JENS LARSEN’s „Jazz Chord Survival Kit“



GuitarMania has teamed up with Danish guitarist JENS LARSEN of Dutch based jazz quartet TRAEBEN to bring you a series of tutorials and workshops. In the first lesson, Jens introduces us to his jazz survival kit.

 


In this lesson I want to give you a few exercises that should make it possible for you to go through a jazz standard without too much trouble. We often spend too much time working on details and forget to apply it to songs and hear how it works in contexts so this is a tutorial about how to play a standard and a few suggestions for songs to check out when you know the exercises.



Diatonic Chords


Not surprisingly when playing jazz standards it makes sense to start with some diatonic chords. I have made to exercises with the diatonic chords of Bb and F major. Having those in your fingers and knowing what chords they are is a good starting point and will make it possible for you to play through songs without the rest of this lesson. Since most people relate the chord to the root and most of the time this is place on the 5th and 6th string I have the Bb voicings with the root on the 5th string and the F major voicings with the root on the 6th string.

 



You might recognize the type of voicing I am using here as a Drop2 voicings.




If you are familiar with different kind of voicings you might recognize these voicings as Drop3 voicings.



The voicings that we now have both have the chord part on the B, G and D strings and the root on the 5th and 6th strings. This allows the voicings to have ok voiceleading most of the time without us having to worry too much about it since that requires more knowledge of the notes in the chord and how they move in harmony.

 

II V progressions


If you see a lead sheet for a jazz standard for the first time it is quite likely that you will be overwhelmed by the amount of chords that are in there. For that reason, it is very practical if not essential to learn to view groups of chords as one thing rather than each chord by itself, since that makes it a lot easier to remember the song by heart, and in the end also analyze or understanding the song while playing it. That is the reason why I have made the next 4 exercises. One of the most common two chord progressions in jazz is a II V.

A II V is a minor 7th chord moving up a 4th or down a 5th to dominant 7th chord like this:

Dm7 G7

The reason why I am not including the I chord, ie II V I is that very often the II V is resolving differently so it is handy to just pair those two for now.

The II V voicings that I can build with the voicings in the first two exercises are pretty ok,  but by adding a bit of extensions I can make them easier to play and transition better from one to the other so here’s an exercise where I let the II V resolve to another II V etc.

 

 



And here is a similar version starting on the 5th string:

 

 

 


Minor II V cadences

Since we are already busy with recognizing II V cadences in major it seems logical to add the minor variation of this, too. Same idea as the major counterpart. We add some extensions, and in this case alterations to the dominant to make it easier to play and make the II V move more smooth from II to V.

 



The m7b5 chord is probably one of the most hated voicings by beginning students and it is a bit difficult and takes some practice, but there is really no way around them.


Here’s the set with the root of the II chord on the 5th string

 

 


 Diminished Chords

The only chord that we miss now is a diminished chord, since they are not present in the II V or in the diatonic chord sequence or in the II V’s



 

 


So now you have most basic chords covered and should be able to get through most standards without too much trouble.



The examples in the this lesson are also available as a downloadable PDF, which can be downloaded on Jens’s website at http://jenslarsen.nl/jazz-chord-survival-kit/


I hope that you liked the lesson. If you have any questions or comments then feel free to leave them here or on the video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Facebook, Google+ or Twitter to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts and releases.

 




Please check out the interview GuitarMania conducted with Jens, and the GuitarMania review of TRAEBEN’s new record „Looking at the Storm“ here.

For further information and material, please refer below

TRAEBEN Soundcloud

www.traeben.com

http://jenslarsen.nl