Chords and harmony: Difference between revisions

Will you take, say, an F# chord, and experiment with various ways to spread it out?

Yeah. I’ll just experiment with different voicings. What I usually do is just try to find the kind of voicings of particular chords that I like. Turn them around. I don’t like the sound of conventional guitar voicings. I love listening to jazz guitar; I listened to it a lot when I was younger, because my father introduced me to it. But I very quickly tired of the sound of the chord voicings. Whereas with a piano player I hear much more chordal inventiveness, not in terms of shuffling around with the chords, but with the inventiveness of voicings. I just decided that if I was going to get some chord things together that I might as well play some other voicings, instead of the kind of Jazz Book One or Jazz Book Two or Jazz Book Ten types of chords. I just searched for different voicings.

Do you think that different voicings evoke certain types of moods?

Oh, yeah. Sometimes you can use a simple chord and come up with a nice voicing. It’s all important, because it’s music.

Do you ever locate chords on certain groups of strings to change their mood or impact?

I wouldn’t favor any particular one over any other, unless it was called for in a specific piece. Then I would. I just try to look for interesting ways to play around some simple things and make them sound like they’re not. Or the other way around: Make something simple seem much more involved.