Jazz Chords: Every Type of Passing Chord You Need To Know

Adding passing chords is one of the best ways to make your comping and chord progressions more interesting, and you can explore a lot of great sounds like this without drowning in complicated theory!

3 Basic Jazz Chord Exercises That Will Change Your Playing in 2024

Get the PDF on my website:

Get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon:

✅DOWNLOAD A FREE E-BOOK with 15 II Valt I licks!
Sign up for my newsletter:

My name is Jens Larsen, a Danish Jazz Guitarist and Educator. The videos on this channel will help you explore and enjoy Jazz. Some of them teach you how to play jazz guitar, but other videos focus on Music Theory, like Jazz Chords, or offer advice on practicing and learning Jazz on guitar or any other instrument.

The videos are mostly jazz guitar lessons, music theory, song analysis, and videos on jazz guitars.

Content:
00:00 The Flow of Beautiful Harmony!
00:27 #1 Diminished Passing Chords
02:19 #2 Getting Chromatic
05:01 #3 Diatonic - The walk
07:04 Dominants
09:24 #5 Is That Even A Chord?
11:27 The 3 Rules For Playing Jazz Chords
11:45 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

My Gear:

[JensLarsen]

The exercises that really make you better at comping:

[mcny]

Wow! I love every lesson you publish, Jens, but this one was pretty fantastic and very well explained as usual. Thank you!

[drink.juice.]

this just helped me in that i now know what i have been looking for and attempting to expand is diatonic progressions

[ricklaino]

Always informative
I kinda like the #4 dim and the 4min sounds

[GlennJimenez]

I know that guitar. You showed clips of you playing it and using it as a workhorse

You still play it! Wow

[matthewgoldberg]

Jens, great lesson. I would just add that song writers also use many of these devices. The diminished passing chord of your first example was a favorite of Jimmy Van Heusen: Imagination, It Could Happen to You, Call Me Irresponsible.
And the IVm6 at 10:00 is the first chord of the vamp intro that Billy Joel used in Just the Way You Are.

[janehutchison]

Thanks Jens. Beautiful and very practical. I am finding a good way for me to get these into my fingers is to pick a tune to play as a slower tempo chord solo. Keep them coming!

[eric_james_music]

This vid is like a consolidation of some of your best lessons! Made me think there's really only 2 types of diminished chords instead of 3. There's the dominant diminished (functionally, the #i dim7 and the vii dim7 resolve in the same kind of way). And then the super versatile #iv/biii dim7 that you never know where it'll go. I always think of "Someday My Prince Will Come" and "All The Things You Are" C Section.

[roshan_raju_]

Wonderful lesson as always, but the only difficult part being how to practice these and start implementing them in our own music ideas?

[Mike-rwnh]

Hi Jens. I’m just listening to Rotem Silvan live-streaming a casual jam session with a drummer and bassist. Any chance you could do something similar? I loved your session with Aimee Nolte, but that was ages ago.

[louisdombrowski]

Ya make it look easy, great videos 🎵🎸🎶🎼

[mauriciopizarro]

You share sir the best jazz guitar chird voincings

[emlyngriffith]

Lots of information here….very useful. Thanks a lot! 👍🍷

[MaunShComb]

Okay, if Jens helps the intermediate to advanced Jazz enthusiast, who on the YouTubes is best for the beginner (not a noob to theory, but intensive jazz studies, yes) to mid-intermediate? Although, I can keep up with the ideas of Jens, I just don’t have the foundations for application. Any help would be appreciated.

[pauloadelino]

Hello Jens, I love hour YouTube videos, but lately with this epiphone guitar the sound is very distorted.

[vivsavagex]

you can imply these passing chords in your single note soloing playing too!

[gmitter-slqq]

I think the red "VII" should really be "VI7" in 1:11, right?