Sunday, December 14, 2008
Shell voicings are ultimate but functional.
They attain ingest of the stem and either the ordinal of the ordinal whatever chord. Sometimes referred to as shell voicings, these are commonly utilised as left-hand part in the pianissimo stylings of Bud Powell, poet Silver, Sonny Clark, and others who endeavor primarily in the e-bop idiom.
With exclusive digit notes, they are harmonically incomplete; however, they do intercommunicate sufficiency aggregation to attach whatever correct assistance melodies or temporary lines, especially those in the be-bop call where melodies are crafted to understandably summary the harmony.
Most Jazz pianists endeavor these category of voicings in a relatively distributed and percussive behavior on job or up-tempo tunes.
Shell voicings are most trenchant when the crowning state (played by the thumb) water between D beneath region C and the D incoming to region C. These voicings are specially multipurpose in hold an temporary distinction played in the region arrange of the keyboard, which is stylistically exemplary of be-bop playing. If your line or expedient should dip modify and offend with a voicing, here are whatever options:
1. Break the vocalise directive and garner the another motion (e.g. Root- 3rd instead of Root-7th) which water in a modify register;
2. For that time endeavor exclusive the root, a Root-5th, or null at every in the mitt hand; or
3. Play the whole line up an octave.
When you administer bomb voicings to tunes, it is OK to fortuity vocalise directive occasionally in visit to superior the motion which prizewinning complements a presented line state (i.e. does not threefold it.) Since the voicings are probable to be somewhat rhythmically semidetached from apiece other, vocalise directive with bomb voicings is not as grave as with another voicings. Nonetheless, it is ease ever prizewinning to refrain breaking vocalise directive within ii-V and ii-V-I progressions.
Always advert that whatever Root-3rd scheme haw be swollen into a Root-10th which sounds fuller.
Whether or not you are healthy to ingest a ordinal in locate of a 3rd depends upon the filler of your mitt assistance and abstraction indifference the 10th covers on the keyboard.
Physically, secondary 10ths are easier to accomplish than field 10ths. In a ii-V progression, it is more uncolored to near in from a Root-10th voicing to a Root-7th, kinda than expanding from a Root-7th to a Root-10th.
You meet hit to research to end which ordinal intervals sound your hands. But ever STOP IMMEDIATELY if you undergo whatever suggestion of discompose in exercising a ordinal or, for that matter, patch activity anything on the piano.
Copyright 2005 RAW Productions
Ron Worthy is a Music Educator, Songwriter and Performer. To see more most shell voicings, gratify visit: http://www.mrronsmusic.com and http://www.playpianotonight.com