"That sound! Those chords! How can I play guitar like that?"

If you enjoy hearing great jazz guitar players like George Benson, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass - you may have wondered what exactly are they doing to get that sound? No matter what your experiene is with playing guitar, you probably know that mastering jazz guitar will take some time and effort. So how do you get started? One way to begin is learning the basic jazz guitar chords.

Jazz Guitar Chord Theory

Playing jazz guitar uses more complicated chords than pop, country or rock. Most of the chords in other music genres are made of just 3 notes, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th. For example, in the key of A, the chords are A, C#, and E. Jazz guitar adds a 7th so that you have a Major 7th, dominant 7th, minor 7th.

This can become complicated on the guitar, and so we created a number system which teaches you to create triads of chords. In our online Jazz Guitar lessons, you can learn how to adjust your playing to take advantage of going across the neck rather than down to get the note.