How To Voice Jazz Chords

Choosing your chords depends mostly on the song! There are some rules, though, that you should be familiar with before diving in. This article will go into more detail about how to choose your chord types depending on what type of music you want to learn how to play.

I’ll also give you some tips and tricks for practicing your chords on guitar so that it becomes second nature. To make this easy for you, I’ve included all the information here as separate articles, so you can easily refer back to any one part when needed.

Learn to sing the different chord tones

The second part of learning how to voice chords is knowing what each tone in a chord is called. These are referred to as the chord qualities or notes.

A bass note is any pitch that is lower than the root of the chord, for example the first fret on the guitar string is a bass note of A major barrering pattern. An octave higher would be doubling the frequency (pitch) of a bass note, such as A at the first fret is an Octave higher than A so it is A Oboe!

A mediant is one pitch that is between the root and the third of the chord, for example the second fret on the guitar string is a mediant of Am7 flat shape. A half step below this is known as a minor mediant, which is G in this case. A whole step above this is a major mediant, which is E in this case.

A supertonic is one pitch that is beyond the third of the chord, the fifth here being Bb. Doubling the frequency of a supertone makes an octave higher pitch, so our Bb now becomes a Buford. A parallel fourth is also a very common term, but not necessarily universal. Sometimes they refer to it as a suspended fourth.

Practice singing and playing chords

As we learned before, starting with vocalization is an important part of learning how to voice chord tones. Once you have those down, your next step is to learn how to play some chords!

Practice singing any song using the major scale (see our article here) and then try moving some of the notes around in the chords to make them different voices. For example, if the main tone or root of the chord is the third note of the major scale, then add a second tonal element that is one whole step lower - the first note of the minor scale. This creates a second root, making it a biminaus chord!

Once you are able to do this for at least two chords of each type (major, dominant, half-diminished, etc.

Learn to use your voice

When you learn how to do something with your hands, like playing the guitar or piano, it is very helpful to also learn how to use your voice as an instrument. A common way to do this is by learning how to sing jazz chords.

Just because you are not singing while you play the chord does not mean that there is anything wrong with learning this method. In fact, it can be quite powerful for music production!

By adding some special effects such as vibrato, falsetto, or contouring of the pitch, we can achieve some spectacular results. And yes, it is possible to make beautiful songs using this technique!

There are many ways to approach learning how to sing jazz chords. You could start by just practicing each note separately until you feel comfortable with the notes themselves.

From there, you can add inlays and other riffs to fill out the song more.

Record and edit your voice tracks

Once you have all of your chord shapes recorded, it is time to work on editing them! Depending on how many chords you have in a song, there are several ways to go about doing this. You can either use one of the software programs that automatically match the notes with the correct scale or you can manually do it yourself.

The first way to do this is using something called MIDI-style recording. This means instead of having music play directly into your microphone as normal, what we call midi files (the musical notation format) get converted into note sequences for you to record. A computer then takes these note sequences and mixes in the appropriate timing and intensity to create an effect similar to when someone sings a song.

This method works great if you already have some basic skills in singing and/or playing instruments. If you don’t, however, converting the songs into note sequences may not be the best option unless you are very experienced at working with such things. Another downside is that if you want to change the tempo or pitch, you will need to rerecord everything which can be tedious depending on the number of songs.

Another way to do this is using keyboard tracking. Here, you simply type out each individual note of the chord and have the program mix in the other parts.

Mix your tracks

In music, chords are one of the most important building blocks in creating songs or pieces. A chord is an extended tone (no pitch missing) that gets stacked onto another tonal center to create a harmonic structure.

In music theory, there are eight main chords that make up our music language. These include major, minor, dominant seventh, suspended sixth, half-diminished, augmented, diminished, and octave/neo-augumented. Each of these has their own unique sound and formula, which musicians use frequently in compositions.

But how do you know what chords to play? That’s where things get tricky!

Luckily, you have some tools at your disposal! By mixing all types of musical styles, you can find yourself with lots of resources for composing and voicing new chords. Plus, it’s great practice for becoming familiar with the basics of music theory!

This article will go into detail about one such tool - voice harmony.

Compose your music

Now that you have learned how to play some chords, it is time to start composing your songs! Before, we focused mostly on reading music, but now that you know some simple chord structures, it is time to connect them together into song fragments or melodies.

By this, I mean take one part of a melody, add an F major chord, and then another part of the melody, and so on until you have something that sounds like a whole song. This process is called sequencing.

There are several ways to do this. You can use computer software such as Logic Pro or GarageBand to sequence your tunes. Or you could use a tool such as YouTube to find pre-made sequences and just copy and paste what works for you.

Whatever method you choose, make sure to test your lyrics with your new music before publishing! If there are any words that sound weird after the chords, try reordering the notes or creating different chords.

Create a song structure

In music theory, you will learn how to voice chord structures or songs. A song structure is just like what we talked about before with notes - only this time, they are connected by changes in chords.

The first thing you should do when learning how to voice chords is to pick a key you are comfortable in. Then, choose a bass note (usually the root of the chord) and start playing around with it.

Practice using your favorite instrument (piano, guitar, violin, etc.) to create different voicings of the chord. You can use software such as GarageBand to help you.

Write lyrics

Let’s look at an example of a simple piano chord, the A major chord. To voice this chord, you need to say the root, or pitch, twice as well as the third, or tone, once.

The first note is called the index (or sometimes referred to as the tonic) and it usually comes right after the word “lyric” in a song. The second note is the mediant, which is one that sounds slightly shorter than the index but still has two full notes. In our case, the mediant is the next most important note beyond the root. It goes between the root and the fifth, or other tone, of the chord.

In music theory, the term mediant is often replaced with parallel minor, because they are both chords built off a bass note and a dominant note. That means their roots and dominants must be the same!

That’s why your index looks like a natural fifth above the root in the A major chord we looked at before - the perfect harmony for making any genre sound good!

Now let’s see how to play these chords using rhythm and notation. First, find the root of the chord and then pick out the third, or other tone. For the mediant, just barely emphasize the root and the fifth, creating a short tone.