Basics
Getting started in swing-style playing doesn’t require a huge amount of theory knowledge, or technique, but it does require some. I’ll put up posts on each of these basics as we go on:
- Chords: major (maj), minor (m), dominant (7) and diminished (o) and half-diminished (m7b5) plus these chords with the appropriate 7ths and ‘extensions’ — normally 6ths, 9ths and b9ths. Swing playing typically makes use of a lot of inversions (the same chords but with the notes in a different order) so that the propulsive rhythm can be kept up at high tempos and with a lot of chord changes. Using inversions means that less jumping around the neck is required. Learning inversions can be intimidating at first, I certainly struggled the first few times I tried to learn, but once you understand how swing guitar players voiced chords [see a future post on 3-note ‘swing’ voicings] it gets a lot easier. Each of these chords should be learned in ‘swing’ and normal forms.
- Scales: swing players don’t really make a lot of use of scales in improvising. When you approach modern jazz guitar material it often seems like the approach is ‘first learn these two hundred scales and modes, then learn each of the half-dozen chords you can play each mode or scale over, and then you can improvise’. It looks like months and months of study before you can jam over a simple blues progression. Swing material isn’t like that. If you know the major scale and some chord shapes, you can play. If you know a couple of minor scales and the major pentatonic on top of that, you’ve pretty much got all the material you’ll need to know. Even the scales tend to be approached as if they are arpeggios with some extra notes filled in so you can make use of the chord shapes you already know.
- Arpeggios: swing improvising makes heavy use of arpeggios. This can seem intimidating but once you realize that if you know the chords to play the progression you already basically know the arpeggios, too, it gets a lot easier. A future post will illustrate just how easy it can be to play over a progression using just simple chord shapes.
These basics plus some understanding of the basic rhythms and you’re good to go. No need to know 7 different modes of the melodic minor, how to make the super-locrian work over 7#5 chords, twenty-five different ways of using the lydian, and so on.
Swing To Bop: Swing, RnB and Jazz Guitar 
Thanks for these posts! I’ve been playing for over 13 years and decided now is the time to learn all the notes on a fretboard (ie. when playing G, knowing where my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3brd, 4th, 5th, 5#th, 6th, min7th and maj7 notes are); your tutorial on learning where these notes are using the CAGED chord pattens have greatly reduced the amount of time is has taken me to pick this up! So a BIG THANKS for that!
I was wondering: what is the difference between an ‘inversion’ and a ‘voicing’? I’ve been told these words have different meanings, however I’m not sure I understand the difference between these two terms.
Looking forward to seeing some tutorials about standard swing chord progressions (rather than the blues i-iv-v and trad-jazz ii-v-i) to broaden my genre scope.
Many Thanks again!!
Tom
I’m not a theory expert, but I think of it like this:
I think the basic idea is that a ‘standard’ chord is root, third, fifth, seventh and extensions, in that order. A pianist has no problem playing them that way.
If the notes are in a different order, e.g. if it goes 3 1 5 7, for example, it’s an inversion, as the usual order of the notes is ‘inverted’. A piano player would be making that choice because they wanted a particular sound rather than because of purely technical limitations.
For guitar players it’s slightly different as much of the time the straight chord is impossible to play. 1 3 5 7, for example, is rarely possible unless you have huge hands because it’d involve big stretches. Although it’s worth looking at some of Johnny Smith’s stuff to see insanely hard ‘closed’ chord voicings.
So, guitar players often keep the root on the bottom but shift the other notes around to accommodate the fingering [you’ll hear people talk about drop 2 or drop 3 voicings, for example]. The different ways of doing this are different chord voicings. The standard G barre chord goes 1 5 1 3 5 1, for example. They aren’t inversions though, as the root note remains on the bottom.
If the bottom note isn’t the root, it’s an inversion [and there might be different ways of voicing a particular inversion depending how you finger the notes and in what order].