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 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.

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.