Harmony

The concept of lazy voicings can help you find NEW voicings. When you play lazy voicings you move voicings to the next chords closest notes. This can even help you get away from the root which is a voicing suprisingly you can usually omit, ESPECIALLY with a bass player.

Hey guys here is part 3 where I discuss one Upper structure triad option you can use for a V7 chord moving to a Minor i chord.
If you are in the key of C- the triad over the G7 would be Ebmaj. so a maj triad built off of the b6 scale degree.

Try it out!
Also check out part 1 and 2 of the series:

TRADUCCIÓN AL ESPAÑOL PARA ESTUDIANTES

In Part 2 of my Upper Structure series I use a Maj Triad built off of the 7th scale degree of a Major 7 chord.
So if we are playing a Cmaj the upper structure would be a Bmaj triad.
I use this mainly to suspend the Maj7th chord. So instead of directly playing C maj I play a Bmaj Triad and then play the C maj chord.

Check out the video and if you have any questions please post them!

TRADUCCIÓN AL ESPAÑOL PARA ESTUDIANTES

here is part 3 where I discuss improvising using the upper structure triads on the dominant chords for "My One and Only Love"...

For example...
In the A section you have a B-7b5 to E7 to A-....
for the E7 I use a G triad as the upper structure so the voicing looks like this:
G# B D G moving to an A C E for minor.
Now when improvising try to create melodies that utilize the notes from an E7 (E G# B D) and mix in a G triad (G B D) so it might look like G G# B D E. Move around the octaves and try to make melodies that resolve to the A minor chord.

In Part 2 I talk about the specifics on how to use the triads with the dominant 7 chords to create harmonic movement.

For example.

The G7 on the 2nd measure would have an E triad as the upper structure. So voicing it out would look like this:
G B F G# B E
this chord moves to an A- so if you just take the G# B and E and move them to A C E you have a really nice movement to the minor sound!

Sorry for the low audio for my speaking...if it is too low I can type it out for you guys if you want.

Hey guys, here is a lesson on playing upper structure triads on "My One and Only love". Using these triads will show how easy it is to think about upper structures of harmony.
I also demonstrates a way of thinking about chords and triads instead of using scales to create melodic improvisation.
The first part is a demonstration of the melody focusing on the upper structure triads.
The Second part is an explanation of the chords.
The third part is an explanation on improvising over the chords.

This is a great lesson. Just go through all the tunes you know see where you can put this. Pull out the real book, whatever!

Also check out Behn's comping. He plays really clear rhythms IMHO.

Most of us voice from the bottom up, right? C maj 7, we hit the C and build up from there.

Try voicing from the top down. See the B or the D and then fill in the rest of the chord. It's not easy to switch, but it will REALLY help your playing..

Sorry to re-surface this lesson but for some reason it was listed as "new" in my posts and when I checked on it the accompanying PDF was missing. Just thought I would fix it.