Jazz is a broad and complex genre, and so it may seem difficult for those who are first getting into Jazz to know where to start. There are lots of different subgenres, and lots of different concepts, such that Jazz can sound like a foreign language – a Jazz musician could say ‘let’s use the Lydian Dominant mode to play over the secondary dominant chords in section B of Rhythm Changes.’ But Jazz doesn’t need to be complex. You can actually get by with a minimum amount of theory and practice.
The lessons on this website cover everything you need to know about Jazz, from simple to quite advanced concepts. But some people may not want to learn every possible concept in Jazz. You may just want to get the minimum amount of knowledge need to play some Jazz, so you can actually start doing something. Then you could come back in future to learn further ad hoc concepts you can apply to your playing. So this lesson is going to cover a number of beginner Jazz concepts and techniques all in one place. If you’re planning to go through each lesson on this website, then you can probably skip this one, as we will be covering all the concepts covered here in more detail later in this course. So in this lesson will cover the minimum theoretical knowledge and practical techniques you need to play something resembling Jazz.
Jazz Theory for Beginners
On the theoretical side, there are just a few things you need to rote learn and memorise. These are:
- The intervals of the Major scale
- The chords in a Major key
- The construction of the most commonly used chord types
Now, while there is some underlying logic to why these things are as they are (this has to do with acoustics), you don’t need to know it. You literally just need to memorise these three things by heart and you’ll be able to start understanding and playing Jazz.
So firstly, a scale is just a collection of notes played sequentially moving up in steps. The most widely used scale in Western Music is the Major Scale. The intervals of the major scale are
whole step -whole step – half step – whole step – whole step – whole step – half step
(W-W-H-W-W-W-H)
Where, naturally, a whole step is two half steps. Memorise this. This can easily be seen with the C Major scale on the piano. Once you know this pattern, you can play every single Major scale that exists. To practice it, pick a random note on the piano and play the Major scale from that note.
Next, a chords is just a collection of notes played simultaneously, moving up in skips. So now let’s take each note of the C Major scale and build a chord up from it, skipping one note each time until we have 4 notes. And because we want the chords to be in the key of C Major, we can only use the notes of the C Major scale.
- So taking the note C, we can build a chord that has the notes: CEGB, this is a CMaj7 chord.
- We can do the same from the note D, and get DFAC. This is a Dm7 chord.
- Etc.
Doing this for all 7 notes in the scale, we can create 7 chords. These are:
CMaj7 – Dm7 – Em7 – FMaj7 – G7 – Am7 – Bm7♭5
These are all the chords in the key of C Major. And because every single major scale is constructed with the same intervals, all the chords derived from any Major scale will always be the same – except for the root notes. So for example, all the chords in the key of F Major are:
FMaj7 – Gm7 – Am7 – B♭Maj7 – C7 – Dm7 – Em7♭5
And this is the second thing that you need to memorise – all the chords in a Major key. Again these are:
Maj7-min7-min7-Maj7-V7-m7-m7♭5
The only things that differ are the root notes, which just follow the notes of that Major scale.
Now, let’s take all the notes of the Major scale and number them 1 through 7. And we will refer to the chords in terms of their allocated number. So when someone says – play me a 251 in C, they mean – play me the 2 chord followed by the 5 chord followed by the 1 chord in the key of C Major, which would be
Dm7 | G7 | CMaj7 ||
And if someone said, play me a 451 in F – this would be a
B♭Maj7 | C7 | FMaj7 ||
Now, there are two ways to think about chords – the first way is as part of a key, like we just saw. So if I ask you to play a Dm7 chord, you know it’s the 2 chord in the key of C Major, and therefore only uses white notes on the piano. The second way is to think of each chord as a stand-alone entity. This brings us to the final thing you need to memorise – the construction of the most commonly used chord types. The most important thing to memorise is the construction of the Maj7 chord, which is – 4H+3H+4H. Knowing this formula means you can play any Maj7 chord from any note. This is why the 1st and 4th chord in a Major key are Maj7 chords – they are constructed with 4H+3H+4H – Cmaj7 and Fmaj7 in the key of C.
Each of the 4 main chord types have such a formula that you can memorise, but what I find easier is to only memorise the Maj7 chord formula, and then change the Maj7 chord to get the other chords. Specifically, a V7 has a♭7 compared to the Maj7 chord, a m7 has a♭7 and♭3 compared to the Maj7 chord, and a m7♭5 has, as you may expect, a ♭7,♭3 and♭5 compared to the Maj7 chord. So instead of memorising that V7 chord is 4H+3H+3H, just build a Maj7 chord and flatten your 7th. Same goes for the m7 and m7♭5 chords. And again, this is why the 2,3,6 chords in a Major key are m7 chord – because they are constructed with a 3H+4H+3H, and the 5 chord is a V7 chord, because it’s 4H+3H+3H, and the 7 chord is a m7♭5, because it’s 3H+3H+4H.
And that’s it. If you memorise those three things, you’ll have the minimum amount of knowledge you need to play Jazz. You don’t need to worry about modes or quartal voicings or side-slipping or any of the more complex stuff, at least to begin with. Knowing these three things – Major scale intervals, chords in a Major key, and the construction of the main chord types – is enough to begin with.
Jazz Practice for Beginners
Now, let’s cover the minimum practical techniques and skills you need to play Jazz. We will use a particular formula that is the simplest way to play a song and still have it sound like you’re playing Jazz. And the best part about using this formula is that you can then apply it to any literally song and have it sound jazzy.
But before we do that, we first need to pick a simple song, preferably one with a simple chord progression that doesn’t modulate to too many keys, uses a lot of 251’s, and has a simple melody. Some good ones are:
- Fly Me to the moon
- Autumn Leaves
- All the Things You Are
- Softly, as in a morning sunrise
- Summertime
- Mack the Knife
- There will never be another you
In the video below I used Section A of Fly me to the Moon as my example. This is a good one to start on because you’ll quickly see that it’s in the key of C Major (as we now know from the above theory section).
When playing Jazz, to get a full and balanced sound we really want to include a bottom part (the bassline), a middle part (the harmony) and a top part (the melody or improvisation). And as a beginner, the best and easiest way to do this is by combining a:
- Walking bassline in your left hand (which covers the bassline at the bottom);
- The guide tones (which are the 3rd and 7th or a chord) with the bottom two fingers on your right hand (which covers the harmony in the middle); and
- The melody with the top three fingers on your right hand (which covers the melody at the top).
And we want to be able to combine all these things together into one seamless performance. But in order to do that we will have to practice each technique separately. So here’s how I would suggest you begin learning a song:
- First, learn to play the 7th chords in your left hand – first all in root position, then alternating between root position and second inversion (so that your hand isn’t jumping around as much)
- Do the same with your right hand
- Next, learn to play the melody in your right hand
- Next, learn to combine the melody in your right hand with the chords in your left hand. First, just play and hold the chords on beat 1 of each bar, then try to insert some rhythm into the chords by comping.
- Next, learn to play just the guide tones with you left hand, again trying to minimise any jumping around – try connect the guide tones smoothly through the progression
- Do the same with your right hand
- Then write out and memorise a walking bassline for your left hand. The only rules are:
- User quarter notes (so 4 notes per bar)
- Primarily using the diatonic Major scale with chromatic notes when you need it
- Play the root note of each chord on beat 1 of each bar
- Just walk up and down to the root note of the chord in the next bar trying to connect the notes smoothly
- Next learn to combine the walking bassline in your left hand and the melody in your right hand. This may take a bit of time to master as you need to develop your hand independence
- Next learn to combine the walking bassline in your left hand and the chords in your right hand
- Next learn to combine the walking bassline in your left hand and the guide tones in your right hand
- Next, just with your right hand – learn to combine the melody with the guide tones. Now you can play the guide tones in between the melody notes or with the melody notes or a combination of both.
- Next, learn to combine playing root notes in your left hand with the melody + guide tones in your right hand
- Finally, learn to combine the walking bassline in your left hand and the melody + guide tones in your right hand.
And you’re done. You can apply this formula to literally every single Jazz song you encounter. Now, this isn’t going to be the most creative Jazz performance in the world – but it’s a really good way to start playing what is unmistakably a Jazz song.
But, of course, we haven’t finished yet. The most important part of Jazz is the improvisation. And this is why we’ve picked a simple song in single key – more or less. This whole song is in the key of C Major (or A natural minor) so we can just use the C Major scale (so all the white notes on the piano) to improvise over this song. So when improvising we are going to:
- Play a short phrase (only a few notes) then pause, then another short phrase and pause, and so on
- Primarily using the diatonic Major scale
- Add chromatic passing notes
- Use repetition
- Combine steps (scale rune) and skips (arpeggios)
- Finish every phrase on a guide tone
So first we will:
- Play the chords in your left hand and improvise with your right hand
- Then, when you’re comfortable with that, play the walking bassline in your left hand and improvise with your right hand
- Next, just with your right hand, learn to improvise but occasionally hit the guide tones with your bottom fingers to add a bit of harmony to the song. It helps if you keep your bottom fingers ready over the guide tones and improvise with your top few fingers, just like we did when playing the melody
- And finally, add the walking bassline in your left hand, while you improvise and play guide tones with your right hand
Great, so again, this performance isn’t going to win any awards. But it’s a good solid way to learn to play something that sounds great and is quite clearly Jazz. And it really forces you to reinforce some really important Jazz concepts and techniques such as guide tones and walking basslines, without which the genre wouldn’t exist.
Jazz Improvisation for Beginners
Finally, to make an improvisation sound interesting you have to create and resolve tension (i.e. tension & resolution). This involves playing ‘wrong’ notes to create tension and ‘right’ notes to resolve it. There are many different ways of doing this, but below are a few ways that even a beginner can begin incorporating into his or her playing.
- ‘Right’ Notes
- Arpeggios
- Major Scale
- Blues Scale
- ‘Wrong Notes’
- Chromatic Approach Notes
- Enclosures
- Chromatic Runs
So that’s quite a lot to do and take in as a beginner. If you’re just starting out, doing all this will take you months. And that’s ok. As long as you break it down and practice each concept by itself, you’ll do great. Just play each technique separately, slowly, with a metronome, until you’ve mastered and memorised it. Only then start combining the techniques. And that’s it. Hope that helped. And remember to check out the videos below to see examples of what we just discussed.
Jazz for Beginners – Theory
Jazz for Beginners – Practice
Jazz for Beginners – Improvisation