Hey, guys, it's Marc from jazz guitar lessons. Back in with you for three simple ways to improve your jazz comping. In this episode, I want to cover it briefly. I'll give you actionable tips, so perhaps grab your guitar now so you can follow along.
Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists to learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe.
So digging into tip number one, quite frankly, it's misleading when someone asks you to do something and it's convoluted and telling you, well, do the other thing first.
You've probably read the book The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. You were there all along. Yeah. That's the story of the first tip. Sorry. The first tip is comping has more to do with the rhythms you use in your comping than the chords and the voicings themselves. So here's my challenge to you. Tip number one: fix the rhythm for an entire course or two.
If you're playing blues, you should do it for three or four or five choruses. That's it. Use a simple rhythmic figure. If you don't know where to start, you can head over to Jazz Fellowship. It's a free school group. There's over 3000 people on there. Now you can get the four key jazz rhythms one get. You could start with like right now.
Now is the Charleston figure. So 234 cha cha cha. Ta dah. Chuck. Jo Jo, if you're more advanced, stay tuned for the next tips. But know that some people are surprised that either they can't do that very well, or they're surprised at how it sounds good with the voicings they currently have. They don't have to reinvent the wheel and change a rhythm into voicing and the inversions.
It's sort of the flat nine on top into the decent, and that when they just make it groovy and interesting, that's one of the main ways to keep your comping very engaging. It has little to do with the voicings, of course, grab the right voicings, but know that the number of voicings you need to learn is relatively limited to the music and the stylus, the sounds of the chords, but also to the instruments.
So there's only a handful of voicings you need. And after that, sticking, making it really groove. You really in the pocket makes a huge difference. All right, onto tip number two. So you know, sorry about reframing. Like seeing, something horrible happening. That's the second tip. So I have to admit I had an experience with it was extremely rough for me to go through that, but I, I saw a cat, being ran over by cars, and he wasn't really dead yet, so that poor cat was in the middle of the road.
I called for assistance. I called the police, and then I called the animal shelter thing. It was hard. Like I had that on my mind for the next while. Right? For the next week or two. It was very traumatizing. But the point is, if I can take that and reframe it to see I had to live that experience for another reason and down the lines like, oh, it allowed me to whatever it was, appreciate the presence of my own.
Can the house, you know Mitton, she she was awesome or it allowed me to reframe relationships or whatever. So the reframe is a basic, I guess, psychological tool that we can use. In the second step, I would say for getting better at comping. It has nothing to do with dead cats. I promise. But I would tell you if you could reframe what you actually have, you're going to go much further.
That was my first lesson with Gary Schwartz in Montreal, actually. He called it, expansion and contraction. So the point is, you start from a definite standpoint. That's easy, understandable, and then you evolve it into a different, chords as specifically chords. So in my case, if you haven't seen this on the fellowship, go to lesson six.
You will encounter the process of building shell voicings. So shells evolved from staples. Staples have their roots in the fifth and sixth string. And shells basically tell you well remove the bass note. So that's a really powerful heavy reframe you can do, because the reframe makes you still visualize the root on the bottom two strings. I still see like myself, I see A and E string.
I always see the root where it's at that I still think like a rocker and bar chords, essentially. But say I have a C minor. C minor, 7 or 8, right? So it would be, c b flat, E flat g, so 8X888. Right thinking taps also. So if I just take out that c I'm left with eight, eight, eight on the middle strings of the guitar.
This is still C minor. And this is what I call a shell plus one. Meaning you have your DNG string, the middle, the guitar. Then you add one more on the B and then if you wanted, you could go further with shell plus two and still adding the top string. But here's a catch with the reframe. When I think of these chords that have higher extensions, I don't think in terms of notes and extensions and alterations and inversions and note names.
I just literally still see that root six or root five, and I see it in my mind's eye, but I'm not playing it, but it allows me to build the top strings easily. So that's quite the reframe. Highly recommended. This is my second tip for better comping for jazz guitarists.
Hey guys, just a quick note if you're enjoying this content and you're eager to boost your own jazz guitar playing, then connect with us. We've transformed the jazz skills of thousands of guitarists. You can find the link in the description or head directly over to Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net to begin your journey. All right, let's dive back into the episode.
And my last tip for getting jazz guitars to sound better.
You know, tension. Tension is a thing we often hear when a YouTube video guy will say, oh yeah, you got to do a flat nine, but then resolve that tension, you know, sharp nine you there's tension in dominant chords, say a five chord like a G7 flat nine that goes to C major. There is that. But also know that within chords there is also a sense of tension.
Interestingly. And here's what I mean with this third tip. The seventh degree of a major chord is a tension. Let me repeat this or rephrase it. When you're playing a C major 7CE, g, e, the B note, then it's maybe I'm off key. Sorry, but that note is a pull note. It wants to pull up to your to your note.
Right. So here's my tip. That tension can be resolved. So as a starting point for all my students. And you can see this in the fellowship again go and look up at the staples. The staples have C6. I don't even teach a major seventh because I believe the seventh is a tension and it just sounds rounder and more resolve and more unsat like in setting the terms of sitting.
It just sounds more sad when, when we we have a six chord instead of a major seven. So here's a tip if you haven't done that already, I highly, highly recommend you. You learn to C6 or the C, major nine or the C6 nine that we have in the staple cheat sheet. That's absolutely for free to download link in the description.
And another step if you're more advanced, any major seven shape, you have played a major seven shape and resolve the seventh down to the sixth. So if you're playing a C major, seven of sorts and there's a B natural note, so it's the seventh right? Resolve it down to the A note to the six. So you create an inner tension.
And with those three tips. So number one if you can learn to fix your rhythm to really keep them steady and keep in the pocket, if you can learn to visualize roots, although you're already playing like extensions and upper shells and stuff, and if you can make your major sevens into six, that could be a tip. Like hopefully by the end of today or by the end of the week, your comping can tremendously, drastically improve.
And it again, this is Freeman. This is just little things we can do that we have false beliefs of like vocabulary accumulation. Right. We think we have to do all the six diminished versions from Barry Harrison because Barry Gilbert did that or like learn all the best voicings like that. Well, yeah, you can do that. But it's not going to give you as much gas as if you just play in the pocket.
Have really cool rhythms that know that. Marc from jazz Guitar Lessons. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast episode. Please let me know in the comments and like and subscribe! It helps the algorithm here to suggest the things that I will do next for the podcast episodes, and I'll see you soon on the on the podcast on the website Jazz guitar lessons, dot net slash blog, all the school free fellowship and on the YouTube channel.
Thank you. Take care.
