Presented by Dr. Bob Lawrence
Dominant chords are the backbone of jazz piano — and they're easier than you think! In this fast-track tutorial, you'll learn how to play them confidently, even if you're just getting started with jazz.
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Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Bob Lawrence discusses the complexities of dominant voicings in jazz piano. He outlines four primary techniques for voicing dominant chords, emphasizing the importance of learning these voicings in both hands for effective improvisation. The discussion includes traditional rootless voicings, contemporary shell voicings, and two-handed shapes, all aimed at enhancing a pianist's harmonic understanding and improvisational skills.
Transcript
All right, here we go. Quick video on dominant voicings. I mentioned in a previous video, I think voicings are the most complicated skill for young jazz pianists to learn. I voicings can get very, I say it's like fish in line. They can get tangled up very quickly, right? So this video, just going to outline four ways that I teach students here at the Dallas School of Music.Four ways that I teach them how to begin voicing the dominant sound, dominant chords. Okay? I'm just gonna go through them quickly for you, then I'll demonstrate them. Obviously, C dominant, root position, straight up block voicing, right? C, E, G, B flat. Of course, we have the inverted shapes, first inversion, second inversion with G on the bottom and then third inversion with the B flat or the seventh on the bottom, right? So you got root position, C on bottom, first inversion, E or the third on bottom, second inversion with the G on the bottom, and the third inversion with the B flat on the bottom. You should learn these voicings, these blocks in both hands, right? Both hands when you play them. And the reason being is because not only will you use them in the left hand when playing, but the right hand, those shapes are absolutely vital for improvisation, right? Melody flows from harmonic understanding. Those harmonic shapes are necessary in your right hand for improvisation purposes. Now, we have our traditional shell voicings, which are three, seven, nine, or sometimes you'll hear them called rootless voicings. I teach these shapes, these are very popular and very common in jazz. And then the 7-3-5. If you want to hear what it sounds like, it's always a good idea to maybe go down and hit the root, C, come up, hit the voicing. Beautiful, right? There's my 3-7-9. If I go down hit the root again, come up, 7-3-5. Beautiful. Traditional rootless voicings. You can't go wrong, and you need to have them in your arsenal.
Then we have the contemporary shell voicings, the chordal or fourthy voicings that you hear people talk about. So C dominant played with the third, the sixth, and the nine, right? A little more abstract, but it works beautifully for a dominant sound. Or seven three six beautiful very common voicing for dominant okay and then finally we have our two-handed shapes we have I like to teach three seven in the left hand and then the third six or the 13th and the ninth in the right hand right beautiful five note shape always two in the left three in the right and then I play the other voicing I teach for dominant is seven, three, six, nine, five. Just like that. Okay. So those are the four types of voicings, the root, the blocks, the block shapes, root position, first, second, third inversion. You got your traditional rootless shell voicings, option A, option B. You have your contemporary shell voicings, which are based on interval of the fourth or chordal shapes, option A, option B. And then you have two-handed voicings, two in the left, three in the right, five note shapes, and option A and option B for that. So I want to now just put these into a musical context so that you can hear them. So I've got a backing track that I'm going to play along with, but it's always nice to hear the voicings in a musical setting, right? So we have our root position C dominant. Straightforward now they're in versions. Right, just work your way straight up the piano. What goes up must come down. So I always encourage students to play these shapes ascending and descending. Then we have our traditional rootless shell, 379 and then the 7-3-5. Option A, option B. Our contemporary shell, 369, option A. Then our option B, seven, three, six, or the 13th, right? Now our two-handed voicings. Three in the seven, third and seventh in the left . . .