Looking for some jazz chord progressions to practice over...

Hey, all. Been a while since I've visited this sub-forum. Hope you are all well.
 
So I'm trying to get up to speed with all the jazz theory stuff I taught myself last winter and would like to work on my improvisational skills. I've created a Sonar project with a simple multi purpose swing-y type beat and am programming in various MIDI bass tracks that I loop to practice over.
 
For example the first one is just a basic ii V I progression. So if you guys have some neat progressions to share I would be grateful. If they follow a normal diatonic path the simple Roman numeral chord system (like ii I V) is fine but perhaps if you are going to throw in some Altered stuff maybe use actual chord names because I'm still trying to understand that type of thing.
 
Perhaps an odd request for an engineering forum but it would help me immensely. Thanks and have a great day.

Start with any of the old standards. Also try Coltrane's Giant Steps.
Try learning how to improvise over these changes fluidly, even using basic scales this will help you develop your skills.


 

Listen and play along with old jazz masters on their music. Another option is to get a simple copy of Band in a Box. It has something in it called "melodist" where you can choose from several types of jazz..... among them, Old jazz, smooth jazz, modern jazz,  and several others..... with the click of the mouse, you can have it generate a 3 to 6 minute "jazz song/progression" and it will display the names of the chords it chose. Change keys, change tempo, print the chord chart, and/or simply play along.
 
Here is one such song: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=9012413  BB created the progression and "plays" the guitar chords and piano. (among other things) I throw in some live picking on the melody section. I did have to edit this song to get it to this point.
 
Here's a few others done in a similar manner, all BB creations with the melodist.
 
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10512085
 
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10080370
 
that should give you a point from which to start.
 
In addition, PG Music, the company behind BiaB also has some specific programs that are designed to teach jazz licks and such things.... I've not looked into them but I do see them advertised on the PG site http://www.pgmusic.com/news.htm  click on the "OTHER SOFTWARE" link for windows.
 
 

Another classic is Mickey Baker's jazz guitar method...this is real vintage stuff. I have an original of this back home somewhere. It's on Scribd! Really good for learning the basics of chord progressions.

http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/28251200

sharke
Another classic is Mickey Baker's jazz guitar method...this is real vintage stuff. I have an original of this back home somewhere. It's on Scribd! Really good for learning the basics of chord progressions.

http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/28251200

 
Oh heck yeah.... !!!!  The Micky Baker books one and two were very popular among several players I knew in a town with a very active live music scene. 35+years ago.  There was 3 or 4 of us who had the books and were working through them.
 
I got both books and learned a number of chords from that book that are very useful in playing all styles of music, not just jazz but the main focus in on jazz and it's well worth having those books.
 
I recorded this back in 2008 : http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=6922964  It's a "jazzed up" version of the old church hymn called Power in the Blood. The chords are straight from the Micky Baker book first few pages.... I have actually been actively thinking about re-doing this song now that I have learned quite a bit more than I knew at the time I did this in 2008. 

The Mickey Baker books are probably my favorites - I was introduced to them in about 1974, and I return to them often.
 
Other books to consider include the previously mentioned Ted Greene Chord Chemistry and Joe Pass's Guitar Method, both of which are still available on Amazon. Speaking of which, and I hate to sound like a jerk, but downloading from Scribd is, in this case, pirating, since the Mickey Baker books are also still available on Amazon. (and none of them are expensive!)

Now this is out of print, but I also have to recommend Dennis Sandole's "Guitar Lore" - this is an amazing text because of the approach, which separates the fundamentals out brilliantly - well, it worked for me anyway<G>. The problem is that I'm not sure how well this one would work for someone teaching themselves... I was fortunate to study with a teacher who studied with Sandole, and in some ways even expanded on Sandole's ideas.

If I had a student who wanted to learn about jazz guitar I'd probably start them with Baker - I think it is the most accessible...

Oh and it looks like if I wanted to download it I gotta pay for a membership so I'm assuming the site tosses some money at the publishers. I'd have to do PrintScreen to actually steal it.
 

Beepster
Oh and it looks like if I wanted to download it I gotta pay for a membership so I'm assuming the site tosses some money at the publishers. I'd have to do PrintScreen to actually steal it.

I hope you aren't looking for sympathy<G>...
 
From what I've learned about Scribd they do not reimburse the copyright holders. I hope that isn't true, but that's the current thinking on the service. There is probably some irony here, but it escapes me!

That Gma7/Gma6 change at the start of the Mickey Baker book is a killer when you're just starting out, i imagine your hands are in pretty good shape dexterity-wise from the stuff I've heard you play though Beeps. I remember having trouble with that change when I first started out, then I read an article in a guitar mag about finger exercises in which the author mentioned the MB book and that change in particular as the motivation behind coming up with the exercises as he too was having trouble with it.

Another great area to look into is 3 note comping. It's a highly rhythmic style of playing which is especially common in big band scenarios, and involves playing 3 note voicings of chords, mainly on the low E, D and G strings (muting the A). So for instance you'd take that basic Gma7 shape in the Mickey Baker book and just miss out the B string. You learn all of the inversions of each chord on those strings. A great exercise is to take each chord type and go through the cycle of fifths, playing all inversions of each chord in succession without looking at the neck. As you play each inversion, call out the bass note. It's great for both learning the fretboard "blind" and for getting to know the names of each chord tone in all keys. It's also a fantastic sounding style which lends itself to playing those fantastic chord solos you hear. I learned those voicings years ago and use them extensively, no matter what style I'm playing.

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I've got plenty of thoughts on the theft accusation our friend has leveled against me but I'll just let that be so as not to stir up a flame war. I'd rather send Mr. Baker or his descendants some money than some nebulous company who happened to scoop up a bunch of old copyrights they probably don't even know they own. Is a book from 1955 even still protected material?

just to be clear - the majority of my original post was suggestions of books that I've found helpful in my studies. I offered, I thought helpfully, that downloading copyrighted material is a frowned up, ok, I did call it pirating, but it is, so I was not in error on that point. I also pointed out that you could purchase a copy, I believe it is still under $10.

It was your response that caused me to respond more vehemently.

To turn a phrase, I don't feel too badly about it either.
 
There is a very big difference between borrowing a book, and then returning it, and downloading it. If you really don't see the difference well, that's on you. Are you really going to destroy your download after you've checked it out? You certainly gave the impression that you weren't.
 
The comment on YouTube is a very interesting one... I don't know many folks that knowingly search out copyrighted material on Youtube. There are too many avenues that protect the copyright holders. But I am pretty sure I've watched stuff I did not know was protected.
 
The Internet has, intentionally or not, blurred some of the lines. I watched a performance the other night, shot by a friend of the performer, whom I guarantee has covered all his bases, but did he have the right to put a recording of his performance on YouTube? I do not know, and I do not know if he considered it.

I think that's a very different case from knowingly downloading something that you can purchase legally, and easily, and for not a lot of money, and then not only rationalizing it, but admitting you don't care.

Copyright law is not perfect! It does not adequately cover resale, for just one example. And it doesn't even come close to covering software. I rent it? I license it? While I certainly understand that Cakewalk, or any developer, needs to earn a return on their investment, I find a lot of these arguments to be very difficult to comprehend.

But it is all that we have at the moment... we ought to respect the rules we have while we try to shape them for the internet age. The fact that it has not caught up with technology is not a reason to ignore it.

And back to guitar - the teacher that introduced me to the Mickey Baker books also introduced me to Clarinet method books. It turns out that the clarinet covers about the same range as the guitar (or vica-versa), and scale and arpeggio studies, while not terribly musically interesting, make outstanding exercises. It terms of plain old physical technique I think you'd be hard pressed to find a more efficient avenue of study.

I pushed back a bit when he put those arpeggios in front of me (I was a teen-ager, I was supposed to push back<G>) but the improvement in both left and right hand agility and accuracy was almost immediate, and obvious even to me. Some of the chord changes (GM7 to GM6 with the root on the sixth string) that I wrestled with literally fell under my fingers.

The other exercise, chord specific, that you might want to consider is to build the chords on any four strings, and then move them up and down the neck. I've only seen this explained explicitly in one place, but it has become a staple of my own teaching, and you will find oblique references to it in a number of books that focus on learning the neck. Start with a dominant 7 and find all the ways to play in on the first four strings. Now modify it to the more common 4 note chords (Maj7, Maj6, Min7, Min6, 7Sus4, 7sus2, add9, etc. don't overlook the diminished and half diminshed sevens) Once you get those down then you can start experimenting with voicings of more complex chords, and all the fun of figuring out which notes to drop.

The logical conclusion from that will be the three string comp'ing a la Grant Green and others. I know some teachers that use the three string chords as a device to teach the neck, but most of my students struggled with that, so I now save that for last. It certainly can be the source of some funny looks and head scratching - geez mr. teacher, we went from six strings to four strings to three????

Hiya, Jeff. Yup. I actually spent the past few years studying the blues and have taken that about as far as I can go without burning out on it I think and it was ideally in preparation for jazz studies so I think I'm ready to move on. It's funny I actually have that exact site bookmarked and have worked through many of the lessons, even the jazz stuff, and I'm sure I will continue to draw more insights from it as I progress but I was hitting a bit of a wall there too. When I started this thread I was kind of just looking for some progressions that I could create MIDI basslines with to jam over top of but now I'm working through the stuff sharke linked because it's turning into a real workout and giving me even more ideas. It's the traditional style too which is exactly what I'm looking for right now and the chord formations are quite different than some of the stuff I've seen elsewhere or constructed myself but sound about as "jazz" as you can get. Considering how many styles of jazz have been concocted over the years I guess it's easy to get buried/confused by it all so reaching all the way back to the fifties seems like exactly what I should be doing... and man those cats knew how to play.
 
And at this point I actually have no problems knowing which notes go with which chords and laying patterns right up the fretboard instantly. It's just trying to manipulate those notes, chords and patterns to get that specific jazzy style. I was trying out some stuff the other day over a ii V I pattern I created in Sonar using the 3, 5, 7, 9 concept but it was coming out kind of surfy, which is cool too, but it ain't the old school jazz sound I'm reaching for.
 
Anyway, just sitting down to dinner but saw your post. Thanks for tossing your input my way. It is always appreciated. Cheers.

Hi Beeps OK that is all good. A good thing to do is to listen an album like Stardust by Willie Nelson and listen to the Jazz tunes on there. Very straight voicings but those standards are simple AABA form and the chords in the A and B sections are often easy to solo over. Check out some Rhythm changes as well.
 
Simple standards like 'All of Me' or 'All the Things You Are' etc are good starting points to solo over.  Look at the tunes and breakdown where the key centres are. You don't have to use a different scale for each chord from a key, you can also solo over a series of chords using the same key centre using one scale. The idea is to think melodically and try and construct something meaningful with your soloing.
 
A lot of Jazz guitarists actually don't say much at all and are playing vertically which is boring. You are just hearing the correct scale over any given chord. But creating horizontal melodic lines is a different matter. Much stronger and better.
 
You can use your DAW of course to create chord progressions. A program like 'Band In A Box' is also killer for extended Jazz practice though. And most Jazz standards are already programmed in there or easily obtained. Slow the tempos down too at first and ease into it. Playing at 300 BPM or higher is very hard to do without a lot of practice.
 
Listen to Kurt Rosenwinkel, he is probably the best (modern) Jazz guitarist in the world right now. James Muller from Australia is also a pretty cool player, one of the best. I was fortunate to hear him live the other night. OMG! playing was just incredible.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwzJmtaqNEM
 
 
 
 

Yeah you have to immerse yourself in jazz music to "get" it. The more you hear those voicings and how they go together the easier it gets. Listen to the masters - Wes Montgomery, George Van Eps etc. I will never be able to play like Van Eps because his technique is so far out there but your ear can learn a lot from listening to the color of his chords.