Today I want to show you how to play these jazz piano voicings that are great to build
up your solos or even when you're comping for other soloists in the band. let's work on
a simple jazz progression and look at some voicing techniques and comping patterns
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of Music resources." Of course, there are many ways to implement these big Jazz voicings, so we'll
probably do a few videos on them. But today, we'll focus on block voicings. So we'll play both hands
at the same time building a voicing with six seven or even eight notes. We can think of the
hands splitting the notes in any of these patterns: three plus three, four plus three, three plus four,
or even four plus four. On a C7#11, we can play something (three plus three) like this..
4+3 could be this... or 3+4... and 4+4 could be something like this...
So, what am I doing? The first thing is to build a rootless voicing on your left hand.
So here's a C7 4-note rootless voicing. Basically, I'm taking a regular C7 in first inversion and
replacing the root with the ninth, and the fifth with the 13th. We're not going to go too deep into
rootless voicings today, but we have an entire course on rootless voicings, where we explain
how to build them, what the rules are, and so on. So check that out on our website mDecks.com (and
I'll put a link in the description down below for you.) So, now that I have my 4-note rootless voicing
on my left hand, I can omit a note to turn it into a 3-note wordless voicing. So I can take away
the 13th, and get a chord that still has the two guide tones: the third and the seventh (E and Bb,)
or take away the b7 and get a quartal rootless voicing E A and D. And there's a
big difference between these two 3-note voicings. The first one conserves the quality
of the C7 chord, because it has the two guide tones, but the second one is much more ambiguous.
It doesn't even sound like a dominant chord anymore, even when we add the bass. This could
even be a C69 voicing. So make sure you consider these properties when you build your voicings.
They're both great options, depending on what kind of sound that you're going for. On the right hand,
we're going to build the voicings using an octave and an inner note (or two, if we want a
4-note voicing) Of course, there are other ways of building the right hand voicings for these big
chords, but let's just start with that for now. Co on this C7#11 you can play this A E and A,
or maybe A F# A (to get the #11, F#) or this: F# D and F#. And if you want,
you can add an A to get a 4-note voicing. The best way to think about these voicings is
to look at the interval between the inner notes and the bottom note (or the top note), and the best
intervals are: the 5th from the bottom (perfect or diminished), and the major 3rd from the top. But
you can also play notes: from the major third above the bottom, to the minor third below the top note.
And you can play these voicings really high if you want. A great exercise to practice is
to take a chord --let's say our C7#11-- and then choose the note, that
you want to play, in octaves (let's say F#) and then, try all the intervals
and study what type of chord you get over the C7 rootless voicing on your right hand.
Of course, some of the options are useless -- like F# B F#, is going to sound terrible
over a C7 chord, because B is the major 7th. You also have to check the voicing that you're using
on the left hand. For example, if I play the 4-note rootless voicing -- I showed you before -- and I
play F# C# F#, we get a 9th and a b9 in the voicing, which don't really
like each other very much. The b9 and the #9 work really well though. Look at this...
Changing the D to a D# on the left hand makes a huge difference in the sound.
But don't just follow the theory, use your ears, because these voicings with an octave
and a perfect fifth are so consonant that they would stand lots of tension.
So, that doesn't sound bad at all! -- to my ears anyway -- although it probably should. One more thing about
consonance: look at this voicing here... (that) sounds pretty harsh, doesn't it? But note-wise, there's
nothing wrong with it. The problem is this: the A to Bb, is a b9 interval -- the most
dissonant interval in music -- and the A (tension 13) is below our Bb (a guide-tone.) This combination is
guaranteed to sound really dissonant. Can we use it? Sure! Listen to what happens when I add the root...
Be aware of these properties when you're practicing these voicings. It's as much about
ear training, as it is about voicing practice. So, to this point, we've been talking a lot about certain
techniques, and how to use them within a vacuum. But how do we apply all of this in the real world? in a
real chord progression? Well, there are two things to consider -- when applying the stuff that we're
talking about today. 1) voice-leading and 2) motivic developments. Let's talk about the voice-leading
first. A good approach to sound voice -leading, is adapting what you have, to where you
want to go. In other words, if I play F# D F# on a C7 chord, and I need to go to F7alt,
all I really need to do is flatten the D and keep the F#'s. Of course there are many other viable
options that jibe with F7 altered, but moving only one note (when possible) is the best way to create
smooth voice-leading. It's also important to notice how changing the inner-note is more subtle than
changing the top and bottom notes in the voicing. Now let's talk about our other point: motivic
development. We'll basically define a motive as: any melodic/rhythmic pattern or idea. And
motivic development would just be sequencing or expanding on that idea. When it comes to motivic
development, try to maintain the shape of your original motive. For example: if I play this on C7...
then I can play the exact same shape on F7 altered, by merely changing the D to a Db.
and we can always add a little variation, by slightly shifting one of the beats.
Speaking of rhythm, what are some good rhythms and copying patterns that we can use? Well, a thorough
and complete answer to this question is almost endless, but as Stravinsky famously said: "the more
constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self." So, what we'll do today, is offer you some
constraints. We'll show you 3 tried and true rhythms, that you can always go to. The cool thing
about these rhythmic words, is that they all fit in one measure, and they're all 3-note rhythms.
So, you can use them to develop any 3-note motive. 1.. 2... and 3...
So, if I play #1 on the C7#11, you can then use #2 on F7alt, and then you can
go back to #1 on Bbmaj7, and for the Ebmaj7, we can use #3...
And when you put them together you get this...
on the next video we'll take a look at a systematic way of learning rhythmic words
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