If you have some guitar background and have always wanted to:
-Expand your chord vocabulary
-Get started on playing "jazz" chords
-Feel less boxed in by familiar "grips" like your open chords and 5th and 6th-string bar chords
Then I highly recommend Jack Peterson's book Chords Galore. Its a step by step method for learning a lot of voicings that will greatly expand your harmonic flexibility. It starts with the basics and doesn't require too much prerequisite theory or reading knowledge, so if you have some guitar experience but have been intimidated in the past about "jazz" chords like Cmaj7(#11), or D7(b9#5), then this book breaks these things down for you. Finding a good teacher to help explain things can further help your progress in this book.
-------Overview:
What does this book take you through? First you'll work with the raised 2&3 voicings based on the 6th string and their inversions. (The book will explain these various "raised" voicing families, inversions, etc.) The next chapter focuses on raised 2 voicings based on the 5th string and their inversions. In the next chapter, you guessed it, you combine these two sets of voicings. Every step of the way is clearly explained in plain language- making it a perfect DIY book. The theory behind these chords is presented in a very logical and functional way.
By this point you've covered some serious ground already, and you would be reasonably good at comping ("rhythm guitar" if you're new to jazz) behind a soloist in a jazz combo. You could take out your real book and have couple voicings for each chord to choose from, chords like: Ebmaj7, Ab(6), Fm7, F#dim, D7sus/A, Gm7/Bb. Play some standard tunes like Satin Doll, Girl From Ipanema, Misty, or All The Things You Are to try out your new chords!
So now you've got some new voicings and are playing some tunes. But what about those weird (#11)'s, or (b9#5)'s? Well, chapter 4 tackles that with 9th, 11th and 13th chords. Now your G7/B can become G7(b9)/B, and your G7 can become G13, or G7(b13). These are all based on the chord forms you've been working with up til this point, so you're taking what you know and adding to it rather than simply learning by rote memorization.
Chapter 5 covers a new family of voicings called "root color tones." Knowing these will be valuable if you play in a big band, where the 3-note root color tones voicings will keep you out of the piano and horn section's way. The next chapter goes over some very hip sounding open triads and shell voicings. Whew, all these new chords... what else could there possibly be?
Take everything you've done so far and move it up a set of strings. These are called "crossovers," and as the book says, it "increases your chord knowledge 100%." (literally!) The next and final chapter covers "transfers," moving a single note one or two octaves in a voicing. This gives you even more new voicings, and brings you round about to some old familiar ones.
------Reference Sheets:
So, if you're serious about learning some new voicings I highly recommend purchasing Chords Galore. I've made up some reference sheets that were useful to me when working through the book. What I did is map out all the chord families. Some have alternate names (ie "drop 2&3) and some you won't encounter yet in Chords Galore (ie drop 2&4's). I also mapped out their crossovers to the right, so you can see them moving up a set of strings and adjusting for that pesky B string. The inversions ascend vertically, and you'll notice I label the chord tones at the bottom of each diagram.
This labeling is important, because from that knowledge you can take the basic dominant 7th chord shape from my map and alter it to achieve any type of chord you want. On the third page I show how you can get 14 different chords from one of these basic shapes. It's a useful visual aid to have on your stand when you're learning the various examples presented in the book:
 |
| Page One |
 |
| Page Two |
 |
| Page Three |
 |
| Page Four |
(Download full resolution versions here: Page One, Page Two, Page Three, Page Four)
Anyways, I hope you find these reference sheets useful, and if you haven't already go out and pick up a copy of Jack Peterson's Chords Galore!
-Neil
------Links:
Amazon.com: Chords Galore
Amazon.com: The Real Book
