After the jazz explosion in the early 1900s, musicians were eager to transfer the new sounds emanating from New Orleans onto the guitar. Although initially conceived as a rhythm instrument, a slew of stellar six string geniuses quickly elevated the guitar to its current status. Guitarists like Eddie Lang, Tiny Grimes, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart are some of the most influential early players who were using jazz guitar chords in their music. By the time electric guitars became popular, the floodgates were open and jazz guitar soon became its own genre.

So how did they do it? How did the early 20th century guitarists capture the jazz sound on their instruments and become pioneers of a new genre? To understand this better, let's closely examine how to create jazz guitar chords by using the number system from the Online Jazz Guitar School with Chuck Loeb.

First we learn the major scale as a pattern of half steps and whole steps.