Quick online chordfinder - jazz chords?

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I know enough chords to busk around most jazz standard leadsheets etc, but I've got into the habit of making quite a small vocabulary of chord shapes go a long way -  for example if I see an alt dominant I have my little collection of alt shapes.

Which is fine for most of what I play, but recently I've got involved with a project that's using big band charts and I'm seeing a lot of very complex chords crammed into tunes and defined very precisely - C13+11, Eb7+5+9, lots of slash chords etc.  I don't have shapes for these at my fingertips and I'm not always sure whether my routine simplifications/subsitutes will work against the written horn parts etc.

My normal approach when I come across an unfamiliar chord has been to analyse it and work out my own shapes from first principles, trying to play enough notes to captures the flavour of the chord, but I'm finding that a laborious, time-consuming way to do it when there are lots of unfamiliar chords. 

I'm thinking I could speed up the process if I could quickly access a few reasonably easy shapes for a particular chord. I have the likes of the Ted Greene Chord Chemistry books sitting in a cupboard somewhere  but I always thought they were overkill.  Any online resources people would recommend?
“To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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Comments

  • BarneyBarney Frets: 614
    By C13+11 ...Eb7+5+9....do you mean sharpened as in Eb7#5#9 ?
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  • Yeah I'm using a small bluetooth keyboard and it doesn't have a sharp sign.  I hoped it would still be clear what I meant.  The chords are illustrative anyway.
    “To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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  • BarneyBarney Frets: 614
    Why not simplify the awkward chords .. to the basic 1 and 3rd then add the extensions ..there no need to a add them all i wouldnt have thought .. ?
    Eb7#5#9 you could maybe just add the #5 or #9  as a triad ...?
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited October 2016
    Barney said:
    Why not simplify the awkward chords .. to the basic 1 and 3rd then add the extensions ..there no need to a add them all i wouldnt have thought .. ?
    Eb7#5#9 you could maybe just add the #5 or #9  as a triad ...?
    Yes, this is the way jazz players think but you can take it further.
    You don't really need to play the root, or even the 3rd at times, especially when playing with others.

    For instance- look at a G13 chord.

    Root: G
    3rd:    B
    5th:    D
    b7:     F
    9th:    A
    11th:  C
    13th:  E

    You can look at this chord in a number of ways.

    For instance- it is a G triad and an F maj 7 chord played at once.
    (You could also think about it as a G dominant and an A minor triad.)
    So if you play an maj 7th chords off the b7 of a V chord you will imply a dominant 13 sound.


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  • BarneyBarney Frets: 614
    octatonic said:
    Barney said:
    Why not simplify the awkward chords .. to the basic 1 and 3rd then add the extensions ..there no need to a add them all i wouldnt have thought .. ?
    Eb7#5#9 you could maybe just add the #5 or #9  as a triad ...?
    Yes, this is the way jazz players think but you can take it further.
    You don't really need to play the root, or even the 3rd at times, especially when playing with others.

    For instance- look at a G13 chord.

    Root: G
    3rd:    B
    5th:    D
    b7:     F
    9th:    A
    11th:  C
    13th:  E

    You can look at this chord in a number of ways.

    For instance- it is a G triad and an F maj 7 chord played at once.
    (You could also think about it as a G dominant and an A minor triad.)
    So if you play an maj 7th chords off the b7 of a V chord you will imply a dominant 13 sound.


    Yeah definitly all this ...another way is just look at the extensions alone ....for example 
    F13b9 is just a normal D chord on top do when its played over a F root it will really sound something...or even the Eb without the root ..

    F7#5#9 ..could be looked at as a Amaj7 triad without the 5th again over the F root will sound something 

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  • Thanks guys, but I'm pretty much doing all that stuff, just looking for some short cuts. There are a lot of complex chords in some of these arrangements and they are often changing fast.  I'm having to work out the notes in the chord, experiment to decide what I can best miss out (eg on a dom 7 sharp 9 do I miss out the major 3rd or the sharp 9). Then find a voicing I can play, taking into account what's feasible given the next chord in the sequence.  Then practice until I can play it to speed.  It's not that I don't know how to do it, but it's well outside my comfort zone and it's a slow process.  Some shape suggestions might just speed things up a bit.


    “To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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