Jazz chords harder than 'normal' chords?

[KingKong]

Hello,

So I've decided to work on my comping for a bit, learning e.g. more alternative minor 7th voicings, doing a few chord studies of various standards...

Is it me or are jazz chords a lot harder to finger and get down than standard rock chords?! I've been stuck on a particular chord study for a week and STILL can make the changes without fumbling about....!

I swear I never had this trouble getting the likes of g c and d sorted back in the day, anyone else get this?

[bako]

I wouldn't automatically define difficulty by style but put it this way:
A more extensive chord vocabulary is more difficult to learn than a smaller one. Open strings are easier to play than fretted notes.

Jazz on average uses a more extensive chord vocabulary than pop/rock music although how extensive varies from player to player. When playing solo guitar arrangements of songs, you are engaging with the particular chordal solutions and language of the author.

Part of retaining chords is mental visualization and part of it is physical.
It takes a long minute to internalize new chord forms but the ability to recognize intervals, note names and function of notes will expedite internalization.

Then there are shapes that present new physical angles, some become playable as the hands acclimate and some might be forever unachievable for a given individual. For example, walking 10ths are basic language for playing stride piano, but some people's hands are just too small. When faced with that which is impossible for us, alternative solutions become necessary. A challenge for every guitarist early on is differentiating between chords that are just new and chords that are impossible. Be patient in this game, it is worth the effort.

[Litterick]

The extensions make jazz chords what they are, and make them difficult.

[jim777]

It can be more difficult to cleanly play (and move to and from) 4 and 5 note chords than 3 note chords. So yeah, jazz chords are more difficult to play. But then there's the upside of hearing them once you can play them cleanly

[rsclosson]

The initial challenge is worth it. My experience has been that there are very few barre chords and the voicings are usually 4 note chords. Ironically, the deeper I got into it the more I have been drawn to 3 note voicings. It never fails to amaze me that they are better sounding and more powerful than full 6 string chords.

The danger can be that you can't easily go back. If I ever do a gig with just majors, minors and dominant 7ths, including "cowboy chords", I am bored to tears.

[Bop Head]

For me the biggest challenge when starting with jazz chords long time ago was muting the two unused strings for the (mostly) four-note voicings.

[Lionelsax]

Jazz chords harder than 'normal' chords?

Depends how you play them. Playing nearly all of them is no more 'difficult' than any other closed position chord. They may be unfamiliar but that's not the same as difficult. Keep at it and it becomes easy.

But there are chords using 5 or 6 strings and, as I think someone mentioned, shell-voicings, or 3-note chords. They're pretty easy and it's extremely easy to shift from one to the other.

Possibly the hard bit involves chords that mean muting notes within the chord, especially if you're using a pick. Using the fingers makes that easier. But it's like anything, familiarity is the key.

Don't try to learn too many all at once. My advice is apply learning them to tunes, then you get used to playing related chords. That's half the battle. So don't just learn all sorts of m7's and then all sorts of dominants, learn 2-5-1's and other oft-repeated patterns. Which is why tunes are good to use.

I don't want to make this too long but there are also interesting tricks to use. Say you had a basic Gm7 - C7 - FM7. The usual way might be to play them

3x333x - x3231x - 1x221x

But try

3x331x - 2x231x - 1x221x

Stuff like that.

Anyway, repetition and familiarity in actual contexts. Don't just pore over chord dictionaries!

He is not talking about chords but voicings.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

... being Allan Holdsworth ...

[James W]

Joseph Alexander's books on Jazz chords present a lot of the useful info you'll need and how to apply it (though there are some misprints). I guess they are more difficult than 'normal' chords and many will require a pick and fingers approach. Start slow and eventually your fretting hand fingers will get the picture.

[mickmac]

"Jazz; chords are easier and less tiring than Rock "chords . I have to use both frequently .Rock is much more tiring. Mickmac

[wolflen]

my teacher often said..chords are just frozen voices..move one voice and a new harmonic universe opens up

jazz chords more difficult .. could be..remember your first F major barre chord..?

depending on determination and patience..your hands and fingers can adjust to chord shapes (posture and position of guitar also)

once formed..the function of the chord helps its reason to be..that is just to be able to form a chord will not have a "muscle memory" pre-set if it is isolated

and have no harmonic direction to or from another chord..if you play Emaj7b5 ok now what?

learning harmonic functions of chords helps alot...

and as others have said learning tunes and set pieces so you can hear (and see) the chords in action..so to speak

[ragman1]

He is not talking about chords but voicings.

Voicings are chords.

[chasranney]

That "chord" is an E-gads!

... being Allan Holdsworth ...

[rpjazzguitar]

The chords typically used in rock are all relatively easy to finger. I can't think of an exception.

Some jazz chords are just as easy, but there is no limit to how hard they can get.

For comping standards in the style of the 1950's, say, you don't have to use a difficult grip. No worse than your first barre chord.

If you want to play like Holdsworth or Guinga, that's another story.

[ragman1]

I don't think there's any need to play the sort of chords that hurt your hand. Completely unnecessary. The idea is to make nice music, not win a gold medal for stretchiest tendons

[AllanAllen]

You struggled just like this with the cowboy chords, you've just forgotten by now. One day you'll forget how hard this was too and tell newcomers on the forum to learn all the chords and their inversions like it's a weekend endeavor.

[ragman1]

I could never play a full 9 chord, like C9. Can't play the top G without numbing the E or sounding the F by accident. It's a bummer

So I just do x3233x and have done with it.

[KingKong]

It's the fingerings that are the issue, like if I get one chord right, all good but then they seem to stay stuck in which ever act of contortion they are in and don't want to move to the next.

This is clearly a matter of practice and learning to relax, guess I'm just having a bit of a moan tbh. Fucking jazz .....

[RLetson]

I will with all modesty (and I have plenty to be modest about) present myself as someone who came to swing (with a bit of jazz feel) from the Great Folk Scare years, and even sixty-odd years later can recall how hard some of the basic chords seemed to be. Barre chords are the classic troublemakers, but back in 1956, just getting around four-string/first-position voicings in C, D, and G seemed like a big deal. It took a while to manage the shapes that let me get through Peter, Paul, and Mary and Kingston Trio material.

By the time I was exposed to shell chords by a series of good workshop teachers, I already had an idea that one could do a lot with three or even two notes (lots of fingerstyle folk and blues), and Ted Conner built his approach around just the 3rd and 7th and had us using what were essentially inversions. It wasn't enough to tackle Joe Pass material, but it was a foundation that I am still building on. And most of it depends on three-finger grips that can move pretty easily in multi-bar sequences that make harmonic sense.

Once I'd absorbed the basic lessons from Ted (and Steve Abshire and Mike Dowling, among others), it was just a matter of keeping at it, applying it to new tunes, and stealing as much as possible from my more accomplished musical friends.

I will add (as a woefully unschooled player) that understanding how and why a handful of easily-mastered grips can function as different chords (because of common notes and harmonic context) is pretty helpful, even if that theoretical knowledge is generally applied not during performance but when woodshedding--how many ways can I make a 9 or a m7-flat-5 or maj 7 and which grip/voicing will work in a particular situation?

[KingKong]

Another thing is the number of chord fingerings available and feeling the need to learn how to make use of them.
Probably as said above might be a case of spreding learning out across too many at a time.

[Bop Head]

It's the fingerings that are the issue, like if I get one chord right, all good but then they seem to stay stuck in which ever act of contortion they are in and don't want to move to the next.

This is clearly a matter of practice and learning to relax, guess I'm just having a bit of a moan tbh. Fucking jazz .....

Take a sequence of only two grips and watch closely what is happening when you are changing very slowly from one chord to the next. How are the fingers moving? Does maybe one finger stay on the same string, same fret? Use that finger as a sort of anchor. If a finger does not stay in the same fret but on the same string use it as an anchor as well. Check if there are alternative, more ergonomic for the change fingerings.

[tbeltrans]

If you know how to "spell" chords, know the notes on the fretboard, what extensions can replace what primary notes of a given chord, and what notes you can leave out, you can voice the chords to suit you.

A great presentation on this is a video lesson from Barry Greene's "Stepping Stones" series, the lesson on chords: Stepping Stones - The Fundamentals of Jazz Guitar - Barry Greene Video Lessons

Another is Robert Conti's "Assembly Line":

Chord Melody Assembly Line • RobertConti.com

All of his chords are easy to manage and none have those big stretches.


Tony

[lammie200]

I am sure that I am in the vast minority but I never really enjoy playing cowboy chords and actually find them more difficult to play than practically any other kind of chord. Might be because I find them to be almost colorless. I pretty much avoid them.

[pauln]

I am sure that I am in the vast minority but I never really enjoy playing cowboy chords and actually find them more difficult to play than practically any other kind of chord. Might be because I find them to be almost colorless. I pretty much avoid them.

The funny thing about cowboy chords is that almost all popular music for a very long time always included a guitar track playing cowboy chords, and the studio musicians that could play perfectly fingered, sounded, balanced, perfectly timed, strummed, changed, flawless cowboy chords were always busy and in demand. The degree of concentration and almost "non-musical" mechanical approach strikes me as mind numbing. This was a special technical recording studio skill pretty much replaced by music software.

I guess I'm joining you in "the vast minority" [sic], in jazz I never use cowboy chords, which does not mean I avoid first position. I also find that only a few jazz songs in just a few places actually ever really require a bare honest major, minor, or seventh chord to sound right; I usually perform for three hours without ever playing one.

[Christian Miller]

Maybe I've disappeared up me own fundament, but I tend to think there's only chords.

A relatively limited palette maybe used in straigthahead guitar rock, but there's plenty of rock tunes where more 'jazz' voicings are played. I'm not just talking about prog either, loads of nineties stuff has interesting chords. Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Soundgarden, Foo Fighters etc etc.

Beyond cowboy chords and power chords, good arrangers especially in two guitar bands know how to trim down voicings to make them sit in the arrangement better. So 'rock chords' can be anything really, so long as it fits the song.

OTOH, not all jazz guitarist use tricky to finger chords. For every Allan Holdworth, Johnny Smith, Lage Lund or Pasquale Grasso apparently defying the anatomy of the left hand, there's a player like Joe Pass or Cecil Alexander who mostly uses chords that fit naturally under the fingers and plays great jazz.

a good jazz musician should in my opinion, not be afraid of using a plain triad, or even a cowboy chord, if the music requires it. Nothing sounds quite like open G. We shouldn't be afraid to use it. Ask Bill Frisell... Not everything has to be extended to the nth degree. In fact I find players who always comp with those chords quite obtrusive.

Technically, the thing I find hardest to play remains the barre F because there's only a few ways I can make it less tiring on the arm to play and they don't really help that much. I'll do anything to avoid it, especially if I have to do a gig where I may have to play for a long time in keys with that chord. I dig why the bluegrass guys capo.

Stretch positions? No problem.