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Basic Jazz Guitar Chord Substitution and the III-VI-II-V-I Jazz Chord Progression

In this easy jazz guitar chord lesson, you will learn about jazz chord substitution and the III-VI-II-V-I chord progression. The lesson uses most of the chord voicings from last week’s lesson on beginner jazz chords, but we use some of them as chord substitutions to get different sounds or tonalities.

Many chord shapes in jazz guitar can be more than one chord. For example, a Db7 chord can also be a G7 with a flatted 5th. Realizing this is one of the foundations of understanding chord substitution.

We also cover the III-VI-II-V-I chord progression and apply chord substitution to it. Here are the locations of the root notes for each of the intervals in a 3 6 2 5 1 progression. Technically the six should be minor, but we have turned it in to a V7 chord to get more of a jazz turnaround sound.

We also learn the dominant 7/9 chord voicing in this video, which can be used as a substitute for just about any V7 chord with a root on the big E string:

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Major and Minor Sixth Jazz Guitar Chord Exercise

Here’s a great jazz guitar exercise to practice for learning your major and minor sixth jazz chord voicings. Basically you practice switching between Gmaj7 and Gmaj6, and then Amin7 and Amin6, and then the same thing with Cmaj7 and Cmaj6, Dmin7 and Dmin6. There is also some movement of the minor 6 chords to outline a III-VI-II-V-I chord progression.

I originally learned these chords from the first Mickey Baker book. You can get it here: https://amzn.to/2NIt4L

Here are the jazz chord voicings from the video:

There are some other minor 7 and minor 6 chords in the video, but the voicings are the same.

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Easy Jazz Chords Every Guitar Player Should Know

In this lesson we go over some of the most important jazz guitar chord voicings. These are some of the basic jazz chord shells that you will use your entire life as a jazz guitarist.

These could be considered basic jazz guitar chords, but I think of them as foundational jazz chords.

The following chord voicings are all covered in the video. The idea is to have a major 7 chord, a minor 7 chord, a dominant 7 chord, and an m7b5 chord voicings with roots on the E string, and the A string of the guitar. These jazz guitar chord voicings will enable you to play many of the easier tunes in the real book. These chords are the foundation of jazz guitar, and you’ll use them your whole life.

Here is the ii-V-I jazz lick from the video, it’s in the key of G major: