Jazz guitar theory for beginners

1. The notes in first position

“First position” means the first few frets, with your index finger on fret 1, middle on 2, ring on 3 and little finger on 4. Almost every note in the ten tunes is here. These are all the natural notes (no sharps or flats) in first position, which together make the C major scale. The strings are drawn the way TAB draws them, high E on top; the filled circles are C.

Two things to notice. Each fret is one semitone (a half step), so the notes with no fret between them, E–F and B–C, are only one fret apart. And the 5th fret of each string is the same note as the next string open, except on the G string, where it’s the 4th fret. That’s how you tune by ear.

2. Reading TAB and chord boxes

TAB (tablature) is a picture of the strings, high E on top, with a number for the fret to play. It tells you where; the staff above tells you when and how long. Guitar music on the staff is written an octave above where it sounds, so it fits the treble clef.

A chord box is the neck standing up: thickest string on the left, the nut at the top. Dots are fingers, numbered 1 (index) to 4 (little); ○ means play the string open; × means don’t play it. Under each box on these pages is the same chord in shorthand, low E string first: C is x32010.

3. Swing

Jazz quavers (eighth notes) aren’t even. In swing, each pair is played long-short, the first note about twice as long as the second, like the rhythm of “hump-ty dump-ty”. It’s written as plain quavers; the word Swing at the top tells you to play them this way. Listen to the same line both ways:

Swing also leans on beats 2 and 4. Tap your foot on every beat and click your fingers on 2 and 4, and you’ve got it. Bossa nova (Seedling Bossa) is the exception: its quavers are straight.

4. Seventh chords

A plain chord (a triad) is three notes, each a third apart: C, E and G. Add one more third on top and you have a seventh chord, the basic chord of jazz. Which seventh you add, and whether the chord is major or minor, gives four main sounds. Hear them:

• Major seventh (Cmaj7): major chord + the note a semitone below the root (B). Soft and settled.
• Dominant seventh (C7): major chord + the note a whole tone below the root (B♭). Restless; it wants to move, usually to the chord a fifth below (C7 to F). Every chord in a major blues is one of these.
• Minor seventh (Am7): minor chord + the note a whole tone below the root. Mellow.
• Half-diminished (Bm7♭5): a minor seventh with the fifth lowered. Tense; it leads into the V chord of a minor key.

5. Comping

Comping (from accompanying) is how a jazz guitarist plays chords behind a tune or a solo. Three patterns cover most of the ten tunes (Seedling Bossa has its own, on its page):

• Four to the bar. A short, even down-strum on every beat, the chord let go almost at once. Freddie Green played this way in Count Basie’s band for almost fifty years. Hear it
• The Charleston. Two stabs: on beat 1 and just before beat 3 (the “and” of 2). It leaves room for the tune. Hear it
• Jazz waltz. Three beats: a fuller strum on 1, lighter on 2 and 3. Amazing Grace uses it. Hear it

On every tune page, Tune only plays the melody without the chords, so you can practise comping against it.

6. Shell voicings

Once the open chords are comfortable, the next step is the shell: just three notes, the root, the third and the seventh, with the fifth left out. They’re small, easy to move up and down the neck, and they’re the sound of swing rhythm guitar. With the root on the low E string (here G) or the A string (here C), slide the same shape to any fret for any root: up two frets and G7 becomes A7.

Mute the strings marked × by letting your fingers lean lightly against them, and strum all six: only the three notes sound. Short and crisp is the style.

7. The 12-bar blues

The blues is twelve bars long and uses three chords, all seventh chords: the I, IV and V of the key (in G: G7, C7 and D7). The order below is the one Greenhouse Blues uses. Players often change bar 12 to D7 to lead back round to the top, and jazz players swap in extra chords, but this is the frame. Count it in groups of four bars.

The minor blues (Night Garden) has the same shape with minor seventh chords, and bars 9 and 10 slide down from F7 to E7:

8. The ii–V–I

Number the notes of the C major scale 1 to 7 (in Roman numerals, as chords). The chord on the 2nd note is Dm7 (ii), on the 5th G7 (V), on the 1st Cmaj7 (I). Played in that order, ii–V–I, they make the most common way home in jazz, and jazz standards are built from chains of them. Sunday Two-Five is a study on it, and Down by the Riverside slips one in before its two main cadences.

Listen to the top notes as the chords change. Each chord’s seventh falls a step to the next chord’s third: the C in Dm7 to the B in G7, the F in G7 to the E in Cmaj7. Those two notes, the third and the seventh, are called guide tones, and melodies that lean on them sound like they know where the harmony is going.

9. Scales for your first solos

Improvising starts with a handful of notes that fit the chords. These three scales, all in first position, cover the ten tunes. The filled circles are the root, the note the scale is named after.

Start with three or four notes, not the whole scale. Play short phrases with gaps between them, end phrases on a note of the chord you’re on, and repeat an idea before you change it. Play over a tune page with Chords only and Loop on.

10. Chord symbols

Jazz charts write chords as symbols. Here’s what each one means, using C as the root; move every note by the same amount for other roots.

The formula counts up the major scale of the root: 1 is the root, 3 the third, and so on; ♭ lowers a note by a semitone.

11. Every chord in the ten tunes

All fourteen shapes, in the order the tunes bring them in.