hi! i'm tim richards author of theexploring jazz piano books. this is a second clip relating to volume two of the book. in this clip i'm going to demonstrate a range of three and fournote shapes, rootless voicings, the ii-v-i, cycle dominant sevenths, altereddominants, and turnarounds, and so on. if you're serious about your playing it'sessential to become familiar with these voicings they're used by allprofessional pianists. if you're new to rootless voicings i strongly suggestreviewing clip number five from the volume one series before embarking onthe present clip. we'll start with dominant chords, since they have morevariations than any other chord type.
i'm assuming you already know ordinary four note dominant chords and that you're familiar with all their inversions aswell. one of the main characteristics of modern jazz piano is the trend to moveaway from shapes like those, and play more rootless voicings.generally thereare two families of rootless voicings. one has the third of the chord on thebottom and the other the seventh. let's take the family with a third on thebottom, the first inversion family. we'll start with a standard c7 firstinversion shape, the second shape we played earlier, but we're playing it nowan octave lower. first of all let's omit the 5th of thechord leaving us with just 3, 7 and root
to turn this into a rootlessvoicing, move the root up a tone to become the 9th. so you're now playing a three note rootless voicing; call it "3, 7, 9". the 3rd and 7thof the chord cannot be changed but the 9th is movable. try flattening orraising the top note there's c7, flat 9 and if we raise the 9th we get c7sharp 9. the second family can easily be accessed by playing a root positiontriad and moving the root down a tone. this gives you the classic "7, 3, 5" rootless voicing so this 7:35 voicing can also have thetop note flattened c7 flat 5 or c7 sharp 5or we can raise it yet another semitone
and that gives us c-13 so that's like ac7 chord with a sixth on top so these are all three note rootless voicingsi'll now show you how you can integrate these dominant voicings into a two fiveone sequence using the most efficient voice leading because we're going aroundthe cycle of fifths voicings will alternate third and seventh on thebottom so starting with a seven three five shape on g minor seven i play thebass line the roots in the left hand this is a way of playing the two fiveone in f note how the change from g minor to 7 2to 5 involves moving one note only seventh of the g minor falls by asemitone becomes the third of the c
seven on the right are two options withflat nine or sharp nine chords on the five these provide color andchromaticism to the otherwise diatonic chord sequence because the notes d flatand e flat are not in the key of f major try playing one or the other with the onthe five chord or so they're alternatives but you can alsoplay both of them half bar each will now play the chords using the oppositevoicings starting with 379 on g minor here we go seven four to the third of the beforebut this time it's in the middle of the
voicing now the same chords with an alterationon the c7 this makes the top note descending semitones that always soundscool when first learning your rootless voicings it's a good idea to play themin the right hand with the bass line in the left so you can hear the completesound of the court several tracks in volume to demonstrate this i'm going toplay the walking bass line given in dominant seventh workout number twotrack 16 this goes around a complete dominant seventh cycle upper fourth inevery bar in three note shapes we're starting on a seven with a three sevennine voicing alternating with seven
three six four d seven the bassline usesroots and fifths only one two one two three four many pianists had a fourth note to therootless shapes so that 379 becomes three five seven nine so that's from major seventh chord youcould also play three five six nine for a six nine chord for a dominantchord back to three five seven nine with a flattened seventh again you canput the sixth in that cord instead of the fifth and if we raised the fifth and the ninthwe get what's called an altered chord
the three types of dominant all of which are in this three fiveseven nine family for minor after flatten the third three five seven nine or you could playsix nine c minor six nine staying in see let's look at the shapeswith the seventh on the bottom first of all see major nine so we've added the ninthor we could play the six on the bottom in the 77th dominant chords c9 flat andseventh on the bottom with a ninth we could add the sixth on top instead ofthe fifth we could have the raised fifth
on top as welleven better raised the ninth as well that makes it c7 altered and finally minor chords c minor 9or c minor six nine i'll now run through a cycle of dominant seventh with fournote rootless voicings in the right hand so track 17 bossa nova comping numbertwo on page 97 features a similar bass line to last time but this time it's ina latin feel the right hand shapes alternate three six seven nine four aseven with seven nine three six four d you also need to memorize the shapes andget used to playing them in the left hand especially if you're playing with abass player track 18 dominant bebop
scale work out on page 99 featuresrootless 13th chords in the left hand around this dominant 7th cycle the bebopscales in the right hand i'm not going to talk about bebop scales in this clipbut the point is you can use this track to practice anything you likeif you silence the right hand channel because the cd is stereo panned you'llget bass and drums only to play along with 1 2 1 2 3 4 we're going to finish by looking brieflyat turnarounds usually the last two bars of a tune that send you back to thestart for a repeat or an improvisation the most common jazz turnaround is basedon 1 6 2 5 chords applying the voicing
principles i've demonstrated abovehere's a few ways of playing this with rootless shapes so a turnaround in fsticking to the notes that belong to the key otherwise known as diatonic if i make those four notes shapes youcould sound like this all the chords in this example a diatonic they don'tcontain any notes outside the key or scale of f many many standards are basedon this sequence not just in the last two bars as a turnaround but often inthe main body of the tune itself blue moon is a well-known example i'm nowgoing to play the same turnaround with the opposite shapes starting with theseventh on the bottom of the f chord
first of all in three notes and thenadding a fourth note if you're playing a bluesyou can still play a one six two five turnaround but the chords are likely tobe all dominant sevenths the defining chord type in blues harmony if youchoose your shapes carefully you can make them go down in semitones from thesecond chord of the turn around d7 until you get back to f7 one of the iconicsounds of jazz piano so here's a blues turnaround with dominant seventh chords i've upgraded to four note shapes so here's a blues turnaround in f43 notevoicings
it's how those shapes go down from thed7 in semitones i can do it in four notes as well by adding the ninth to thef chord again they still go down in semitones d7altered becomes g 13 becomes c seven altered becomes f 13 playing theseshapes in the right hand with a walking bass in the left hand is a timeless andessential accompaniment style you'll notice i'm not playing all the chords onthe beat as written i'm mixing up on and off the beat courts this is an importantpart of establishing a good groove track thirty-one blues turnaround workout onpage 165 gives you a variety of rhythms and walking bass lines to explore thesecond half of the track transfers the
chords to the left hand and suggests arange of approaches for improvising over them in the right you i hope you found this summary ofrootless voicings useful maybe learn the shapes in the right hand first with abaseline in the left hand are really important a government technique thenonce you know the shapes transfer them to the left hand and play themunderneath your improvisation or melody this is especially important when you'replaying with a bass player in clip number five we'll be looking at anothertechnique of voicing chords where you
split the notes between the handstwo-handed comping really important style used by all professional pianistshowever the next clip refers to diminished chords and scales until thenhave fun
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