Most people put jazz chords in the too hard basket. After all, jazz is only for the music snobs right? You can’t just go ahead and start playing complex jazz chords without proper training. Right?

It’s true that there is a rough order that most guitarists follow when learning chords. Most guitarists learn open chords first, then barre chords, before moving onto Jazz chords. But jazz chords are just like anything else. There is a bit of theory that usually accompanies jazz chord learning, and knowledge of the notes along the fretboard is also important, but jazz chords can be learnt as systematically as anything else.

This lesson is part of a series of lessons on chords. If you want to go back and brush up on basic chord theory, you can start from the first lesson and work your way up to this lesson. However, this lesson is also designed to be a stand-alone lesson, so if you’re feeling confident and want to jump right in, keep going.

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How many different types of guitar chords are there? Chances are, you already know how to play a bunch of different chords. You have probably learnt how to play them by associating different shapes and fingerings with different chord names. But you’ve probably also come across some chord symbols that look like hieroglyphs and have wondered from time to time, what do all these symbols and add-ons actually mean?

That’s what we’re going to try to break down in this lesson. In some ways, ‘figuring out’ chords is relatively easy. There are some obvious applications of numbers and labels that happen. The B Major 6 chord, for example, is made up of the B Major chord, as well as the 6th note of the Major scale. But some labels are not as obvious.

This lesson is not for the faint-hearted. We are going to cover a lot. But by the end of it, you should have the ability (or at least a one-page reference guide) to figure out any chord that you come across. Before we go into too much detail though, we need to go back to the basics and start from there.

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Jazz chords. Many guitarists abandon their chord learning journey before they have to cross that bridge. You can play Rock, Pop, Folk and pretty much everything you need, without having to learn weird jazz shapes. So why bother?

Firstly, the chords themselves are fun and interesting to explore, regardless of your intention to ever play jazz.

Secondly, they’re actually pretty easy to learn, if you can already play standard barre chords.

Thirdly, you only need to learn eight different chords in order to play most jazz songs. That’s right, if you simply learn these eight, relatively easy-to-play chord types, you can pretty much play any jazz song.

These eight chords are not an official list, but if you play enough jazz material, you will notice that there are certain chords that come up a lot more than others. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to play these chords.

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