Voicings
When I say ‘voicings’ what I mean is various improvisations or techniques of sounding your chords. With voicings, you can take up a simple chord like your Major 7th and make it sound different. You are literally adding, or subtracting from the chord to give it unique sounds. That’s what I call voicing. It’s just a way of voicing out your chords differently. They are simply representations of a chord in general.
Now there’s a major difference between voicing a chord and inverting a chord. Inversion just means reshuffling your chord without changing any note in the chord. Voicing on the other hand, has to do with playing a particular chord differently [voicing the chord differently] by adding or subtracting from it.
Just like in inversions, the more notes you have in your chord, the more options of voicings you would be open to. These two ideas are solely dependent on how many notes are in your chord.
The underlying rule for voicings is basically to eliminate the 1st tone of the chord. Doing this will allow for more open voicings.
Let us look at the C Major 7th Chord again.
Now there’s a major difference between voicing a chord and inverting a chord. Inversion just means reshuffling your chord without changing any note in the chord. Voicing on the other hand, has to do with playing a particular chord differently [voicing the chord differently] by adding or subtracting from it.
Just like in inversions, the more notes you have in your chord, the more options of voicings you would be open to. These two ideas are solely dependent on how many notes are in your chord.
The underlying rule for voicings is basically to eliminate the 1st tone of the chord. Doing this will allow for more open voicings.
Let us look at the C Major 7th Chord again.
Basically, I will show you how to spice up seventh chords by changing the way you voice them.
A very important note to remember: A voicing is simply a representation of a chord.
How the notes in a chord are spaced
What notes are being played twice
Where the root of the chord is placed
What feeling a particular order gives you
These things are all important when it comes to understanding voicings.
Some musicians need a lot of help in this area. Just because you’re playing the same notes as the next musician, it doesn’t mean you’ll make that chord sound the same way the next musician does. I know musicians who can take the same old major chords we’ve been playing for years and make them sound like something we think we’ve never played before. And when you find out what they’re doing, you’re often times blown away because it’s so simple. The key is how you voice your chords and where you place them.
So in this lesson, all I would do is take regular seventh chords and alter the order and number of notes I play.
Step 1: I would start with the regular root inversions.
C Major 7th: C + E + G + B
(Actually, this is the first step to learning the idea of voicing so you understand its connection to the root, so in this steps, completely removing the 1 is not done, but the 1 is shifted to another hand).
Step 2: I will now take out the 5th interval. The 5th interval in this chord is “G” (”G” is the 5th tone in the C major scale).
Step 3: I choose to only play the root on my left hand bass.
C Major 7: C on left hand /// E + B on right hand
A very important note to remember: A voicing is simply a representation of a chord.
How the notes in a chord are spaced
What notes are being played twice
Where the root of the chord is placed
What feeling a particular order gives you
These things are all important when it comes to understanding voicings.
Some musicians need a lot of help in this area. Just because you’re playing the same notes as the next musician, it doesn’t mean you’ll make that chord sound the same way the next musician does. I know musicians who can take the same old major chords we’ve been playing for years and make them sound like something we think we’ve never played before. And when you find out what they’re doing, you’re often times blown away because it’s so simple. The key is how you voice your chords and where you place them.
So in this lesson, all I would do is take regular seventh chords and alter the order and number of notes I play.
Step 1: I would start with the regular root inversions.
C Major 7th: C + E + G + B
(Actually, this is the first step to learning the idea of voicing so you understand its connection to the root, so in this steps, completely removing the 1 is not done, but the 1 is shifted to another hand).
Step 2: I will now take out the 5th interval. The 5th interval in this chord is “G” (”G” is the 5th tone in the C major scale).
Step 3: I choose to only play the root on my left hand bass.
C Major 7: C on left hand /// E + B on right hand
Step 4: I choose to double up on the “third” (doubling up means playing octaves). The third interval in this chord is “E” (“E” is the 3rd tone in the C major scale).
C Major 7: C on left hand /// E + B + E on right hand
C Major 7: C on left hand /// E + B + E on right hand
Step 5: Once I establish my voicing (which is basically “3 + 7 + 3 over the root bass”), I will use this same voicing all the way up the piano.
You already know the seventh chords that correspond to the major scale. The trick is this: Just slide over your fingers one note and that will give you the voicing for the next chord in the scale.
C major 7 = C + E + G + B = new voicing (C /// E + B + E)
D minor 7 = D + F + A + C = new voicing (D /// F + C + F)
E minor 7 = E + G + B + D = new voicing (E /// G + D + G)
F major 7 = F + A + C + E = new voicing (F /// A + E + A)
G dominant 7 = G + B + D + F = new voicing (G /// B + F + B)
A minor 7 = A + C + E + G = new voicing (A /// C + G + C)
B half-diminished 7 = B + D + F + A = new voicing (B /// D + A + D)
Note: What you see in the first group of notes is what the chord normally looks like in root position. Then you see our voicing in parentheses.
You may be thinking… “Wow! That seems too easy. I just move my fingers over and I can learn all these new voicings!” Well, that’s because these voicings all have the 3rd and 7th in them and quite frankly, that’s all you need in order to play a chord (along with the root, of course). The 5th doesn’t really tell you much about the chord because major, minor, and dominant chords all have perfect 5th intervals. What really matters in a chord is what the 3rd and 7th are doing. (Even when you’re trying to figure out what kind of chord you’re playing, the third and seventh should be able to tell you. Any extra notes may hint at it being an extended or altered chord but the 3rd and 7th will tell you what kind of underlying chord you’re playing, in most cases).
So, try making your own voicings.
Maybe you won’t use “3 + 7 + 3” like I did. Maybe yours is the reverse: “7 + 3 + 7.” That sounds pretty good, too! And you can even take it all the way up the scale too because it has the 3rd and 7th and that’s all you need in order to form the seventh chords of a major scale.
The second option works this way:
In this case, take your basic Major 7th chord, play it on both hands fully
So left hand will have C E G B, and so will right hand. This is the actual shizzle of how to create left hand and right hand chords.
Okay let’s start with the left hand. Take out the notes in between, so you are only left with the skeleton tones in the chord, C + B. [that is you take out the 3rd and 5th, leaving you with only the 1st and 7th tones]
Okay, since we have the left hand down, lets get down to the right hand. So the concept of the left is to play out the boundary parts of the chord
For the right hand, we first of all take out the one (C) leaving us with the 3rd, 5th, and 7th
The next thing to explore is playing the right hand in different inversions: E G B, G B E, B E G
So we could have any of these:
C + B /// E + G + B
You already know the seventh chords that correspond to the major scale. The trick is this: Just slide over your fingers one note and that will give you the voicing for the next chord in the scale.
C major 7 = C + E + G + B = new voicing (C /// E + B + E)
D minor 7 = D + F + A + C = new voicing (D /// F + C + F)
E minor 7 = E + G + B + D = new voicing (E /// G + D + G)
F major 7 = F + A + C + E = new voicing (F /// A + E + A)
G dominant 7 = G + B + D + F = new voicing (G /// B + F + B)
A minor 7 = A + C + E + G = new voicing (A /// C + G + C)
B half-diminished 7 = B + D + F + A = new voicing (B /// D + A + D)
Note: What you see in the first group of notes is what the chord normally looks like in root position. Then you see our voicing in parentheses.
You may be thinking… “Wow! That seems too easy. I just move my fingers over and I can learn all these new voicings!” Well, that’s because these voicings all have the 3rd and 7th in them and quite frankly, that’s all you need in order to play a chord (along with the root, of course). The 5th doesn’t really tell you much about the chord because major, minor, and dominant chords all have perfect 5th intervals. What really matters in a chord is what the 3rd and 7th are doing. (Even when you’re trying to figure out what kind of chord you’re playing, the third and seventh should be able to tell you. Any extra notes may hint at it being an extended or altered chord but the 3rd and 7th will tell you what kind of underlying chord you’re playing, in most cases).
So, try making your own voicings.
Maybe you won’t use “3 + 7 + 3” like I did. Maybe yours is the reverse: “7 + 3 + 7.” That sounds pretty good, too! And you can even take it all the way up the scale too because it has the 3rd and 7th and that’s all you need in order to form the seventh chords of a major scale.
The second option works this way:
In this case, take your basic Major 7th chord, play it on both hands fully
So left hand will have C E G B, and so will right hand. This is the actual shizzle of how to create left hand and right hand chords.
Okay let’s start with the left hand. Take out the notes in between, so you are only left with the skeleton tones in the chord, C + B. [that is you take out the 3rd and 5th, leaving you with only the 1st and 7th tones]
Okay, since we have the left hand down, lets get down to the right hand. So the concept of the left is to play out the boundary parts of the chord
For the right hand, we first of all take out the one (C) leaving us with the 3rd, 5th, and 7th
The next thing to explore is playing the right hand in different inversions: E G B, G B E, B E G
So we could have any of these:
C + B /// E + G + B
C + B /// G + B + E
C + B /// B + E + G
That basically covers the Major 7th chord voicing. Remember, you NEVER play around with your 3rd and 7th in a chord, because they help define your chord structure and quality. When your 3rd is a Major 3rd, it means you are either playing a Major chord, an Augmented chord, or Dominant chord. When it is a minor, you are either playing a minor chord, a diminished chord, a minor major chord, or a half diminished chord.
follow the list below for the other voicings:
Minor 7th
Dominant 7th
Diminished 7th
Major 9th
Minor 9th
Minor 11th
Dominant 11th
Minor 13th
Dominant 13th
Minor 7th
Dominant 7th
Diminished 7th
Major 9th
Minor 9th
Minor 11th
Dominant 11th
Minor 13th
Dominant 13th