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Satin Doll Jazz Guitar Chord Study | The Jazz Guitar Blog

Posted: 09 May 2014 12:49 AM PDT

A classic jazz standard, Satin Doll is often one of the first tunes that we study when learning how to comp and solo over jazz guitar progressions.

With many famous recordings, including one by Wes Montgomery that is a must hear if you haven't already, Satin Doll has become a crowd favourite at jam sessions, gigs and jazz festivals the world over.

Because of it's level of popularity in the jazz world, with audiences and players alike, learning how to play Satin Doll from a comping standpoint is an essential skill for any developing jazz guitarist to have under their fingers.

In this lesson, you will learn a chord study over Satin Doll that uses many common jazz guitar chord shapes, as well as takes inspiration from the rhythm of the tune itself.

What's In This Chord Study

In order to understand the harmonic concepts used in this Satin Doll Jazz Guitar Chord Study, here is a brief outline of each chord type in the study, which you can see labelled in the etude itself below.

If you dig the sound of any of these chord types, feel free to explore those concepts further as you take these ideas deeper in your study of jazz harmony in the woodshed.

Rootless 379 – These chords are based on playing the 3^rd and 7^th of each change, and then added the 9^th on top to create added color to the progression.

Rootless 3713 – In a similar vein to the previous shapes, you are stacking 3rds and 7ths with the 13^th added to bring color to these Dominant 7^th chords.

Rootless 735 – Here, you play the 7^th and 3^rd, and use the 5^th as the added note. When doing so, you are essentially playing the chord, 1-3-5-7, and just removing the root so that it's smaller and more compact on the fretboard.

Rhythms From Melody – One of the most important elements of inspiration when comping is the rhythm from the melody line, which you can hear in this section as all the comping phrases are based on the rhythm of the Satin Doll melody.

3 to 9 – These chords are built by replacing the root with the 9^th, so that you have the intervals 3-5-7-9 for each chord.

Lydsub – The Lydian Sub is a classic sounding comping device where you play a maj7#11 (the Lydian chord) shape from the b7 of any 7^th chord. Essentially you are playing the Lydian chord from the underlying key over the V7 chord in the progression.

4^th – These shapes are built by stacking 4^th intervals as compared to the tradition 3rds that make up Drop 2's and other common jazz chords.

Drop 2 – These chords are built with the root-position interval layout R-5-7-3 and creating the inversions from there.

Rootless 13^th – Here, you are playing a 3-b7-9-13 interval pattern as you create a rootless 13^th sound over Dominant 7^th chords.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the various chords used in this study, you're ready to dig into the full etude as you work on the song in your woodshedding.

Satin Doll Jazz Guitar Chord Study

With the background information explored in your studies, you can now dig into learning the etude as a whole.

Since the song is 32 bars long, feel free to break up your practice sessions into 8-bar phrases, which you can then bring together and create the study as a whole from there.

Also, go slow and use a metronome when first practicing this etude in order to ensure your rhythms are accurate and secure, as well as the chord shapes in this study.

Satin Doll Backing Track

To help you practice this study, and work on your own comping ideas over this tune, here is a Satin Doll backing track using only the bass and drums so that you can jam along with this track in the practice room.

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17 Essential Jazz Guitar Chords For Beginners | Chord Chart

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 09:09 AM PST

Here's a chord chart with the 17 chord shapes every beginning jazz guitarist should know. Practice these chords by playing the chord progressions below the chord chart.

Beginner Jazz Guitar Chord Chart

The most fun and effective way to practice jazz guitar chords is playing chord progressions. Here are 3 exercises that should get these beginner's chords under your fingers:

Exercise 1: in this exercise you will be playing a series of 2 5 1 progressions. Use a simple rhythm so you can concentrate on the chords.

Beginner chords example 1

Here's the backing track for your practice:

Exercise 2: this exercise combines the beginner's chords with a walking bass line.

Beginner chords example 2

Here's the rhythm track:

Exercise 3: this chord exercise includes diminished chords:

Beginner chords example 3

The backing track:

Also check out the shell chord chart (shell chords are the most basic jazz guitar chords): Shell Chords (For Beginners)

Chords Guitar