![]() Remember that both major and minor chords share the same 9th. We build minor rootless voicings in the same way as with major chords, we add the 9 and we drop the root. In the key of C you would build a minor 7th chord of E which is the third. The alternative way to build a rootless voicing for major chords is to build a minor 7th chord off the major 3rd. To turn a major chord into a rootless voicing, we add the 9th and then drop the root. If you are playing in a jazz band, the bass player will have the root of the chord covered so there is no need for you to play it. Rootless voicings free up a finger for more interesting and colourful note choices such as a 9th, 11th or 13th which makes your playing sound more professional. The second is that it reduces hand movement to a minimum so that you can move from one chord to the next very easily and focus you attention on soloing in your right hand.The first is that the chords will flow from one to the next very smoothly which sounds great to the listener! Rootless voicings achieve very smooth voice leading in a 251 progression which has 2 main benefits: To play a rootless voicing, we leave out the root of the chord and play one of the extensions instead so for example we could play the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th of the chord. We learnt in the lesson on chord extensions that we can extend the chord past the octave to play the 9th, 11th and 13th. How Do We Play Rootless Chord Voicings?Ī voicing is the way that we choose to spread out or arrange the notes of a chord on the keyboard. Rootless voicings are also useful in a solo piano context and are a great voicing choice to support soloing and improvisation in your right hand. This reduces hand movement and will make your playing sound much more professional and sophisticated than root based voicings. Rootless voicings achieve very smooth voice leading in the context of a rootless 251 progression. To play a rootless voicing, we leave out the root of the chord and play one of the chord extensions instead so for example we could play the 3rd, 5th, 7th and the 9th could be the additional extension of the chord. Rootless voicings are an essential skill for the modern jazz pianist. Downloadable Lesson Supplementĭownload this free PDF containing rootless 251 progressions in all 12 keys:ĭOWNLOAD PDF What Are Rootless Chord Voicings? In this lesson we are going to cover what a voicing is, what makes it rootless, and why we use rootless voicings. Now this is the focus of the next course in the PianoGroove syllabus, but just to give you a taster of what’sĬoming we will look at the b9 over the V7 chord.Rootless voicings are also known as left hand voicings or Bill Evans voicings so be aware that these three terms refer to the same thing. Remember that we can always alternate the root placement.Ī final variation here, if you are a little ahead of the curve, is to test some alterations. Drill Variations – Root Placement & AlterationsĪ variation, is to play the ii-7, then go straight to the V7 chord rootless voicing, and then hit the bass. Of your attention on finding the voicings. The goal is to commit them to your muscle memory so that you don’t have to focus all Again looking at the 1st 8 bars of Body & Soul, we can see there is a 251 in Db Major.īy isolating these progressions in practice drills, we will be prepared for when they come up in jazz standards. We looked at the tune Misty, here’s the first 8 bars, and we can see that we have a 251 in Ab If we think back to the last lesson, we looked at how these voicings can sound in the context of jazz ballads. We will play the root in the lower registers, and then bring our left hand up to play the This was drilling through major, minor, and dominant rootless voicings with a stride style left hand.įor practice slot 2, we are going to add all three of these voicing together to create the major 251 progression. In the last lesson we covered the first exercise in the PDF download. Welcome to the 2nd lesson in this practice series on rootless voicings. ![]()
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