Now that I am through with that other nonsense, I want to continue the discussions that were started on other threads about Jazz comping and chord voicings.

here is another good book

http://www.jazzbooks.com/mm5/merchant.m ... ode=PIAKEY

also this is a cool site with a lot of info

http://www.marksmart.net/instruments/st ... kmain.html

I think sharing specific examples can be a cool thing to do.


Brett

The DeGreg book is a good one. He starts out with "shell" voicings which is useful on Stick.

Taking a ii-V-I as the basis of an example you have two basic LH shell voicings you can use for it:

ii : 1-3
V : 1-7
I : 1-3

or

ii : 1-7
V : 1-3
I : 1-7

In the first one the bass moves down a 5th then up a 4th and the second one goes up a 4th and down a 5th. In each case the upper tone moves in a smooth voice-leading line. In the key of C the first pattern's upper line moves:

F-F-E

And inn the second pattern the upper line moves:

C-B-B

The typical kind of voice leading that piano players often use. Now what you do in the right hand is a whole other can. Personally I'm working on simple two-note shells. The obvious point is that whichever LH shell pattern you're playing will dictate what notes are in the right hand. The rule would be that whenever you're playing the 3rd in the LH you should be playing the 7th in the RH and vice versa.

So two possible RH shell voicings to accompany the previous LH voicings could be:

ii : 5-7
V : 9-3
I : 5-7

or

ii : 3-5
V : 7-9
I : 3-5


Again, typical jazz piano voicings of a ii-V-I with only two notes per hand but nicely fills the chord out in a simple manner with good voice leading.

Dave Huff

Here are those shell voicings in notation to give a clearer picture of what I mean.

So Brett and Dave, how do the left hand parts in DeGreg's book work for you in fifths?
Dave, I notice that your examples have more than an octave between tenor and bass, and the second one crosses voices, unlike the ones in the book. Do you find the LH progressions in the book easy to play?

Mad Monk.

Well you're thinking in terms of Bach chorale part-writing rules, which will inevitably be broken if you try to superimpose them upon jazz piano accompaniment practice. This is actually the same problem I mentioned in your thread, namely that you can't necessarily look at voices in the same way on a fifths tuned stick part written on a grand staff as you would a keyboard part. If one is insistent upon using Bach part-writing terminology then the upper voice in the left hand of Voicing B actually isn't the tenor but would in fact be the soprano voice. Of course you could raise everything in the right hand up an octave to fix that (which looking at it now I would probably do for Voicing B, I made these away from an instrument so was going from memory).

What this does illustrate is that the most convenient left hand voicings with a fifths tuning will often have an octave displacement. By this I mean that 3rds and 7ths are generally more comfortably played as 10ths and 19ths. So for the least stretching I found that bringing the upper pitch of the left hand up an octave to be the easiest to play, which does change DeGreg's voicings.

But I would reiterate the point that getting locked into classical part-writing rules when analyzing something like this will probably give more headaches than help. Also be aware that the octave spacing rule applies mostly to the spacing between soprano, alto, and tenor, whereas most harmony texts allow spaces larger than an octave between tenor and bass (mainly because Bach did it , but there's good acoustical sense to it as well as it matches the form of the overtone series with larger spans in the lower partials and closer spacing the further you go up the series).

HI Brett.

I just came back to have a good look at that Aebersold book. It's a bloody ripper isn't it, just what the doctor ordered really.

I've been looking for books which run through all the chord building blocks in a Logical way, damn it. It's ok if you've got ears, but putting this stuff away under your belt hook, so to speak, is another story.

Thanks again.

Hi Stringtapper... everyone.

I just tried all this and it was so cool to try the second example on the attachment and to hear about voices and their range/placement. Essentially moving the bass up from the ii to the V.

Thanks for a morning lesson, much further down the track for me on this post.....