Lesson: Voicings

capilano-gypsy

I hope some people find this contribution useful.

Multi-purpose voicings

We'll talk about one of the most commonly used voicings in gypsy jazz. These voicings are based off of the half-diminished chord shapes:

(displayed from low E to high E)
B half-diminished

xx3435

xx7767

xx9,10,10,10

xx12,14,12,13

These shapes can be transposed to the middle 4 strings:

x2323x

x5746x

x897,10x

x12,12,10,12x

Other shapes that involve the lowest E string are harder to use for multi-purpose stuff because sometimes they'll clash with the bass (e.g. 9th against the root) so I'll leave those out for now.

So these shapes can be used for min7b5, min6, and dom9 chords.

Bm7b5 is the equivalent to Dm6 and G9. With this in mind, try playing the different shapes on its equivalent m6 and dom9 chords over different changes.

An example on Minor Blues:

Gm6
xx2333 -or- xx5756 -or- xx898,10 -or- xx12,12,11,12

Cm6
(same as Gm6 shapes, moved up a 4th)

Eb9
xx3323 -or- xx5666 -or- xx8,10,89 -or- xx11,12,11,13

Am7b5
(look at top part of this lesson)

D7b9
(different voicing - an idea would be to move around diminished shapes)

I hope someone finds this useful.

guelda

Thanks man, I found it useful

peace
Guelda

vince

I did as well. thanks!

Josh Gibson

Thanks for taking the time to do that. You just inspired me to spend my practice time tonight working on those voicings.

Yann

Hello,

I'm very much interested in voicing progressions these days and the page I have written about it a while ago has been updated recently with cluster chords (or should I say block chords ?), a transcription of Bireli's chorus in voicings in Stella by Starlight on Live in Marciac, as well as my approach to voicings over a ii-V-I :

http://www.serendipity-band.com/misc/manouche/src/voicings-en.htm

I also hope you'll find it useful.

Cheers,

Yann