You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Jazz Chords For Beginners

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Back to basics with a classic YHI topic - Jazz Chords for Beginners! What are the tools you need to get started on your journey in jazz piano? Well look no further because YHI has got your back with these incredible beginner jazz chords. Start sounding great today!Limited Time Offer for Jazz Chords For Beginnershttps://link.youllhearit.com/jcbDownload the PDFhttps://learn.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-chords-pdf/Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. What's up, Pete? I smell something. Did you... No. I didn't... No, sir. Wait, I see something.

I feel something. There's something in the air. You know what it is? What? I think we are about to partake in a you'll hear it classic. My favorite kind! Or, as they say in France, Classique.

The Spoken. Gross. I'm Adam Manus And I'm Peter Martin And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast Classic Edition Exploring music A very gross car just drove right down the street

during that intro It really did Yeah we're doing a bit of a You'll Hear at Classic Peter So we've had a lot of people talk about This one course that we have at Open Studio Called Jazz Chords for Beginners Ever heard of it

Ever heard of it It's a very popular course That we made a few years ago And it's a course That really addresses is some of the basics of jazz harmony that we probably take for granted here on the podcast and don't talk about enough. So I thought today,

we could just go through of what are the basic chords that you kind of need to know to understand everything we're talking about and understand just how to put together some harmony for a song. So that's what we're going to do today is we're going to look at literally from the workbook from jazz chords, beginners from the course, which by the way...

Oh, that's not it. That's an LP. That gets Gilberto. I still got my tiny LP. Sorry. No, there will be a PDF here in the description so you can take that stuff with you. Okay. Yeah. Caleb, let's bring up the first image, please, from the workbook. Image. Image.

Numero uno. Boom. So there it is. Here are the basic chords, Peter. And this is how we just grabbed the... He thinks that I was trying to lift it. I'll be surprised that coaster stays, by the way. Can I just make a note, too, that this is

aptly titled jazz chords for beginners, but I think this concept and really this course is probably one of our most applicable to anybody that's just trying to get a handle on like keyboard harmony in general. Yeah. It's very, of course, it works for jazz, but this kind of works, is informative and foundational for like a lot of kinds of music. I think so. I think so.

This is just the basics of like seventh chords and extensions. So if you're looking at the sheet here, you can see whether that you've downloaded that in the description or you're watching on YouTube. we have these, what are you got, one, two, three, four, five, six different chords here. We've got the major seventh chord, the minor seventh chord, the dominant seventh chord, the diminished seventh, slash major sixth chord, and the half-diminished seventh chord, also known as the minor-seven flat five. Why is the minor major seven?

Oh, question, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, Peter. Yeah. Minor major seventh and minor six, why are those, or am I getting ahead of myself? We'll talk about that. Okay.

Yeah. I'm interested. Yes, we have them in the same category. They are technically different chords, but they're kind of interchangeable depending on a couple of circumstances. So let's start with the major seventh. The basic major seventh chord is built here in the key of C. We've got the root, we've got the three and the five, seven,

as Peter is so diligently demonstrating here, that's C, E, G, and B. Play it one more time, Peter. That's that major seven. Now play it as a block. Now on the next measure here, we have what we call the upper extension. So there we have the root three, five, seven.

and if we add the 9, the 11, and the 13... Gross. The D, the F, and the A. Play those all together. Now, that is every single note of the C major scale. Did you know that? Make it stop. I know.

Well, the tension between the E and the F is palpable. And so that's why a lot of times when you're playing an 11th on a major 7, when you're getting up to those extensions, you'll do a sharp 11. So it'll be a little bit more palatable with that. Yeah, because that's really... So that's with the F. If I take just the F away, that's acceptable. It's a beautiful major 13 chord, yeah.

So a lot of times when you see like a C major 13, you won't have an 11 in the chord. If you do, it'll almost always be a sharp 11. You almost never see a major chord with that natural 11, although it does happen. You know what's one I love is the C-7-11, because I like to jump in and get a big gulp. Bam.

Only 47 cents after the card was at six home runs. Okay, so the next... That won't happen this year. No, no. The next chord is the minor seventh chord. And for this, we've got a D minor seven, which is the second degree of C major. We've got the root.

We've got the minor third, F natural, the perfect fifth, A, and the minor seventh C. Play those all in a block, please, Peter. That is a beautiful chord. Inner City blues. So what? You've heard it a billion times a gorgeous chord.

Now, the three upper extensions, the ninth and the 11th and the 13th actually sound beautiful. sounds a lot like Bill Evans, Peter. Right. 13 in there. Yep. And that's just straight stacking.

Again, so from the bottom up, Peter, we've got D, F, A, C, E, G, and B. Right. And we don't have, like, you might say, well, why isn't it clashing as much between, like, the third and the ninth? It should. But that's kind of... It just sort of works. Something works really well at that one, specifically. The way it's inlaid.

Next up, we've got the dominant seventh chord for this. We're going to use the fifth degree of C, the G7. We've got the root G, the third, B, the perfect fifth, D, and the minor seventh, F natural. Is it minor or dominant seventh? Minor seventh. Minor seventh, technically, from the root up, that is a minor seven. Okay. But yes, you call it a dominant seventh because it's the dominant seventh chord.

It's got a major third and a minor seven. You love putting your maw together with a dog, don't you? Dogma. 100%. The extensions, the natural extensions on this are all very beautiful. You've got the 9, the 11. So the 9 is A, the 11 is C, and the 13 is E. And again, just like the major chord, because of that major third,

you almost never hear the natural 11 played with this. You would hear the 9 and the 13 quite a bit, which we'll get into some voicing options for those in a little bit. Yeah. We also have here, Peter, on this sheet, the altered extensions for a dominant chord. Sorry, jumped a gun on those. These are incredibly useful played all the time.

The flat 9, you could also do Sharp 9, by the way. the flat 9, the sharp 11, and the flat 13. Gross. Well, this works, but you have to change that. Like, it doesn't work with root position. Stacking them is not great. Yeah, gross. Next up is the diminished seventh.

For this, we're going to start on C sharp. So we have C sharp, and then in minor thirds up, E, G, and B flat. That is the C sharp, diminished seventh chord. Learn it, live it, love it. It's a beautiful stack of minor thirds. Now, Peter. Scary. Scary.

The extensions on a diminished seventh are key. Are they, though? They are key. It's basically stacked on top of this. A D diminished seventh chord, D, F natural, A flat, and B. Okay. I didn't know that. Oh, sorry.

That's my bad. Sorry. I said the exact wrong diminish chord. So we got our C-sharp diminished on top of that. Scratch everything I just said. Okay. It's D sharp. Yep.

F sharp. Thank you. A and B sharp. There it is. Double diminished right there. So we're coming off, and even down here it works. So this is your, and for those of you that are watching here, don't feel like, I mean, you are missing out a little, but also great chance to really develop your ears with this because we're getting into some more. Like on the other ones, like that should lead your ear up to that route when you're stacking those up.

But here, like, this is the same, this all minor thirds. It's all fully diminished. But we've got that, I mean, I know it's built off of, like, the roots aren't the ninth. But I think that that perfect fourth in the middle is what sets this one off. So you go, do, do, do, do. That's a hard one to hear. And then you go up with the minor thirds. Beautiful.

Herbie Hancock's calling. He wants all his chords before he sings back. The double diminished is beautiful. And, by the way, all of those. And Igor Shrivinsky called as well. All of those notes for the extension. they make up the C-sharp diminished chord. Those two diminished chords make up the C-sharp,

sorry, the C-sharp diminished scale. Whole half. Whole half. Actually, there's just one diminished scale, and it is whole half. Your dog and your mom have come in again. I'm dog-ming out. And you've got a Dorito stuck on your shoulder.

Thank you. Next up is the minor major seventh and the minor six. So this is something that you might use for a minor tonic or maybe a minor four chord. Here we've got a C minor major seven. That's a C minor triad with a major. 7, C, E, flat, G, and B natural. Yeah.

It is a beautiful sound that you would probably use with something like either a melodic minor ascending or a harmonic minor. Totally. You could use it as a tonic chord. But the most common minor tonic chord is the C minor six chord. Yeah. You could also do a C minor 69. That's C minor triad, C, E flat, and G with an A natural. Not an A flat, an A natural.

Again, thinking about the melodic minor ascending. as the basis for that. The extensions for that are the natural 9, D, the natural 13 F, and of course that 13A would be way up there. But the 13 is only applicable when there is a seventh involved. Right.

So a common version of this is the 6-9 voicing where you have C, E, F, A, D, and G. We'll get into that a little bit later, but it is a common way to do a minor tonic. So if you're playing like softly as in a morning sunrise, a C minor 6 should be your goal. to or like alone together, the C minor six is the tonic.

Yeah. And I think too, you know, some people might be like, wow, that's weird. Why is that more of a tonic sound? Why is that sound more settled than with the minor seventh? Because that's leading somewhere like this, because you might think, oh, that's kind of, but it because it doesn't just lead up. It also leads down as you have it to the minor six. But you should know the minor. It feels like you can rest there. minor six is more common as the tonic than the minor major seven. Right, for sure, for sure.

But I would say they're both, I mean, I know we use. They're interchangeable too, by the. But we use the minor seven a lot, but that's not really like a tonic-y kind of chord in most situations. Not usually. Yeah, because that wants to lead down to the minor, to the regular six as well. That's right. It can be, but most often not. Our final chord is the half-diminished seventh, also known as the minor seven flat five.

This would be the two chord in a minor 251. So here we have a D half-diminished 7, D-F-A-flat, the flat-5, and then C the minor-7th. A beautiful chord. Now, typically, this is derived from the Locrian. So the natural minor-7-flat-5 in the key of C is the B minor-7-flat-5, the B-half-d-d-d-d-d-d-half-d-d-d-d-d-d-tminished-d. So if we go back to our D, we've got D-F, A-flat, and C, that is the D-H-d-d-d---midish-7th. the extensions are E flat, G, and B flat. This is like an E flat triad on top of that bad boy.

Well, this is derived from the key of E flat. This is the seventh degree of the key of E flat. So this is that E flat. Caleb, next slide, please. Those are our basic chords. All of them are used in most of the tunes, gross, most of the tunes that we play. Here are some very simple rooted two-note voicing.

These are the very basic versions, the root-shell pretty voicing. that you might use. Peter, I got this section, if you don't mind. For the major 7th, we've got this beautiful root shell pretty voicing. What do we mean by root shell pretty? We mean the root is on the bottom.

And then we've got the shell, the third and the seventh. Yep. R the 7th and the 3rd. Yep. Then we've got a couple of pretty notes. In this case, we've got the 9D and the 5G. Again, C, E, B, D, and G,

this beautiful G minor, G major triad. Yeah. C major triad. Oh, G major try, right? But, you know, it's like the fifth, a lot of times I don't think. think about as being a pretty note. It is a pretty note.

It is because the way it's spaced out there with that trial. Totally. If it were down here, not as pretty. Gross. Not quite gross, but yeah. Next up is the minor seventh exact same formula. Route 3, 7, 9, 5. This is a beautiful voicing.

You got to have this one. Again, root shell pretty. You got the root and the shell, the third and the seventh. And then the pretty notes, the nine. The dominant seventh voicing, the natural dominant, the G13. You've got the root and the shell, the seventh and the third,

F and B. We're a little bit more spread out now. You've got the 13, the 9, E, and A. And what you have happened in there that I think makes that voicing so strong and works so well. You've got on the outside,

right, the root and the ninth or the second. Totally. And then you've got that classic McCoy-Tiner-Berry hair, everybody, you know, fourth voicing with the tritone

and the perfect fourth, the seventh, the third, which is the shell, of course with the 13th. What do you call that voicing? We played a lot, right? Fourth voicing? Yeah.

But it's not too perfect force. It's a tritone and a fourth. It's got to have a name. I don't know. That, that, that, that, that, that core. That core. It's a that core. The alter dominant version of this G-13,

you simply flat the top two notes. So E and A become E-flat and A-flat. So you've got G-F, B, the third, flat-13, the flat-9. Also a go-to voicing. For our diminished seventh chord, we are going to use an open voicing of the diminished seventh. So C sharp, we're going to put the third E up an octave. So we've got a nice tenth there, minor tenth.

We've got G and B flat below that. And then we're going to put one note, Peter, from that other diminished chord. We're going to put an A natural. Yeah. So there's just one note. Remember we talked about how there is that D sharp diminished. Yeah. That you can put on top as the extensions.

Just adding one note of the. extensions can go a long, long way. So again, there's C sharp, G, B flat, E. All of those notes are C sharp diminished. And then one note from the extensions, A, goes a long, long way. It's all within the whole half a minute. Exactly.

Now our minor six chord, our C minor six chord, we've got the root and the shell. This case, the shell is the third and the six. And we're going to add that nine and that five. And look at what you got in the middle there, big guy. That perfect four. that Peter loves so much. That chord.

Oh, that whole chord is right there. That's right. And finally, our half-diminish seventh, very simple chord here. It's, you know, the bebop musician is called the half-diminished. They wouldn't call this D minor 7-flat-5. They would literally call this F-minor over D. And that's what we have here. D on the bottom, and then just an F-minor triad.

A-flat, C, and F. Yep. Perfect. But that comes back from that whole thing of, like, if you're 2-5 wanting to C-major or C-minor, four, five, one. Exactly. Four. It's like the four chord.

Yeah. Over the D. Caleb, next slide, please. Those are our rooted five-note voicings. How about our rootless four-note voicings, Peter? How about these? We got a major seven here. There's no roots on any of these voicings.

We've got the shell, the third and the seventh, and then two pretty notes. We basically just taken the root out of the equation. The nine and the five. The root has been canceled. Each one of these has an A voicing where the third is on the bottom, and a B voicing, where the seventh is on the bottom. or the seventh is on the bottom. Like this C major 13, we've got the seventh, B, the third E, the 13A, and the 9D.

Yep. And there's a lot of ways to think about, and more importantly, to hear these. But if you were rootless, but we still have the shell as in the left hand. One is just with the third, the shell being the third and the seventh in this case, third on the bottom or the seventh on the bottom. Can you play a C-based note for me? Yes. There's our A voicing. Played against us.

There's our B voicing. One's just a little bit higher range. one's a little lower range. We have the same thing for the minor seventh. Here's the third on the bottom. 3-795, F-C-E-A. Here's with the seventh on the bottom. C-F-A-E. Beautiful four-note voicings here. Yeah, you can move them around. They're just gorgeous. Here's the same thing for the dominant seventh chord, the seventh, and the third, the 13th, and the nine. I mean, this is just like our rooted voicing, but without the root. And here's our B voicing, the third, the seventh, the nine of the 13, B, F.

And then we can do these with the flatted 13 and 9. Yeah. Just gorgeous. I mean, they never missed these four-note root lists. Beautiful symmetry in there, too. The diminished voicing, we're just using notes of the diminished chord, E, B, flat, C-sharp, and G, that's for our C-sharp diminished. And then the B-voicing, next inversion there.

Our C-minor six voicing, we've got the third on the bottom. three, six, nine, five, E flat, A natural, D, natural, and C. And then our B voicing has the six on the bottom. There's that chord again. A, E, flat, G, and D. Now, for our half-d diminished voicing, we talked about half- diminished voicings a little bit last week. I might have updated this since our, remember the speak pipe we got about them?

Yeah. But I like this. It's basically like an F-minor six chord. F, C, D, and A-flat. Yep, I like it. Same thing here. C, L-L. F, A, flat, and D.

Yep. So those are our rootless... It's almost like a drop two from at F minor 6, wouldn't you say? Yeah, exactly. Those are our rootless four-note... Good, Peter, the drop-two. Look at this.

I was just guessing. I was just guessing. I was just si if I could slip it by you there. I didn't know I was actually right. Those are our rootless four-note voicings. And again, kind of the best part about those is that A-B voicing. So you've got two choices where you get these different inversions. Right. Caleb, can we see the next slide, please?

Lastly, here's our third... So we've got three. different voicing structure. Rooted 5-note, rootless four-note, and finally rootless left-hand. These are going to be perfect for when you're playing in a trio and you go in a solo with your right hand. We're just going to do some stacking of thirds here for this, Peter. We've got E, G, B, and D. So you're getting into one upper extension because you're shifting up off of the root to the third at the bottom. So this is our C-major 9, right? We've got the third, the fifth, the seven, and the nine. Don't sleep on this voicing. I know it's basic, but it sounds great.

And then the B voice... And I mean, these are just, you know, like, by not sleeping, I think what you mean is learn these in all keys. Oh, yeah. And also, don't sleep on in terms of like, yeah, if you're always... Yeah, but of course, you don't want to overdo it. But what about a little of this? Like, where you just change in one little note in the middle. It starts with these basic shapes, but these are just the jumping on point.

And by the way, in the course jazz piano for beginners, we take all three of these structures through all 12 keys. Okay. So the B voicing is the same thing, but with B, D, E, and G. Same thing for the minor seventh, right? We got the third on the bottom here. 35, 7, 9 of D minor. Yeah. F, A, C, and E.

And then here's the seventh on the bottom. And that's what it sounds like. I mean, simple but beautiful. Our dominant seventh, here's, I mean, that's the classic one, right? Seven, nine, three. It's that core and the ninth. Totally. 13.

So that's F. Here's a G on. the bottom in the bass. Yeah. Yeah. And then check this out for our inversion, this real crunchy B, E, F, and A up here. And then, of course, we have our flat 13, flat nine versions.

Which is also, by the way, Peter, if you look at that, that is an A-flat minor six shape. That's a, for our Barry Harris fans out there, Tritone's minor. You can take any of those inversions of that over the G. That's right. That's right. That's a drop, too.

We're just going to do. No, that I'm not driving. We're just going to do a stack of minor thirds. E, G, B flat, and C sharp, and then different inversion, B flat, C sharp. The minor six, another that chord with that. Plus the fifth, which is weird because the fifth usually pulls away from that. That's right. But this one works.

E flat, G, A, and D. Isn't that beautiful? And then A for the B voicing A, D, E flat, and G. again with the C on the bottom. But you know what that C minor is? It's really the same shape as the dominant seventh A. Yep. Exactly.

Exactly the same. For our half-diminished seventh voicing, our D minor 7, flat 5, we've got simple F-minor-6 shapes. F, A, flat, C, and D. Again, don't sleep on these. I use these all the time. For melodic shapes.

Well, and... Close to my mic. Okay. Well, for comping shapes. I mean, this basic voicing, even though this is just a stack of what the chord is, it is what, it's the go-to. Yeah.

It's the go-to. And then the B-voicing has the seventh on the bottom. You can get away with, not only get away with, but utilize these basic, what appeared to be root position, if this wasn't F-minor 6, it'd just be root position, it'd be like,

but because we're placing it as a rootless voicing over on top of something else, because this same thing could be. used over like a G. Yeah, for sure. I don't you, but you're my brother. That's the chord from that. You don't know me because I'm your brother. Michael McDonald's, come on.

Can you turn, Keel up? Taking it to the street. And then let's hit the next slide, this. That is that, that is that. The next slide, how many slides we got? Okay, this is it. This is our final slide. So these are some two five ones using everything we've just learned.

You've got our five-note rooted voicings. We've got our four-note rootless voicings. and we've got our rootless left-hand voice things. We have major two-fives and minor two-fives. Again, you can download the PDF in the description of the YouTube video here. And you know what? Actually, you can, you know what? We're going to do a special where you can get this whole course lifetime.

We don't do that very often around it. We're doing it. We're doing it. I'm authoring it. We're going to offer the whole course of jazz piano. Jazz Chords for beginners. Because a lot of folks are like, I don't know if I'm ready for membership. I don't know if my membership, you know, if I lose my job and I lose my membership,

I still want to have something. So we're going to go lifetime access on just this course. Because I think that will really be valuable for those. Amazing. Yeah. Well, let's hear how these voicing's work in action. So here is our five-note rooted major 251. Peter, you got it.

Okay. D minor nine, G-13. I mean, what else do you need? Yeah. That sounds great. And you can see this visually. And if you're on the pod, that's okay. Just go check out to YouTube or download the PDF or get lifetime access to the course.

Part of the thing is like, why does it? this work? Like we're spreading out, right? But we're staying the same on top. Little things like that are fun when you feel them in your hands. Right. It's beautiful. Yeah. What about the five note rooted minor? Oh, that was gross. But the first one's good. Gross. D minor seven flat five. D minor half diminish. G7, flat nine, flat 13. C minor six. You don't need any more than that. No. That is just, that's incredible voice leading. And that's got that chord in the middle with the fifth and the root on the bottom. All right, how about the four-note rootless major two-five?

I'll do the roots. Okay, one. Two, three, four. Dika-ch-c-c-cun-ch-a-ba-sha-ba-du-ba-du-bo-ba-du. Let's do the B-voicing. B-bo-do-b-wow. Oh, boy. How about the minor root-less, the four-note rootless?

Let's do it. taking it to the street. And how about the B voicings for the minor? Are you going to sing through the whole thing? How about the rootless left-hand major voicing? This is probably the most important rootless, left-handed voicing you could learn. It's not necessarily the hip as much important. Three, five, seven, nine, that chord with the ninth, and then three, five, seven, nine.

Totally. How about the B voicings? Yeah. Those are hipper, but the other ones, the A are more foundational, you know, more fundamentals to what you need to learn, don't you think? I think so. I think you're right on that. How about the left-hand minor voicings, minor 251?

And the B-voicings, the B-voicings? Jazz chords for beginners. Ha, that was fun. Yeah, check the description for the PDF and also the offer for lifetime access to jazz chords for being a scores. Like I said, it is one of our more popular. courses. It always in our course rankings is in the top

three. Always. And it's been around for a minute. It's a good one. And you're going to need these for life, so there you go. Yeah. Until next time. You'll hear it. Hey, hey, those are the same voicings. You'll hear it classical. Classico. Classique. Classique.