots to get rich and colorful sounds.
There's also the more modal and intervallic chord types. Corey Christiansen is big into 4th voicings, and a lot of the modern guys chord vocabulary comes from intervallic shapes.
Regardless of preference, a good guitarist should have a great command of all of these styles of chord voicings and be able to use them in a tasteful manner.
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