UPDATED
Oct 12, 2015
Building a Solid Jazz Chord Foundation for `Ukulele
These more sophisticated, contemporary chord voicings find their way into a wide variety of music.
PUBLISHED: Jan 2, 2005 UPDATED: Oct 12, 2015 • VIEWS: 80 • LESSON CODE: UL42-7j •
Instruments: ukulele Subjects: intermediate • advanced • chords • jazz • core
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Building a Solid Jazz Chord Foundation for `Ukulele
Commonly called "Jazz Chords", these more sophisticated, contemporary chord voicings find their way into a wide variety of music forms and styles. This lesson is the first on the series that builds your core foundation for these chords.
This is an expanded and improved version of my Building A Solid Jazz Chord Foundation for Ukulele workshop that I've presented several times at various ukulele festivals over the past several years.
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This is an expanded and improved version of my Building A Solid Jazz Chord Foundation for Ukulele workshop that I've presented several times at various ukulele festivals over the past several years.
The original article, for jazz guitar was published in Just Jazz Guitar magazine. I revised and improved it since the original publication.
Numeric Chord Formula
The secret / not so secret code to unraveling where the notes of a chord come from.
From knowing the Numeric Chord Formula of any chord you can get to the notes of that chord from its corresponding major scale. And, inversely from the names of the notes of a chord you can get to its numeric formula. For some chords it will be the intervals that come before the names of the chord tones, for other chords it might be the intervals first. The order does not matter, only the outcome.
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Pick up any chord dictionary, and one thought that should go through your mind is - TOO MANY CHORDS There is now way to memorize all those shapes. It would be better off learning how they came up with all those shapes. Most chord dictionaries are also just like pages transposed to all possible keys.

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Upper Partials or extensions for chords are the 9th, 11th, and 13ths of a chord. The 9, 11 and 13 can be altered chord tones depending on the type: e.g: b9, #9, #11, b13. These numbers, the 9, 11 and 13 refer to the scale tone/chord tone relative to the major scale used for building all chords.

Core Chords - The Big Six - Building a Solid Chord Foundation • Updated: Jan 23, 2020
The Big Six Core Chords is a series of lessons for building your core, essential 4-part chords. These chords commonly called jazz chords, are really just 4-part chords used in a wide range of musical styles. These chords include: Seventh , Major Seventh, Minor Seventh, Half Diminished Seventh or Minor Seven Flat Five, Diminished Seventh, and Augmented Seventh. These six chords form a core set of chords.

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Naturally, for Ukuleles, all chords need to be voiced using only the four strings available. You would think that this is limiting when in actuality it's quite liberating when you learn the makeup of chords. Chord can be categorized into four categories: "Open Position Chords", "Movable Form Chords", "4-part - a.k.a. Jazz Chords", and "Free Form Chords."

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