Site icon TJPS

Jazz for Beginners – Theory & Practice

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:

  1. The intervals of the Major scale
  2. The chords in a Major key
  3. 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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

So first we will:

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.

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

>> NEXT LESSON >>

Exit mobile version