Chords for Comping A Jazz Standard - This Is How To Get Started

Learning a few jazz chords is not enough to sound like real jazz comping, the kind of thing that you hear
Doc Rainey play behind Chet Baker [Bbm] or [Ab] Jim Hall behind Paul Desmond.
[B] There are a lot more to it
and you want to [D] develop those skills as well.
In this video [E] I'm going to take a really [B] basic [Ab] jazz
standard and then I'm going to start [Eb] with some really simple voicings [Fm] and then gradually start
to develop those step by step [B] and also develop some of the other skills that you need if you
[C] want to play some really solid comping so that you lay down the harmony in a way that sounds
both beautiful and [Bbm] interesting.
My name is Jens Larsen, [Eb] learn jazz, make [C] music.
Perdido is a [Abm] great
and very easy [Em] jazz standard to start [Fm] working on if you're new to playing jazz.
The form is just a
straight A A B A [E] 32 bar form.
[C] The A parts are essentially just [Dm] the same thing repeated which is
a [Bb] 2 5 1 in the key and then a short [Eb] turnaround and then the B [B] part is just a chain of dominance.
If you want to play through the A part [Ab] then you can use this set of [Cm] voicings and _ _ _ [F] _ [A] _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _
_ _ _ [G] _ [F] _ _ of course you
can just play the same thing [Fm] twice.
If you want to make this a little bit more interesting
then you could try doing [A] something like [Cm] this. _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ [F] _ [Dm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [Dm] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ [F] _
_ What I'm doing [E] here is that I'm adding [C] some rhythms [Ab] to
the [F] chords and the way that I do [G] that is that I'm just thinking about each voicing as [Cm] having two
layers.
One layer is the bass note [Fm] and the other one is the [A] chord.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ Thinking of [E] the chords in two
layers is actually quite [Bb] useful and it's also an essential part of a lot of grooves that they have
a low and a high part.
[C] Just think of a basic [F] pop rock drum groove. _ _ _
_ _ In jazz we don't really think
about it like that so much because the groove is a lot [D] more open and it's also often spread [Ab] out over
several musicians [Gm] but if [Eb] you play for instance walking bass and chords at the same time you [A] do
get an idea about [Eb] how that works.
_ [E] _
[Cm] _ _ [A] _ [Bb] _ [Dm] _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ [Cm] _ Let's look at how you can take [Ab] these basic chord voicings and
then [Bbm] turn them [Eb] into voicings that are actually a little bit more useful when it comes to comping.
[C] The first thing to do is to take these basic voicings and then turn them into rootless voicings
[Abm] because then they're a lot [Cm] more flexible.
So if we take the C minor 7 like this _ _
then essentially I'm just [Ab] leaving out the lowest note [Am] and then we [Eb] have this.
_ Notice [Ab] that I sometimes
really change the way that I'm playing the chords when I go from playing the normal voicing to the
rootless voicing [Eb] and that's just simply because it's very practical to sometimes just have an
extra finger that you can use [Dm] somewhere and I will open up [F] how I play things.
In general [Fm] three note
voicings are something that you probably want to be able [Am] to play in [G] different ways just depending on
[Ab] what you want to do with the voicing, what context [Eb] it's in.
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
[E] _ _ And now that we have a smaller voicing
then [C] we can start making some variations to it [Em] like adding a note on the top [Am] string so that [Eb] we're
playing four strings again like this.
_ _ _ _ [Cm] _
_ [Eb] _ [Dm] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [F] _ _
[Ab] _ [Abm] _ [Eb] _ _ Looking for these extra top notes if you play this chord so
just the C minor with the extra [Cm] added C on top here then really just be practical and [N] see what's
easy to play because those are the notes that you need.
That's what you can use [Fm] when you're
comping.
You want to really stay as practical [Eb] as possible.
So _ C minor well the ninth here the D is
really [Ab] useful [Eb] so _ and of course the [A] same goes for the F7 here it's actually a 13.
[C] Then on the Bb
major so we have this [Dm] Bb major 7 then _ _ _ here [Bb] I can just lift the finger and then [Dm] have a Bb on top so
[Bb] and _ [C] the same goes for D [F] minor.
The E is not really a nice note on this one because it doesn't fit the
key so go all the way up to [G] the minor third here and luckily that's a little bit [F] easier when we're
playing the next so _ then the [B]
G7b9.
_ One easy note to get here is just the b13 [Abm] that's just this one [Ab] so
_ [Abm] _ _
[Eb] and then back to C minor.
And if we [B] can do this with the four note voicing [E] then we can of course
also do this with the original three note voicing and that would be something like this exercise.
[Eb] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [Gm] _ _ [F] _
_ _ _ [Eb] _ _ In [C] this way we already have these melodies that [Abm] are tying the chords together and making [A] the
whole thing [Ab] more of a musical statement and this is something that we can then [A] turn into [D] comping
and that's the next thing I want to cover.
With this material you [Ab] can now come through the first
A part and [Bbm] start to make [F] small melodies and riffs that really convey [Bb] the groove.
Let's first check
out how that sounds and then I'm going to talk about how you practice playing like [Eb] this. _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [Bb] _ [F] _
_ _ [Bbm] _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [Dm] _ _ [F] _
_ _ _ [Eb] As you can see I'm just playing [A] short melodies and riffs one or [F] two notes per chord [Bb] and that way of
playing really makes [F] it about the rhythm [Eb] as much and is also really making [A] sure that you're not
getting in the way of a [G] soloist.
And just a quick [B] side note here notice how I'm not writing any
[N] extensions in this example and that's because we're changing the chord all the time so it doesn't
really make sense to be really specific about what notes are in the chord when you're changing it once
or twice per bar.
From the previous exercises you already have some [Abm] options in terms of what notes
you can use in your melodies so what you want to develop now is more the melodies and the rhythms
that you can play and an easy way to just get started with that if you're completely [Eb] unfamiliar
with it is to just take one bar and then using that one chord to make some different examples
and different variations trying out rhythms and melodies that could sound something like this. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A [Ab] material like this you can take to [B] the song and then start [Dm]
comping through the A part and that [G] way
[B] really start to use it [Cm] in music.
Another [Abm] great way [Dbm] of playing [Ab] chords and laying down a groove
something that's really become a part of jazz [Dm] is bossa nova and samba [Eb] so some of the Brazilian
grooves.
If [E] you want to get that into your playing then check out this video where I cover five really
common grooves talk about how you have [Ab] to play them and what chords you can use [F] and also
demonstrating [Dbm] how they [Ebm] sound if you play [Bb] them on some famous bossa nova [G] pieces.
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