In jazz a 7^th or maj7^th is added to most chords. The three basic type of chords are:

Finally there are 8 different chord types you can build like this, but the ones above are the most common.

Jazz musicians are well know to be rather excentric, therefor they are not satisfied with just the 7th. They pile up even more 3^rds.That leads to the 9^th, the 11^th and the 13^th – putting another 3^rd on top of the 13^th would result in a tone which is 2 octaves higher than the root, thus is makes no sense anymore.

The 9^th, 11^th and 13^th are called options. Certainly there are b9^th, #9^th, #11^th etc too.

There are some rules, how to name a chord:

• the root is first (e.g. C, D, Ab, F#)
• then is the distinction between minor (short: MIN, MI or just - ) and major
• now the 6th or 7th (if required)
• after that b5 (dim, o) or augmented 5th (aug, +5, +) (if reqiured).
• in the end the other options in ascending sequence

Examples:

In many notations the option "9" includes the 7^th, the option "11" includes the 7^th and 9^th and "13" includes 7^th , 9^th and 11^th. If the 7^th is not included it is noted as "add9" (e.g. Cadd9 is C-E-G-D, the 7^th is missing).

Now we are in trouble! We only have 6 strings and a 13^th chord (actually 8 notes) would require 8 strings. So we have to leave out some notes. We should always play the 7^th, that's forsure. In most cases we have to leave out the 9^th and/or the 11^th, which are less important options compaired to the 7^th and 13^th.

E.g. a Y13^th chord is can be played like this:

Y7/13

X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|---|---|-4-|---|-- 13
--|---|---|-3-|---|---|-- 3
--|---|-2-|---|---|---|-- 7
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|-1-|---|---|---|-- root

Like you can see, the 9^th and the 11^th are left out.
(Note: Y stands for athe key, it can be a C, a Bb or whatever)

Further on we should know some "special" chords. That are diminished chords, the Y6 and Ysus4 chords.

The other is the Yo (aka Ydim or Yo7). This chord is build of piled up minor 3^rds and looks like this:

Most of you have already seen a chord like Am7/G and may wonder what that means. This is fairly simple. Am7/G means it is an ordinary A minor7 chord with a G as bass note.

The original bass note (an A) just moved down a whole-tone (2 frets) and thus became a G. Easy, isn't it?

But what might that be good for?
You can achieve a better bass voicing this way.

And what the heck means "voicing"?

When listening to a chord, you may hear, wether it is a major, a minor

or what ever chord, but the note that attract attention most are the lowest and the highest note in the chord. They are called voicings. It is very easy to follow movement of these notes.

What voicings will sound good?

A constant voicing will work fine. That means the chord may change, but the voincing notes remain the same.

Another good wait of progessing voicings are steps of 1, 2 or 3 semi-tones (up or down) and large steps (if you don’t do use it too often).

A good example for a constant high voicing is "One Note Samba" (A.C.Jobim). The first 4 bars look like this:

|: D-7 | Db7 | C-7/11 | B7/#11 :| (4/4 beat)

Fingering patterns:

As you can see, the highes tone of all that chords is located to the 6^th fret of the B-string.

One example for a good bass voicing is...hm, I know the piece, but I don't remember it's name... I guess, it’s "Whisper not" (by B.Golson)

The numbers in the brackets should mean the bars. Ab means an alternative bass voicing, catch this tone with the index finger "1". As you can see, the bass voicing moves down in the steps, I mentioned before.

You can prevent the "oops" (if you want, not necessary), if you play D7/b9/Ab instead of D7/b9. Then it would look like this:

Another example most of you will know is taken from "Stairways To Heaven"
Well, that' isn`t jazz, but it is a good example and was one of the first pieces I could play on the guitar....

Finally you can play the melody of a piece in the high voicing, and a bass line in the bass voicing and all that together with the chords of the piece. I try to do this way, but that requires some practicing... I broke my fingers several times.

When you take a look at the chord charts, you will see that it doesn‘t contain chords like Y-7/b9 or Ymaj7/#9. Of course you can play that kind of chords, but they contain extreme tension and are not very suitable as rythm chords. Anyway, it always depends on the context, what sounds good and what doesn`t sound good.