The Most Important Jazz Guitar Chord

Believe it or not, you’ve probably already played one or two shapes of the most important jazz guitar chord.

While traditional chord shapes (the ones we learn...

Believe it or not, you’ve probably already played one or two shapes of the most important jazz guitar chord.

While traditional chord shapes (the ones we learn when we first start playing) are useful, they also can limit us to a certain sound. The shapes in this lesson are called Drop 2’s. Taking a simple closed position chord shape and dropping the second-highest pitch down an octave to form a new, jazzier-sounding chord is the formula for constructing Drop 2’s.

The clashing of these rearranged intervals can make for some challenging finger positioning, but the results are undeniably awesome. There are Drop 2 chord voicings for all varieties of four-part chords, and understanding how to form each inversion with this approach will vastly expand your chord repertoire.

For more details and tablature of these Drop 2 chords, sign up for my free course, Jazz Guitar Tips, Tricks and Licks^[1].

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric website Music is Win^[2]. His entertaining guitar-related content receives hundreds of thousands of video views on Facebook per month, and his online guitar courses^[3] tout more than 1,500 students with a cumulative 4.7 rating on Udemy. Get in touch with Tyler on Facebook^[4], watch more of his guitar lessons and vlogs on YouTube^[5], and follow him on Twitter^[6] and Instagram^[7].