Ch 4 More on Comping

The main focus of this book is to provide information and ideas to help you advance your chord vocabulary and improve your accompaniment skills, especially in the area of comping. As briefly discussed in Jazz Guitar Chords and Accompaniment, the role of guitar in a small jazz band has become somewhat different in recent years. Instead of playing every beat of the measure and keeping time, the modern guitarist accompanies more sparsely and interactively with what the soloist and rest of the band are playing at the moment. In other words, the accompaniment has generally become a more supportive and complementary role, or what is knows as "comping."

So far, you’ve learned many guitar chords and rhythmic patterns and practiced creating some of your own comping examples. In this chapter, let’s take it a step further and explore various elements and techniques involved in comping. The premise stated earlier—that pre-planning your accompaniment cannot be done in such improvised music as jazz—remains unchanged. However, studying the basic principles and approaches will help you to integrate the information you’ve learned thus far and develop better comping skills along the way.

First, in Section 4-1, we’ll consider what factors influence us to select a particular chord voicing when comping. Then, Section 4-2 will introduce one of the most important concepts and considerations of comping: voice-leading. Finally, in Section 4-3, we’ll look at the various comping techniques and approaches commonly used by many players.

( from More Jazz Guitar Chords and Accompaniment)