The Sweet 16 Voicings

    I know what's on everyone's mind - "I always fall into playing the same old Boring Chord Voicings out of sheer habit -  How can I possibly break out of this rut?". While it may not matter in the slightest to the general public, it matters a lot to those of us who are energized by the subtleties of harmony (a small group of us, no doubt).
    Typically, on piano,  we grab onto a Root and Fifth  OR  Root and Seventh in the left hand and put the other notes in the right hand in our standard position, maybe throw in an extension or two,  and we do this on every chord we come across,  for our whole lives, even longer if we pass that concept on to our students.  By getting away from the root on the bottom, and spreading out the notes methodically, we see a much more interesting world of sound and voice-leading open up, filled lots of refreshing possibilities. 
   This study below is a way to shake your voicing world up a little and add some real musical interest to your playing or arranging.   We split out the notes of a basic 4-part chord into its 16 open-voicing possibilities - a universe where any of the 4 chord tones is equally likely to fall on the bottom or top of the voicing.
   I use an Em7(b5) chord for the example here, but this should be practiced with all of the basic 4 part chords in all keys - that would be:
                             Maj7,  Min7,  Dim7,  Min7(b5),  Dominant 7,  Min(maj7).
Granted, it is a daunting project, but the rewards are immensely useful for players, arrangers and composers.
  Just the 6 basic chords alone, doing the 4 exercises, each with 4 voicings, in 12 keys would be

                                               1152 new voicings       ( 6x4x4x12).

Add in 4 additional chords with altered 5ths: (Dom7(b5),  Dom7(#5),  maj7(b5),  maj7(#5))  and you're now looking at
                                               1920 new voicings       (10x4x4x12)

Don't let these numbers put you off, though - the brain can handle this, as there's a lot of transferred learning that happens between the different chord types.  Listen, sing along, experiment and practice to incorporate these into your aural vocabulary and always voice-lead into and out of these voicings if you want them to really work....

      (contact me if you want a full-sized file of this)






 

Broken Open-Voicing Inversions of Em7(b5)

New York Voices - Four Part Voicing for the Harmonically Obsessed