Ok, on to playing them chords.
The main idea is to actually understand what one is doing. That way, you don't need any tabs, lists of chord shapes and what not.
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Prerequisite 1:
Knowing or at least being able to find the notes on the fretboard. In case you're not fluent with that, no worries, doing all this will speed things up (perhaps a lot and rather fast, too).
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Prerequisite 2:
That's a kinda jazz "theory" one (it's not exactly theoretical but more oriented towards practical use...). I could likely explain this in more detail, but it's probably not too relevant for now.
However, here goes: When dealing with those typical jazzy 7th chords, in theory, they all consist of 4 notes: root, third, fifth and seventh.
Playing all these would already result in massive problems should we want to add all those 9ths, 11ths and 13ths (which we will take care of later), as we only have 4-5 fingers and 6 strings arranged in a less than ideal order for that kinda thing.
But fortunately, we can leave some things out.
The most commonly left out note in jazzy chord types would be the fifth. The main reason for that being that true jazz players don't want to be mistaken for AC/DC - and as fifths are one of the key elements of power chords, they have to leave.
Well, ok, not really - the reason would be that the fifth is considered "obligatory". Very likely that's because the fifth is such a strong harmonic in pretty much any naturally created sound so it's sort of "ringing along" anyway. It's usually also not adding much functional value, but that's something we shouldn't get into for now.
Note: This is only true for perfect fifths, diminished and augmented fifths usually (but not always) need to be played. For our little chord building exercises we will however leave them out entirely at first - even on that Am7/b5 we will be dealing with.
Then, this is not exactly a theory thing but rather practical: We can as well leave out the root of the chord once we have a bass playing. Taking care of root notes is bass business.
Hence, the central notes we have to care about are the thirds and sevenths of each chord (sometimes they can be left out, too, but for now we will take their existance as a must).
They also serve as the main "descriptional" items in jazzy contexts, the most relevant chord movements are happening with thirds and sevenths involved, but again, this is not the right place to get into more details regarding that.
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Short resume: To properly "describe" jazzy chords, we need root, third and seventh.
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Now let's take that to the guitar. The following approach is a mixture of being somewhat guitar oriented and still sort of general (as in: you'll find this to happen pretty much similarily within other instruments).
- Roots typically are low-ish notes (at least that's the range where they're essential, played in higher registers they usually only serve as melody notes), so we will be placing them on either our A5 or E6 strings. You will all know this from your bog standard barré and power chords.
- Thirds and sevenths, being the "center" of our jazz chords, will be placed in a rather centered location, for us that'd be the G3 and D4 strings. Yes, you can play them elsewhere, but for this approach to become more consistent, we will place them there, no exceptions.
- Anything else can be considered decoration - and as decoration is nice but not fundamental, we will place that stuff on our E1 and B2 strings.
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Note: All of this stuff will work best fingerstyle or pick/fingerstyle.
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Ok, after all that blurb, let's get right into it.
The first chord cadence we will be faced with is:
Cmin7, F7, Bbj7, (Ebj7). Yeah, I know, the progression continues, but that's the first little progression working on its own, let alone that this is possibly *the* most central jazz progression ever, namely a II-V-I chord movement. Which is also why I set the Ebj7 in brackets. Also, when you're done with this, you have played the 3 most fundamental 7th chords ever already: major 7th chord, minor 7th chord, dominant 7th chord (I hear you already: "But what about that Amin7b5?!?" - look above, those pesky fifths can stay at home for now, even if they're trying to become important in diminished appearances).
Now let's just build the chords. First thing would be to find a proper location for the root notes (even if we may leave them out later on when a bass enters, they're still a common and likely wellknown orientation tool), so we can move from one to the next with rather little movement.
Typically, this would be the first homework thing, but that usually doesn't work on the net, so here we go:
We could use the C root on A5, 3rd fret, but as our evil plans also include to proceed to an Eb later on, for a start, the best choice would be the C located in the 8th fret of our E6 string.
Next things we need are our third and seventh. In case of a min7 chord, we need a minor 3rd (Eb) and a minor 7th (Bb). And we would play them on our D and G strings (note: sometimes the 3rd is on the D string, 7th on the G string, sometimes it's vice versa, you'll see that yourself...). Obviously in a fashion that we can still play the root comfortably.
Ok, as I will have to leave for a while, you may want to figure this out yourself:
1) Root note C, located 8/E6, where's a comfortable place on D4 and G3 to play the notes Eb and Bb? Hint: it's *not* several frets away...
2) As our next chord will be F7, what's the shortest travel for our root note, considering we have E6 and A5 at our disposal?
3) An F7 chord needs a major 3rd (A) and a minor 7th (Eb). Once we found that F root from (2), where do we place them on D4/G3?
4) Next is a Bbj7 chord. What to do?
Really sorry if this comes across as a lame quiz/challenge, but as the next step would be playing and recording some things and as I need to do some different things now, I'll leave it at that.
But I will already say so much: In case you manage (1) through (4), you'll be able to play the entire tune's chords completely on your own already. In a rather easy fashion, but it'll work and it will possibly even sound decent.
