You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Basic Chord Voicings Every Jazz Musician Should Know - #78

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

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Hey Pete, what's your favorite basic piano chord voicing? Yo, Pete. Peter. I'm Adam Annes and you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast, Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you. Coming at you solo today for the first time ever. I'm kind of shocked that this is the first time ever because we've been at this since January of last year. Peter Martin is gone most of the time and we somehow managed to do a daily podcast. Don't ask me how it's worked out, but we have.

But this week, schedule's got a little too hectic, and some things came up, and we're not able to be in the same room at the same time, even via video chat. So I'm going to do the rest of the week solo for you beautiful. You'll hear it listeners and YouTube watchers. But I'm going to make it up a little bit. We'll make up for the lack of Pete with this great Steinway piano, and we'll tackle some things that we get asked a lot about here this week and some technical things that.

hopefully you'll find useful. So let's dive into it. Today we're going to 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. 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 fundamental. All right, so let's get going. The first is a rooted voicing. We're going to call it the two plus three or the three plus two or the three plus three, whatever you want. It's, it doesn't really matter how you voice it on the piano. I know some people are very particular about this, but for for me, it's more about the concept of how these voicings are structured. These are rooted two-handed voicing. I'm going to say three plus three for this 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 2.5 and E flat, the first chord is F minor 7, and we want the root and shell in there. So I'm going to do F, which is the root. Now the shell is the third and the seventh, or the seventh in 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 3 plus 3 voicing or 3 plus 2 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 colored notes. Like we add, you know, the 9th and the 11th and the 11th and the 13th and all the alterations for altered dominance.

So for this F minor 7, I'll add the 11th. I'll add the 13th because I love that. 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 11th, B flat, the 13th 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 voicing's how they're set up, the extensions and how they sound against the root and the shell. I mean, because you literally split. by the hands. All right. Now the second, the second chord of this two five is the B flat seven. So we need root and shell in our left hand. So B flat is the root. D is the third. A flat is the

seven. Now, 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 going to 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. And then we'll add some pretty notes. We'll add the. the natural 13. So coming from that F minor 7, again, nothing but root and shell in the left hand on both these, and then nothing but the pretty notes in the right hand. Notice I'm not doubling any notes at all. We 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 7. We're going to use a 6-9 chord. And this will be like a two, three, just because of where my hand is.

I'll do root and third in the left hand. And then I'll hit the six, which is part of the shell, with my thumb in my right hand. And then the nine and the five. Nice voice leading. Altogether, 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 11th, the 13th, the fifth and then any altered extensions that you want to 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 want to 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 6. C, E, G, A, C. C, major 7 with the 7 on top, B, C, C, E, G, B.

All of these are locked hands. You know, and then there's the six 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 voicing where you have octave spread between the hands and then filling in, you always want to have the shell. And then another color note to do clusters like this. It's pretty open.

The only rule is that octave. And the variant on this is a 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 voicing.

These are related because fourth voicings are just voicings literally built in fourths. It could be five note, It could be four note, it can be six note. It can be built diatonically like on a dominant chord. There's an F7 built from the seventh. Or it could be built in fourths with a third on the top, either a minor third or major third.

These are the so what voicing. 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 force 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 voicing is too. Like these dominant diatonic, you get some nice clashes, you get some nice intervals. I love that one with the tritone on top.

So those are fourth voicing, so what voicing is crucial to understand, especially for modal harmony and stuff like that, really get you that nice chord sound. All right. And so the very last basic chord voicing, every jazz musician should know, are spread voicing. 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 want to 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. I literally have just an A flat block chord, A flat major seven. Then I have the ninth. I'll do the 13th 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 want to do a B flat seven, I do the shell, and then I'll do an altered thing. Flat 13, flat 9, sharp 11, flat 9 to the E flat, again, the 2.5. 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 out of the way. because it's thick and it it covers a lot of ground. All right, so that's it for the first solo you'll hear it ever. I hope you enjoy this. We'll be back tomorrow with the piano and Friday at the piano. And if you want to hear any kind of topic from us, you can go to you'll hear.com.

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