jazz Archives - GUITARHABITS

Top 20 Easy Popular Jazz Guitar Chord Songs

For most guitar players jazz guitar comes on their path through progress somewhere between intermediate and advanced level. Of course there are also guitar players who start out with jazz. It all depends on who your influences are, how badly you want to learn something, your skill level and determination.

Usually you start out learning easy guitar songs, and then you move onto blues, rock or country and when you’re ready to be challenged and expand your horizon even more you might want to consider to focus on jazz.

Learning jazz really opens up a whole new world of possibilities and makes guitar playing even more interesting and exciting. Even if you’re not into jazz and it’s not really your style, learning from jazz will benefit any style of playing.

To begin with jazz it’s nice to learn playing some jazz chord songs. Jazz progressions are really fun to play and will broaden your chord vocabulary and musical knowledge.

You can get your hands dirty with this list of popular jazz songs performed by many great jazz players and artists. You can click the song title and start listening to the song. The “Chords” link will give you the basic jazz chords to the song.

Next to the song title I mentioned the artist who performed the song, and not the songwriter. If you’re interested in who composed the music you can google “song title” + wiki.

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Pick one song to begin with, listen to the song a couple of times, learn the chords, the progressions, listen to it again, take it easy one step at a time, have patience and practice it daily. Keep it at and you will get it under your belt. You’ll be rewarded.

Enjoy!

1 – Autumn leaves – Nat King Cole – Chords – More Chords

2 – All of me – Frank Sinatra – Chords – More Chords

3 – The girl from Ipanema – Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim – Chords – More Chords

4 – Summertime – Billy Holiday – Chords – More Chords

5 – Take the A train – Duke Ellington – Chords
Continue Reading

5 Easy Jazz Chord Exercises

By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

Guest post by Matt Warnock (jazz guitarist and educator)

Learning how to play jazz guitar chords can seem like a tough hill to climb. There always seems to be new chords that you need to learn, and each of these chords has myriad variations and fingerings to work out on the guitar. But, while there are a lot of options when learning jazz guitar chords, you don’t have to learn every shape before you can begin making music.

By starting with a few easy jazz chord shapes, one popular jazz rhythm, and five classic jazz progressions, you’ll build your confidence with jazz chords in no time. This lesson will help you do just that, build your confidence, have fun learning jazz chords, and expand your jazz chord knowledge all at the same time.

Easy Jazz Chord Shapes

To begin your study of these easy jazz chord exercises, you’ll need to get a few chord shapes under your fingers. Each of these chords uses three notes, only the most essential notes, to make them easy to finger on the guitar.

Take a few minutes to become familiar with these chords, and then move on to the next section where you’ll add rhythm and harmonic movement to these shapes. If you aren’t 100% comfortable with any of these shapes, not to worry, as you’ll be working them throughout this lesson, so you’ll become more comfortable with each shape over time.

Extended Chords 9th 11th 13th for Guitar

By Klaus Crow 7 Comments

Extended chords are usually used in jazz music, but also in other styles like pop, blues and latin music to spice up chord progressions and add some nice flavor to the chords.

When I first learned the theory behind extended chords, it opened up a whole new world for me. All these mysterious chord names made finally sense.

I would use the chords for my own material, incorporate them into some of my favorite guitar songs and started learning some wicked jazz tunes.

Once you play around, experiment and incorporate these chords into your playing it will make guitar playing really fun and colorful.

If you’re new to chord construction then first check out How to Use Chord Formulas and Their Benefits and How to Play The Most Common Types of 7th Chords. These posts will give you the basic chord theory you need.

Let’s dive in…

Triads and 7th Chords

Extended chords are the 9th, 11th and 13th chords.

To understand the chord structure of extended chords we must first know the major and minor triad and three types of seventh chords. We use the “C” chord as an example to show the chord names.

How to Play and Apply The Dorian Scale

By Klaus Crow 6 Comments

Bigstock photo
If you know your way around the pentatonic / blues scale, the major scale and minor scale and you feel like you’re up for a new challenge, it’s time to expand your soloing vocabulary.

Let’s take a look at one of the 7 modes of the Major scale. Dorian might be your new endeavor.

The Dorian scale is very common scale in the jazz music, but it can also be applied to pop, rock and metal to give your soloing some fresh and lively colors.

The dorian scale is the second mode of the major scale.

All 7 modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian) are derived from the major scale. Each mode starts and stops on a different note within the major scale. Dorian starts on the second degree of the major scale all the way up to an octave higher.

Example:
C Major = C D E F G A B C
D Dorian = D E F G A B C D

Formulas:
Major scale = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dorian scale = 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7

If you start on a random note to build a Dorian scale the pattern of whole and half steps would be: “whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, whole”. (a whole step = 2 frets, a half step = 1 fret). So the formula in semitones = 2 1 2 2 2 1 2

DORIAN SOUND
Modes are scales derived from the major scale. There are major modes and minor modes. If we look at the minor modes (they contain a b3) you can see the Aeolian mode (natural minor scale) and Phrygian mode both contain a minor 6 (or b6), whereas the Dorian mode contains a major 6. The 6th sets it apart. It becomes the characteristic note and identifies the Dorian sound.Continue Reading