"Is there a system to learning jazz chords ? I talked to somebody over the summer that told me "No, there is no system." That was a major bummer."

I'll say. Who wants to pick a fight with a subject you have no chance of winning at?

Now granted, at least in the part of the world I hang my hat in, the weather this summer was enough to make a pessimist out of anybody, but whoever said there was no system whatsoever for learning jazz chords was talking through their trilby, whether they hang it in Fort Worth or farthest Mongolia.

The fact is, you can take a systematic approach to learning jazz chords, especially if you start off applying them to familiar progressions like 8- and 12-bar blues. Those progressions are often built out of nothing more complicated than I, IV and V chords, and a lot of what you might hear a more jazz-oriented guitarist do with those chords often boils down to just (A) playing more than one shape for each of those basic chords and (B) connecting them up to one another using a few extra dominant chords.

I know, it's a little hard to picture how that works just by reading about it, so in today's Youtube lesson I take the three-chord bridge to "St. Louis Blues" and explain what some of those various additional chord shapes are and how to actually add them into the progression so they make sense and sound cool. This is exactly the process I'll be teaching this weekend in my Minor Blues Chord Substitutions workshop; in the meantime, you can find today's video at the link below:

How To Learn Jazz Chords

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My three-part Reliable Source series on playing minor blues will start this Saturday with the Minor Blues Chord Substitutions workshop, continue in October with Minor Blues & Bebop and conclude in November with Kenny Burrell Chords. You can sign up for each individual online class for $79, or save $40 by purchasing all three for $197 – just click below, scroll to the bottom of the page, and choose the registration option you want. Note: you don't have to attend the workshop while it live streams. An on-demand replay will be available, for an entire year, to everyone who registers.

Minor Blues Workshops – Details and Registration

More soon,

David