The attached PDF shows some simple, useful chord moves for ii-V and iii-vi-ii-V progressions.  Here are a few reasons they are so useful:

1) They feature a strategy where you are only moving 1 finger on a grip.
2) They feature voice-leading -- the finger you move outlines a chromatic descent to the next chord
3) They expose how a small vocabulary of chord shapes can be re-used for different voicings

As I've mentioned before, the first teacher who attempted to teach me about jazz guitar recommended the Mickey Baker books.  While they were nice at getting some basic and hip sounds going, there were a lot of holes to be filled.  While I don't particularly recommend starting with them, the best thing about his books was he gives a relatively small number of chord shapes to learn and re-uses them to stand-in for different chords in a hip way.  The first page of the PDF attempts to show how his chord shapes can be used in a ii-V progression.

The 1-finger ii-V is at the heart of what he initially presents, using a min6 as a Dom.9 voicing.  Making a min7 chord (acting as the ii) into a min6 chord (by moving the chord's b7 down 1 fret) gives you a rootless Dominant 9 chord, which is used as the grip for the V chord in the sequence.  Mr. Baker also shows that if you just hold or reposition min7 chord, you end up with a  rootless Dom11 chord.

As you may know, the min6 chord not only sounds like a Dom.9 chord, it is also a half-diminished (min7b5) voicing. The second page of the PDF shows all the various ways the min6 and min7 chords can be interpreted.  Understanding other uses for any grip you learn is a great thing to do.

Page 3 gives a few variations on a iii-VI-ii-V progression with Mickey's chord voicings.  This is the next most essential progression to learn after the ii-V.  Once you learn and hear the 2-5 and the 3-6-2-5, you will be able to abstract away several measures of many jazz standards which will make them easier to learn and remember.  Instead of learning several measures of a standard, you can eventually just represent it in your mind and ear as a 3-6-2-5 leading to a tonic.  If the six chord is a Dominant (has a major 3rd), then the 3-6 is like a ii-V going to the 2 of the ii-V which then goes to the tonic.  

Mickey's variations include using a min7 shape moved down one fret to represent the tritone of the ensuing V chord.  This tritone works out to be a Dom.7(#9) voicing.  A more common written variation is to use a rootless Dominant #11  for a V, which also happens to be a Dom.7(#11) a tritone away.  In addition to using a half-diminished (min7b5) shape as a rootless Dom.9 chord, we also see how a min7b5 shape can be grabbed as  Dominant Altered chords.  Finally, we see that the iii-7 chord can be a Maj9 voicing for the tonic.

Ideally you want to work out similar chord moves for every inversion of these chords.  The remainder of the PDF will give you a start in that direction.

Page 4 begins the chord moves for a I-vi-ii-V in one position for all the basic inversions which are in the Jimmy Bruno Inversions dictionary (you should check that PDF out if you haven't already).  This should allow you to do this chord move anywhere on the neck for any key.  Remember that the vi-7 chord is homonymous with the Tonic as a Maj6.  The squiggly arrow shows you will have to move up some frets to get the chord root on the correct note.  The min6 of the ii is equivalent to the Dom.9 of the V chord (as well as the other homonyms shown on Page 2).

Page 9 shows a 3-6-2-5 progression with altered dominants as the 6 and the 5.  The squiggly arrow is to alert that you will need to move the shape down on the neck to get the root in the right place.  When the 6 and 5 of a 3-6-2-5 are dominants, the 'tonal center' is located a whole tone (2 frets) away from the final Tonic during the 3 to 6.  The VI chord is a Dom.7(#11) while the V chord is a Dom.7(b9) -- which is also a Diminished voicing.  Note that each of the Dominant voicings here are exactly the same chord if played a tritone away.  Try out Mickey's other tritone subs -- making the tritone a min7 or min6 also gives a hip altered dominant sound to the V.  You should also try grabbing a different ii-7 chord to serve as a Dom11 chord for the V.

The basic goal of practicing the content in this PDF is to increase your vocabulary of chord moves for basic building blocks of jazz harmony -- the 2-5, the 3-6-2-5 and the 1-6-2-5.  With study, you will see these progressions again and again in jazz standards.  The extended vocabulary will give you a host of options up and down the neck for playing over these progressions so you are not endlessly repeating yourself comping behind a soloist.  Learning comping is more useful than just learning how to solo with scales or modes -- for starters, you will realistically be comping far more than soloing.  But dig this -- when you start to picture the chord tones of these progressions all over the neck, they will also be the targets you can approach (scalewise, chromatically or any other way) in your solo to outline the harmony.

This post is inspired by this You Tube video by Jens Larsen: 8 Awesome Types of 3 note Voicings and How To Use Them.

​The zip file below contains a slew of three-note voicings progressing up the neck.

Three note voicing are the Jazz guitar player's go-to for comping.  With three notes against the bass-player's contribution, you can paint harmony that is solid and direct -- using the 3rd, 7th and 5th of a chord -- or more vague -- using 4ths, 9ths, 13ths -- or completely 'out there' -- using altered tones.

Three note voicings also often allow you to have a free finger to decorate or voice-lead the chord with an added line.

By learning the progressions in these pdfs, you will not only have a cool chord run in your pocket, but you will increase your vocabulary of shapes for comping or chord-melody.  While you probably have begun building up your 3-note shapes just by subtracting a note from 4-voice chords, there are other shapes which can be found that don't build up to a four-note voicing.

The voicings on the middle strings (4-3-2) are the most useful, so you may want to start there with each pdf.

Below is an example of Dominant 9 three-note voicings.  The zip download contains several other types, including min-Maj, quartal and cluster triads.

The Sixth-To-Diminished is a chord scale which alternates between Major Sixth Chords and Diminished Chords to provide a chord for every note of the Major scale.  It is just sandwiching a Diminished chord between each inversion of the Major Sixth chord.  If you run up this chord-scale,  you will quickly hear a sound which harkens the chord solos of Wes Montgomery.

Wes Montgomery's octave solos are perhaps the most distinctive part of his sound, but nearly all of his solos were like a three act play:  First, he started with single lines, then he moved to octaves, finally he moved to chords.  Just by the sheer number of strings, he was 'building' up his solo.

There are a few different approaches to chord soloing, most of which involve targeting the note on a chord's highest string as the 'Melody Note' with the bottom strings 'fleshing out' what chord is being stated below.  The Sixth-to-Diminished approach is a quick-and-dirty chord-scale which you can learn on the cheap.

The Sixth-to-Diminished concept is championed by Barry Harris.  I did a blog post on the Barry Harris 'origin' story, but there is no context of what to do with that information.   The  basic takeaway should be that, through these philosophical machinations, the 'Sixth' chord has some interesting 'genes' in its DNA -- specifically related to the Diminished scale.  I imagine early jazzers started heavily exploring the Diminished because they heard the leading tones in an altered functional dominant.

The two-dollar explanation of the sixth-to-diminished is that the chord-scale is continually going from Five-to-One.  As outlined in the PDF, the diminished fingering is really an altered Dominant - a Dom.7b9 chord.  The ensuing chord is the 'One' chord, the Maj6.  Now -- what do jazzers love to do with any harmony?  Take any opportunity to add a 'V to I' cadence.  The Sixth-to-Diminished has the V to I in spades.  Every movement along the chord scale is a V going to a I.  

The beauty of the Maj6 chord is you can easily interpret it as Major or Minor.  Any Maj6 is an inversion of a min7. You may notice that the diminished chords -- spelled out in the chart as Dom.7b9 -- consistently have a note outside the Diatonic Major scale.  The flat-9 of these Dominants are actually the same as a Major#5.  I don't have the complete story on the Barry Harris method, but I know the Maj#5 chord is a big part of it.

If you take a look at the Diatonic chords of the Harmonic Minor, you see the Maj#5 is the Third Mode there.  If we used the Harmonic Minor's Maj#5 as the 'One' chord, the II mode would be the Harmonic Minor's vi  -- Dorian#11.  Let's take a look at the Sixth-to-Diminished harmonization of the II in the PDF.  It shows a Dom.7b9 to the V, but looking from the perspective of the II, we have the Root, the flat third, the sixth, and the #11.  Are the chord tones are outlining the Harmonic Minor starting from the III? Perhaps a discussion for another post.

​This is my first attempt at a chord melody.  I was told creating a chord melody would help me memorize the chord changes for a particular song.  It has also helped me figure out a few new fingerings.

I put chord boxes above the chords, stacking alternates at times.  The hollow circles are the second or third note to play holding the position (or en route to the next chord).  If you know the melody, you should be able to figure it out -- some go to a hollow dot and back to a solid dot.

The premise of constructing the chord melody is relatively simple -- the melody should run on the top two or three strings so you can stack the rest of the chord on the bottom strings.  The melody note should always have the highest pitch of all the notes in a chord.  It is not necessary to have a chord for every single note.  I always tried to aim to have at least the essential tones (3rd and 7th of the chord) and, if possible, the root note.  Often this required some inversions.

Please let me know if I have an error or typo.

Check out this great video on reharmonizing the ii-V-I progression from Jens Larsen.  Subscribe to his channel! Support him on Patreon!

In the video, Jens goes through a bunch of variations on the most common progressions in Jazz.  With each progression, he outlines how the reharmonized V chord is devised and what scales work over top of it.  Along the way, you should start to recognize how those weird progressions in standards are really just altered or reharmonized ii-V-I cadences.

Below is a PDF of the various reharmonizations, although some might have slightly different fingerings.

These are "essential chords" for a Jazz Blues progression in Bb as taught by Don Mock.  Various options for the I, IV, V, ii and VI chord are diagrammed with their function.  The final page shows a basic jazz blues progression for Bb.  The chords are mostly grouped by position, so you can easily shift the 'melody' note on the topmost string during a bar.

In a traditional I-IV-V blues, we have the dominant I7 for four bars, IV7 for bars 5-6, then back to the I7 for two bars.  Bar 9 would go to the V7, climaxing with the most tension, then moving to the IV7 and finally back to the I7.

In a Jazz Blues, a few things are different.  First, the IV jumps up in Bar 2.  Second, instead of going directly to the V from the I, we lead into it though a more jazzy I-VI-ii-V cadence starting bar 8.  The final two bars repeat the I-VI-ii-V cadence in half the time.

Notice that the VI chord is a dominant, not a minor, as would 'diatonically' fit in the key of Bb major.  The IV chord is also a dominant, as is usually the case in a traditional major blues.

Don lists typical extensions of 9, 13 and 11 for the I and IV chord which work well.  

Since the VI7 is really a sub for a vi-7, those extensions will sound off.  Instead, try using an altered chord -- a chord with the 9 and 5 raised or lowered a semi-tone.  The #5, b5, #9 and b9 are 'altered' tones which better lead the cadence to the minor ii chord.  The VI7 is really a 'secondary dominant.'  For just a couple bars, the harmoy is shifting to the ii, and the VI7 of Bb is *functioning* as the V of the ii.  The short of it is that a dominant leading to a ii will sound better with altered tones, which jives with minor scales like the harmonic and melodic minor.

For the V (F7), pretty much any extension, alteration, or combination thereof can work. You can mix nines and thirteens with flat nines and sharp fives and so forth.  This is because the V is really the peak of tension from which everything will fall back into place with the I.

Here are inversions for Dom.7, Maj7, Min7, Min7b5 and Dim.7.  They are stacked against each other so you can see how they relate to each other.  Practicing each fingering across will help ingrain what part of the chord each note is and where intervals sit in relation to each other.

You can use the shapes of the minor7 chord as a rootless Maj9 chord.  The 7th of a minor7 chord becomes the 9th of a rootless Maj9.

These are good for comping with a bass player who will cover the root.