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Jazz Chord Punches

Chord Punching Approaches for Jazz Guitar Soloing

Marty FriedmanTommy EmmanuelSteve VaiEric GalesEric Johnson

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Jazz Chord Punches
Mimi Fox

Mimi Fox

Educator

jazz

Genres

About this course

A critical skill for any jazz guitarist is knowing how and when to punch chords when soloing, especially in a jazz trio setting. Mimi Fox’s Jazz Chord Punches will show you 8 essential approaches for comping and punching chords. Then, Mimi will show you how to apply those approaches across 5 performance studies in a variety of feels, tempos, and keys.

”This course is designed to make you a well-rounded player capable of playing in a guitar trio situation with intelligence and confidence. Being able to punch chords in the midst of playing single lines is one of the trademarks of sophisticated jazz guitar playing. Mastering this technique will also allow you to play successfully in solo, duo (with bassist/vocalist/other instruments) and in many other contexts.

There are many different concepts that we will be covering in this course! It’s important to take one segment at a time and really dig into it! You don’t have to follow the order of the course segments… feel free to skip around and explore. And be sure to use all the great tools that TrueFire provides to aid your learning process.”

In the first section of the course, Mimi presents 8 essential concepts for punching chords including chord voicings, voice leading, arpeggiating the changes, thinking like a drummer, using octaves and double stops, and following your ear.

In the second section, Mimi puts all of the essential concepts to work over 5 performance studies. She will first overview the backing track and approach and then perform over it. A detailed breakdown follows the performance.

Mimi will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way.  You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, Mimi includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own. In addition, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let’s punch some chords with Mimi Fox!

What you'll learn

  • Play multiple voicings for each chord across the fretboard
  • Apply voice leading techniques to create melodic chord progressions
  • Apply various comping rhythms (four-to-the-bar, Charleston)
  • Articulate chord changes through single-line playing without comping
  • Learn eight essential approaches for comping and chord punching
Release date: 10/22/2018 • 2h 07m runtime
intermediatelate intermediateadvancedguitarelectric guitarrhythmsoloing
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Sample lessons
Chord Punches
Chord Punches
Demonstration
Arpeggiating the Changes
Arpeggiating the Changes
Demonstration
Thinking Like a Drummer
Thinking Like a Drummer
Demonstration
Rhythm Changes in Bb
Rhythm Changes in Bb
Overview

What's included

27 lessons • 12 charts • 8 Jam Tracks

Jazz Chord Punches
Hi, I'm Mimi Fox, and welcome to Jazz Chord Punches. This course is designed to make you a well-rounded player capable of playing in a guitar trio situation with intelligence and confidence. Being able to punch chords in the midst of playing single lines is one of the trademarks of sophisticated jazz guitar playing. Mastering this technique will also allow you to play successfully in solo, duo (with bassist/vocalist/other instruments) and in many other contexts.

In this course, I'll show you 8 essential approaches for comping and punching chords. Then, we'll apply those approaches across 5 performance studies in a variety of feels, tempos and keys. All of the performance studies are tabbed and notated, plus you'll have the backing tracks to play along with on your own. You can loop and slow down the videos to work at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and lets get started!
SECTION 1: Essential Concepts
There are many different concepts that we'll be covering in this course! It's important to take one segment at a time and really dig into it! You don't have to follow the order of the course segments - feel free to skip around and explore. And be sure to use all the great tools that TrueFire provides to aid your learning process.
Chord Punches
The Beatles had three guitar players playing together to make their wonderful music! Jazz guitarists combine two of these guitar parts at any given time (and sometimes all three in the case of solo guitar!) It seems daunting at first, but once you begin to dig into this material, the guitar will open up for you in a new way!
Chord Voicings
When first learning to develop a larger chord vocabulary, it's very important to start with a chord position that you know already and then build from there. Here I've started with a Bb7 chord. First, I take one chord position and explore all the different voicings that can be made from that one shape. After that, I move onto another position of the Bb7 chord, and then another, etc.

Then, I move onto another chord. If you follow this simple and systematic approach to building your chord vocabulary, pretty soon you'll be pleasantly surprised at all of the new chords you can play!
Voice Leading
Here I'm using another simple and systematic way for developing voice leading. By moving up and down on one string at a time, building chords from the appropriate scale, pretty soon you'll be able to create a very nice sense of forward motion and a richer harmony then staying on one static chord.
Arpeggiating the Changes
I highly recommend my Mel Bay book, Guitar Arpeggio Studies on Jazz Standards, as a logical supplement to this course. For years, I used this book with my students at all of the colleges and music schools that I taught at. The results were stunning...students were playing stronger and more logical solos by learning their arpeggios instead of scales alone. Once again, the trick is to only attempt to master arpeggios for one chord at a time.
Dynamics
The next time you're listening to music at a concert, try focusing in on the different instruments and noticing the dynamics of all the musicians in the group. This is a very important part of what makes a group sound musical and sophisticated. In your own practicing, try to replicate this when you're playing along to jam tracks or playing with others. Listen closely to what your fellow musicians are doing and try to complement them gracefully. This will make you a more popular musician, and will also make for a better musical performance for all parties involved...especially the audience!

+ 20 more lessons

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Reviews

24 results

brianbowman

Verified buyer

02/25/26

Mimi Fox FTW

Mimi is not only a world class jazz guitarist and musician in general, her teaching is very kind and extraordinarily clear. Her sense of rhythm is allowed the best of any guitarist I've ever heard or studied.

waltermalan

Verified buyer

03/13/22

Love mimi Way outta my league but I'll grab a few things from this course like I do with all the courses and having them all I can from time to time go back over and find something else I haven't had time to look at. It all adds to Waltermalans playing somewhere along the line. cheers

JThompsonUK

12/29/21

Jazz chord punches

I ended up buying most if not all of the mimi fox courses. This like the others I found found provide a wealth of experience, insight and techniques from a great teacher. Definitely worth the watch and for me, wanting to get deeper/ further into jazz/blues, improve my theory and playing, a worthwhile buy...

limogne111

Verified buyer

09/15/21

As Usual, Mimi Fox's courses are very instructive.

kach

Verified buyer

08/13/21

Great educador great Courier

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