Today we're gonna talk about four basic chord voicings every jazz musician should know.
Now, notice I said every jazz musician
and not every jazz pianist.
And that's because these four are
kind of the foundation of voicings in this music
and even if you don't play piano,
they can come in handy,
especially for arranging and for even just, like,
quick arranging on the fly.
If you know what these voicings are,
that can be very handy.
If you are playing with a pianist
who plays these voicings and you understand,
sort of, the basic fundamental concepts of them,
you can kind of intuitively know where they might
be going or know where the harmony could take them
or what their options are and that could help you play
with them as a bass player, as a drummer, as a soloist,
what have you.
And if you're a pianist,
you probably do know these voicings.
If you don't, you should, for sure.
And if you don't know them
in all 12 keys really really well, now's the time.
Don't waste time.
Because these are super, super fundamental.
All right, so let's get going.
The first is a rooted voicing.
We're gonna call it the two plus three
or the three plus two
or the three plus three, whatever you want.
It doesn't really matter how you voice it on the piano.
I know some people are very particular about this
but for me, it's more about the concept
of how these voicings are structured.
These are rooted two-handed voicings.
I'm gonna say three plus three for this demonstration.
And the concept is very simple.
In the left hand, you have the root and the shell,
if you're doing three in the left hand, right.
So, if we're doing a two-five in E flat
the first chord is F minor seven.
And we want that root and shell in there
so, I'm gonna do F which is the root.
Now, the shell is the third and the seventh,
or the seventh and the third,
so we'll do the seventh E flat.
I have large enough hands that I can hit tenths,
so we'll do the third which is A flat.
Like that.
So, that's the first rule of this three plus three voicing
or three plus two voicing.
Is that it's built up from the root and the shell.
Nothing goes in between the root and the shell.
Everything is on top of that.
Now, in your right hand,
now is where we add the color notes,
like, we add, you know, the ninths
and the elevenths and the thirteenths
and all the alterations for altered dominants.
So, for this F minor seventh,
I'll add the eleventh, I'll add the thirteenth,
because I love that sound and I'll add the ninth.
So, here from the bottom up I have F,
E flat, A flat as the tenth and then I have the eleventh,
B flat, the thirteenth, D, and the nine on top
Beautiful voicing.
Very, very handy.
Easy to understand.
What's great about this too,
if you don't play the piano,
is you can really see with these voicings
how they're set up, the extensions
and how they sound against the root and the shell.
I mean, 'cause it's literally split by the hands.
All right, now the second chord
of this two-five is the B flat seven.
So, we need root and shell on our left hand.
So, B flat is the root, D is the third, A flat is the seven.
So, this is good voice leading by the way,
from the, two.
All right, so root.
Three, seven of B flat.
And now we're gonna add some pretty notes.
We'll add the flat nine,
we'll add the, let's see, sharp 11.
And then we'll add the natural 13.
So, coming from that F minor seven,
again, nothing but root and shell
in the left hand on both of these.
And then nothing but the pretty notes
in the right hand, notice I'm not doubling any notes at all.
Try to not double when we can.
Especially don't double the third if it's possible.
Just for overtone reasons.
Okay.
So, the one is E flat major seven.
We're gonna use the six-nine chord
and this will be like a two-three.
Just 'cause of where my hand is
I'll do root and third in the left hand,
and then I'll hit the sixth,
which is part of the shell with my thumb in my right hand.
And then the nine and the five.
Nice voice leading.
All together, it sounds like this.
Pretty standard, but something that I think
every jazz musician should know how to do
and how to structure.
Again, from the bottom up, it's the root and then the shell
and then any of the pretty notes.
We're talking the ninth, the eleventh,
the thirteenth, the fifth,
and then any altered extensions
that you wanna do especially on dominant chords.
You could do it on the one-two
with that sharp 11,
but anything like that is easily built
with this basic chord voicing.
Okay.
So, the next one.
Number two out of our four basic chord voicings
every jazz musician should know
is block chords or closed voicings
or lock hands or whatever you wanna call it.
This is a five note voicing.
And for our purposes here,
it doesn't really matter what scale you're using.
It's octaves.
The left hand is playing just one note.
The octave of the top note of the chord.
And then the right hand is filling in whatever chord it is.
So, in this case, we'll do C major sixth.
C, E, G, A, C.
C major seven with the seven on top.
B, C, E, G, B.
All of these are locked hands.
You know, and then there's the sixth diminished thing,
which we'll get into actually on Friday.
The Barry Harris thing.
That works really well with this style of voicing.
But these five note voicings where you have
octaves spread between the hands and then filling in.
You always wanna have the shell.
And then another color note.
You could do clusters like this.
It's pretty open.
The only rule is that octave.
And the variant on this is the drop two,
where you take this and the second from the top,
you drop it down.
It's the most common.
Just a block chord.
Dropping that.
And this is the block chord.
With the locked hand.
Or the closed voicing.
Okay.
Number three is fourths and "So What" voicings.
These are related because fourth voicings are
just voicings literally built in fourths.
It could be five note,
it could be four note,
it could be six note.
It could be built diatonically, like on a dominant chord.
Here's an F seven built from the seventh.
Or it could be built in fourths
with a third on the top, either a minor third
or a major third.
These are the "So What" voicings.
Fourth.
Four fourths and then the major third.
Okay, what's crucial about these is
these are easily moved around diatonically.
So, if I'm in the "So What" voicing,
the fourths with the major third on top.
We're in D minor here so,
diatonically, it's all white keys on the piano
and you've heard pianists overuse this a million times.
You could just move it up diatonically
and it works in other keys.
And same thing with just straight up fourth voicings.
Like these dominant diatonics.
You get some nice clashes, you get some nice intervals.
I love that one with the tritone on top.
So those are fourth voicings, "So What" voicings,
crucial to understand,
especially for modal harmony and stuff like that.
Really get you that nice chordal sound.
All right, and so the very last basic chord voicing
every jazz musician should know are spread voicings.
The only rule with this is that we have a voicing
in the left hand.
It could be a block chord, it could be a cluster,
it could be a fourth voicing.
Whatever basic left hand voicing you wanna do.
And then octaves in the right hand
with a note in the middle.
Either a fourth up from the bottom or a fifth.
So, let's say we're doing A flat, major nine.
Literally have just an A flat block chord.
A flat major seven.
Then I have the ninth.
I'll do the thirteenth and then the ninth.
So, my upper extensions are here in this spread.
This could be an F minor seven.
And then check it out.
So, if I wanna do a B flat seven,
I do the shell and then I'll do an altered thing.
Flat 13, flat nine, sharp 11, flat nine.
To the E flat again, a two-five.
So that's the only rule.
And you can move these up and down.
Keeping the left hand the same.
For this sound probably.
These are very, very useful.
These are also really great
if you're arranging for a larger ensemble.
You can build some big sounds with this
and when you hear a piano player do it,
get outta the way,
'cause it's thick and it covers a lot of ground.
All right, so that's it for the first solo
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