You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 of Our Favorite Voicings Concepts - #150

Episode Date: July 5, 2018

In today's episode, Peter and Adam list 7 of their favorite voicing concepts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Menace. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. All right, now what are we got today? Today we're going to talk about our seven favorite voicing concepts. Is this going against what we usually preach about with voicing? That there's not really one great voicing.

That's why we're saying voicing concepts. Remember we were talking about doing seven of our favorite voicings. But that voicings, we always say, are part of a progressive situation, shall we say. Yeah, we don't want to get in the habit of just plunking our. hands down. Yeah, we don't have a favorite voicing, so we have a favorite voicing concept. I like it. Okay, I like it. Okay. Where are we going to start? Why don't we start with root plus shell plus color? Okay, this is where I start a lot of, you know, my students on this voicing, because not only is it easy to play, but it really kind of helps spell out what the court can be.

So it's interesting because I start a lot of my students with just root. I made my students are dumber than yours. No, I mean, root plus shell, plus color. I don't take those kind of students. That's good. I need your students. So root plus shell plus color, when I say root plus shell, that's the left hand, right? So if we're going to do a C major seven, we have a C, and then we have the shell. And the shell is, of course, third and the seventh. So third and the seventh. So C, E, B in the left hand. And then plus color, these are notes that help to color the chord. The root plus shell, that tells you all you need to. know about the chord. That defines the chord, but the color can really help you tell the story

that you're trying to tell. And give you options, give you little variations, right? Exactly. The most common color tones that you'll hear are the... Yellow. Oh, no. No. Okay. Well, depending on your synesthesia, this might be yellow, but are the fifth, the ninth, and the 13th, you know, on a major seven. So you usually would want to add two of these. So we'll do kind of a three plus two voicing here. So you have root and shell, and then you can add the ninth, the D, and the fifth. Very common voicing. You could, oftentimes the fifth will be replaced with the 13th, you know, the A.

Also very common. And this works on any chord. If this is a C minor seven, beautiful. On minor chords, you can often add the 11th instead of the 5th. So again, I have C, E flat, B, and the ninth, which is D, and the 11th, which is F. And these go, you can do these in all kinds of inversions, too. If you want to add three color tones, especially on minor seven chords, I added that 13th, so I have C, B, flat, E flat.

I can reach a 10th in my left hand. Can you? Yes, sir. Well, it depends what key it is. And then I have the 11th, F, the 13th, A, and the 9th, D. That's a great sound. You know, it's an easy way to sort of help yourself understand voicing because the left hand takes care of the quality of the chord. And the right hand is free to experiment with colors.

Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's a great way to build up because you can just add one color tone. Totally. I mean, the root and the shell is fixed, although there's always different ways to do with different versions. But then it's such a great way people always talk about, how do I practice voicing. This is the way you do it.

You build up. That's right. You've got something that's set. You've got three notes in the lines. left hand, that's what it's going to be. And then you're adding one, two, or three notes. And, you know, as you said, the fifth, the ninth, the 11th. And we can also do alterations later on. Absolutely. Yeah. With dominant chords, it becomes endless of what you can. And I mean, it's very simple in terms of which ones work. It's certainly in terms of a static situation. And that's

what sounds good. But this is a great way, you know, if you're kind of an intermediate player or you're learning tunes, you know, to go through tunes using this technique is a great way to do it. I mean, not only are you learning the tunes and learning what color notes sound good, but you're also practicing some solo piano skills because... Hello. You know, if you have that root and shell in your left hand, you have the basis for... You got everything you need.

And, I mean, the color tones then, like, this helps your ears so much to understand what those color tones do so that when you start playing lines and melodies, you'll know what it's going to sound like when you land on a ninth or something with that voicing in the left. It all works together. Practice going through your tunes and just with this, you know, root shell, your left hand and color tones and you're right. And then practice leading those voices together in interesting ways.

It's a great... Good stuff. All right. Next, we're going to do fourth voices. Oh, you've got this one. And this, for fourth voicing, what we mean here, I mean the basic sound is a few different variations. And I'm not going to go through the exact notes on all these, but you kind of know what the sound is.

The concept, I think, behind it for me is all force and then sometimes you have a major third, like here on. top and then you're moving that up and then here we're all force it's usually mostly perfect force but then sometimes in order to diatonicly fit within whatever chord you're at and I mean here I'm over a Dorian sort of a sound so then you'll make an alteration to make sure you fit into that so here we've got a tritone as well and then all perfect force and then these are great you know for chromatic move is

and this is going with the straight force which is the ones I really love I mean these are all cool and I like those but I love just the fourth what was the other word you had for that I was stumped on quartal quartal like a quart of milk like a quart of milk quartal

quartal yeah you love saying that don't you I do one more time quartal you're so good at it and it's great what have we got next cool so we're switching it up here again Yeah, so this one, we definitely need to switch because this is such a mystery for me.

This is the infamous and famous drop two voicing. Well, this is what's so crazy to me is like you play this one all the time. I know, but when you give it that the nomenclature of the drop two, I get nervous. You just never learn. You know what? I'll let our listeners in on something. Peter doesn't know what the drop two is. He plays it all the time, but and this is a good lesson because he plays it, you know, by ear,

and he plays it in the context of tense. So when you're soloing and using tense, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, but it's usually in the context of your soloing with tense. And I think that's something that gets lost with the drop two. That's essentially what it is. You're filling in the chords as you're playing with tense. It's something that only pianists can do basis a little bit, but they can't fill in the chords.

That's right, right. Or if they can, we don't want to hear it. But the concept of the drop two is very easy, and there's a million places you can learn this. But if you have just a four-note voicing, you know, we'll do a C major 7 again. C, E, G, B, right? I love you, porkie.

That's what it sounds like you're playing. No, so the top note, B is one, and this is just for these purposes. One, G, the second to top note is two, and so on, three and four on the way down. Drop two. So basically you take the two, which is G, the second to top note, and you drop it down an octave. And that's it. That's all drop two means. Any chord, whether it's a D minor, you drop that A.

It's that simple. And there's really no other... But really, you know, once you spread those out, it becomes about those tenths. So I would encourage you to not just work on the drop two stuff, but throw in those tenths. It's a great sound. Good, good. Sorry, I spaced out there for a minute, so I wasn't paying attention.

So you'll never going to learn drop two, bro. You never learn drop two. But you know, you can also go to the Open Studio blog. You have some great posts on there, digging a little deeper, I would say, on the drop two, which is open studio network.com blog. Yeah, and it's also part of our Elements of Jazz Piano course. If anybody's a member of that, there's a drop two lesson.

But the blog, I have a recent post on Barry Harris' take on it, which is... Yeah. And I believe on Elements of Jazz, when you talk about the drop two, you actually drop it like it's hot. Drop it like it's hot. Drop it like it's hot. Oh, boy. Okay, there we go.

Oh, boy. Okay, now we got... number four of our seven favorite voicing concepts. We've got the cluster core. Maybe I'll jump on this one because I love this. I mean, I know you love it too. Why are you taking all the modern stuff, man? We're going back and forth.

So the cluster, and, you know, I've heard this used a lot, and I'm maybe using it wrong, but at this most basic sound is this. And, you know, these are rootless three-note voicings. You can go four. But I usually find that, you know, going to four notes kind of take something away from it a little bit. I mean, again, always in terms of the progression, where you're going, that would sort of decide things. But just on the, for face value, I love the cluster just being three notes. And normally you're going to have like a major second or a minor second as part of it.

Yeah, yeah. And generally you want to, you don't want to avoid, but oftentimes the cluster is not at the top. It's in the middle or at the bottom. Right, right. So here we got the minor second. Then we got a major third. And this can work, you know, over a couple different chords. But when it's rootless, I'm kind of hearing it like F minor, so the nine. ninth, the third, and the fifth. But it can, you know, kind of half diminished. It can also be for the major. Although I would usually, you know, over like a major seven, A flat major step,

I would move it up to that just to not have the root. And then there's sort of some extended clusters that are more open, that kind of stuff, or that kind of thing. But really, for just the cluster, you're talking about that. There is a good four-note one that kind of jumps on the, one you're three no one you're doing like play a D flat triad with a F on the top D flat triad like second inversion D flat triad and put the G on the bottom that's one of my favorites yeah yeah that's good that's good stuff and then these a lot of times

will work like I did at the beginning kind of you know a lot of times we have trouble with half diminish like what's a good voicing these work good and always for voicing I love to sort of change it up as you're moving horizontally so cluster open and then Cluster, that kind of a thing. And clusters are very effective as a voicing concept with chromatic. Yeah, think of them as tension builders, because that's what they're doing. You're building tension, and then you go to a nice spread voicing, a nice open voicing, and it's that much more effective.

Yep, absolutely. So that's cluster. So what have we got number five? Oh, why don't you stay there for number five? Okay, so we got two plus three. And I think we were thinking about this. What was two plus three? Two plus three is... Rubister.

No, this is the sort of standard. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so many different ways to do this. Ruted voicing. Ruted, yeah. So your only two rules are that it's rooted and that there's two notes in the left and three in the right hand.

Yep. Okay. And again, this is just as a concept to develop your different ideas. Once you actually play, we're never thinking rules. I have to go to the root. I don't. We're constantly adjusting and thinking about where we are in the moment, where we're coming from, where we're going.

but ones that I love are very open and have elements of those fourth voicings in them. So they've got several fourth intervals, but they're not as fourthy. Is that a word? Forty, frothy, fourthy? It is now. So I'm thinking about stuff like this, you know. So we've got those two fourth voicings, but we've also got that triad, second inversion, major six. So two notes in the left hand, three in the right hand.

And a lot of times it kind of works out that it'll be a triad. This is, you know, minor or there. That's major. So many different things you can use it on diminish. But it's always two and three in the roots on the bottom. That's a good one. All right, I'll take this one. Okay.

Shell plus one plus octave. Oh, what does that mean? What does that mean? Hello. Shell plus one plus octave. So this is building, and this is a concept. that I use with my students too, and I know you've talked about it as well.

Your good students, you mean. My good students, not the crappy ones. You know, from number one on this list, right, which was the root and shell plus color. This one is a root list voicing, but it's shell plus one, one color note usually. So let's say we have a C7, so we'll do the third and the seventh, E and B flat, and then I'll add one color note,

usually the D. Still in the left hand. Still in the left hand. And then you add octaves in your right hand. plus one note in between the octave. So in this case, just very basic, we'll do C-G-C. You could add the 13th instead of the G. But this is a very common and very malleable voicing.

And there's no hard and fast rule to this. Really, it's like whatever sounds good. You can create little melodies. Oh, come on. Yeah, those are fun. That was jazzy. Thank you. In a good way.

Awesome. So that's number six. So we've got just one more. Why don't you throw a little of the three plus three on them? What do you know about that? Three plus three. This is classic Frank Mantooth. Oh, yeah. Remember that book that was popular? Yeah, I was going to say he wrote the book on voicing. In the 80s. These were his kind of voicings. But this is, you know, it's funny because this was your suggestion, this one.

And I remember you saying when you were younger, you didn't want to play these. No. You were like, man, everybody plays these. It's so basic, but it's just so effective. It feels good. It sounds good. it really leads you from one place to the other. It's very flexible. Definitely works within a progression.

It's like a warm jazz blanket. It's like a warm, just piano-y kind of blanket. Well, let's hear it. Let's hear it. There you go. Does that sound familiar? It sounds familiar. Now, this is like the very prototypical, you know, two-handed three-plus-three voicing.

I'm playing an F-7. There's where the root would be, but I have the seventh, the E-flat, the third, the A, and the 13th, the D in my left hand. Also, that's a good left hand voicing on its own. But if you're comping for someone, behind someone, you can add in your right hand up from that D, all fourths, G, C, F. This also works for Major 7, if you want to use the... It's a little clashy, but you could do it.

It kind of evokes that great band from the early 80s, the clash. The clash. And it's like you said, there's no root on the bottom, but the root's on the top. I think that's one thing that really focuses this voicing. We flipped it from having the root on the bottom to being on the top. That's a great voicing. Yeah. I mean, it's got great symmetry.

It's all fourths, but it does have that one tritone on the bottom so that it fits in diatonically dominant. These work over the, you know, kind of a C minor 11, two. Throw a little C in the bass there. Flexible. Flexible core. I'm going to throw in a bonus one because I just thought of, you know, one of the common questions that we don't get asked that we should get asked because these usually sound pretty bad when I hear other people play them.

Diminished voicings. Diminished seventh. Well, I hit a little bit with the cluster. You did. Actually, you did, yeah. Full diminished seventh voicing. There are some good options. You don't just have to play two-handed.

Two-handed double diminished. Double-diminished. That's not double-diminished. That's not double-diminished. So this voicing that I'm about to play really changed things for me a few years ago when I... Nerd alert, nerd alert. Go ahead. So I'm doing an F-sharp diminished here. And I'm doing like a 2 plus 3.

In my left hand, I'm playing F-sharp and C. And then I'm playing F with my thumb on my right hand, F, A-flat, and E-flat. So I have, on the outer edges, the notes, all four notes of the diminished seventh chord, the F-sharp, diminished seventh. And then in the middle, though, there with my thumb, I have the F, which is from the diminished scale, which is a whole step above, right, from basically a double diminished. And you can vary where this note outside of the, you know, diminished scale comes from, or the diminished chord comes from. But I like this one.

It's so much fun to move around. If you move it up, you know, in minor thirds, all of these work. the diminished pattern arpeggio those all work for the same chord you know it's great stuff so good you know if you're ever on a one

it's much better than that sound we want to get away from that sound cool all right good stuff so there you go that's seven that's eight that's eight we got a little bonus and we actually had a request we had a comment from one of our listeners I don't know if we can commit to doing this all the time but he was like, you know, I love listening to the podcast every day.

I'm walking the dog, but a lot of times I don't have something to write with. So they wanted recap. I mean, my first thought was like, yeah, recap. Well, yeah, yeah. I'm a people please. No, but I was also like, wow, you could always rewind it and listen. He realized it's not in real time, right? You can listen again.

It's not a live thing. But that's okay. We're here to help our listeners, no problem. So we'll give you a quick recap. We got the root plus shell plus color. That's number one. We got the fourth voicing is number two. We got drop two, number three.

Cluster, number four. Number five is two plus three. Yep. And then we got the shell plus one plus octaves. Then we had the three plus three, the Frank Mantooth classic root on top. And then we got the bonus with the double diminished. That's right. There you go.

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These guys discuss many topics that every musician needs to hear. It's like having the best personal trainers with you every day. Highly recommend this to all musicians. Emphasis is mine. I just want to everybody know that when Peter reads those reviews, he looks directly into a mirror. It's like a little daily adornation. As I comb my hair back, yeah.

And that's from Triton e-subs from Japan. So much love and thanks, Triton. That's dope. Don a ragato goes amazas. And yeah, so please keep those. come in and I'll just give you, if we want to get a little competitive between the countries, we could do that. Right now, the U.S. is in first place.

It's like the World Cup of, you'll hear it reviews. That's right. US, we got 20 from the U.S. We got three from Canada. We got two from the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. I'll pick it up, UK. Yeah. And then Ireland, we've got one.

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Oh, do we have it ready yet? We don't not have it ready yet, but look for tomorrow's episode. We'll have some kind of special. That's right. We'll be coming at you. So until then, you'll hear it.