30 Jazz Turnarounds

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Jazz guitarists usually play through the changes of a blues or jazz standard several times during the performance. The turnaround is the chord progression, which is played at the end of the song to get you back to the beginning of the song. Turnarounds are also used in most AABA song forms to get you from the first A section to the 2nd A section.

Jazz guitar players need a wide and diverse vocabulary of turnarounds to spice up their comping for the vocalists and soloists in the band. In this collection of 30 Jazz Turnarounds, Frank Vignola stocks your inventory with a wide variety of diverse turnarounds that will take your comping skills to the next level on the gig or at the jam.

”We’ll go through 30 different ways to play a turnaround. We’ll use a variety of common jazz progressions like the 1-6-2-5, both six minor and dominant. We’ll go through some modern bebop style turnarounds, chromatic approaches, and techniques like using a common tone on the top of each chord and use five different keys. You can transpose these turnarounds to any key and play them everywhere on the fretboard.”Frank will perform each of the 30 turnarounds, over a rhythm track, and then break them down note by note, chord by chord. In the performance demonstration video, Frank performs the turnaround straight, as written, playing it four times through to practice the fingerings. For the rest of the track, Frank will use some rhythmic approaches to play the turnaround as he would at the gig, on the bandstand.

You’ll note that there are two measures of the groove before the turnaround is demonstrated. Frank uses a ii-V for those two measures because most of the time, at the end of a song, a ii-V is used in some capacity to bring you to the last chord and to the spot in the song where you would play the turnaround.
All of the performances are tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes. You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop and slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons. Plus, Frank includes all of the backing tracks for you to work with on your own.

Grab your guitar and let’s beef up our turnaround chops with Frank Vignola!