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Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings

Left hand piano voicings enable you to play the basic progression of jazz harmony, II-V-I, with good voice leading while freeing your right hand for soloing. The most important notes in these chords are the third and seventh because they determine the chord quality. The root and fifth of the chord don’t require much attention because they are implied by the rest of the chord. Here are the basic left hand voicings in first position:

left hand voicings


Here are the left hand voicings in second position:

left hand chords


Try substituting the tritone (augmented 4th/diminished 5th) for the V chord. This substitution is sometimes called a Valt (#5,#9) chord (depending on the root in the bass):

jazz voicings


Try altering other scale degrees:

jazz chords

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Comments

  1. Paul PivalNo Gravatar says:

    September 30th, 2006 at 1:42 pm (#)

    Graham,

    This is very cool. I’m passing this along to a friend (Steve Summers), who will certainly appreciate advice on guitar voicings for standards.

    Paul

  2. Graham EnglishNo Gravatar says:

    September 30th, 2006 at 5:30 pm (#)

    Awesome. I hope it’s useful for Steve. Here’s a cool and free . It’d be cool if they made one of these for the piano.

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about graham

I'm a songwriter and recording artist who sings, plays keyboards, and explores the vast world of sound hoping to find some magical moments along the way. I'm also a Mac geek.

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